Car Crashes and Amputations · 1:43am May 9th, 2016

Well, I'm finally done with my April guide, so now I can get back to talking about my life. Unfortunately, it's been a pretty big disaster with a few hard hits right after another. It's been so bad that I've completely halted all of my writing, and I'm really working to get back into it, but my inspiration is drained.

Let's start off with the first thing. On April 12th, I had a car accident. I was crossing three lanes of traffic, first two lanes had been halted due to traffic and so I was allowed to cross. Third lane had also been halted, but as I was going to cross it became free flowing. So I waited for a moment and then as it was free, I crossed. As I crossed, a truck came barreling down much faster than anticipated and slammed into my back in. The movement was so quick and rough that it slammed me into another car that was sitting waiting to cross as well.

Luckily, nobody was hurt. I learned I'm pretty much invincible to these things, as this hasn't been my first accident, though it has been my first that I was at fault for. Bad news is, my car was totaled and I still owe money on my loan as my insurance only paid what the car was worth. It took a good chunk out of my loan, but I still owe about two grand.

I was without a car for the week. My mother lives about two miles from my house, and so the next Monday I had her pick me up and take me to work and then she went to her job. When Tuesday the 19th came around, my mother called me up before she came to get me for work. She complained that her leg was hurting and it was numb. She carefully drove to my house where I then drove her to the ER. While we were there, they gave her shots to numb the pain, which didn't help, and took x-rays of her back.

We had thought it was her sciatica, but while I was waiting with her in the room, I noticed her left leg was red and splotchy. I didn't think anything of it, and assumed it had to do with what was going on with her. After waiting for three hours, the doctor finally came back and told us we were free to go and he'd send us home with some meds. I do not believe he even looked at her leg at any point, even though that's what we specifically came in for.

After taking her home with her prescriptions I drove myself to work for the last few hours of the day. Wednesday and Thursday I visited her at home after work to check on her. The left leg was still red, swollen, and very splotchy. She made a follow up with her regular doctor for Friday to see what might be wrong. Once we talked to her doctor, he said to take her back to the ER, as her leg is in a very bad condition.

We took her back, and they transferred her over to another, better, hospital. They determined that there was a blood clot in her groin that halted the circulation of her left leg. By this time, the foot had started turning purple and blue. After taking time to consider her options, the doctors eventually concluded that her leg was too close to becoming gangrene and it had to come off. On Sunday the 24th, she went in for surgery where they amputated her left leg right above the knee.

The surgery took about two hours, which I had thought was surprising as I expected amputations to take longer. For the entire week after her surgery, she had not seemed her self. This was due to the drugs they had been pumping into her, and the other problems caused by the dying leg. She was given blood thinner as one of her drugs to prevent the clots from halting circulation to the other leg as well, she will be on blood thinner for the rest of her life most likely.

Since the leg was so close to gangrene, her body had started to malfunction. Her kidneys and liver had deteriorated severely. Eventually, her liver regained itself, but her kidneys are still not working at the time of writing this post, and so she may be on dialysis for the rest of her life. Her kidneys can come back online, but they are unsure if that will happen or not. Meanwhile, fecal matter had been sitting in her stomach for a good portion of the two weeks and had started to rot her intestines. Luckily, after they got her liver under control, and her blood levels were stable, they finally helped force the feces out of her body.

She is now out of ICU as of yesterday and is doing much better. The loss of her leg has taken a heavy toll, but she seems to be in high spirits. While she still has to be in the hospital for a few more days, she will eventually be moved to a rehabilitation center where she will spend as much time as needed getting into shape to live with this new impairment.

After she is a free woman, she will be living with me for a while until she is ready to live on her own once more. Unfortunately, she lives in a two story town home and so she will have to move, as traveling up stairs will become too difficult over time.

So this has been my life for the last of April. Spending time at the hospital waiting for her to get better. It's definitely affected my writing, as last week's blog post was extremely late. I try to post these on a Friday - Sunday schedule, but trying to be supportive for my mother has taken its toll. Good news is, I am driving my mothers SUV around, so I don't have to buy another car for a while. That's something.

I'll get back to writing soon. I've just got to find my center of clarity once more.

Oh, and this month makes it a year of being sober free from soda. That's a pretty big accomplishment since I use to chug 3-4 cans of soda daily. This last month really made me miss the spark the caffeine use to give me. I know I could have used it.

~TheTimeSword