12 Months of Change

Hello world! I haven’t been saying anything lately, and I am going to try to change that.

The 4th of July, 2020  marked 12 months since I was involved in a serious auto accident. Some days I am still surprised I’m here to tell the story.

The short version of the story follows.

I became homeless in early June. I had a good job but I was evicted from my housing because of the actions of others. Because the situation was volatile I was afraid to return to my previous home. The event that caused my eviction involved violence on the part of the landlord and one of his family members toward a friend of mine who was visiting.

I stayed in motels for a few weeks off and on, thanks to some people who cared enough to help me. One generous and caring friend was able to let me help with dog sitting jobs on a few occasions so we had some time to work things out, but not long.

Rosie (my dog) and I had nowhere to go. I looked for a roommate situation again, although after the last experience I was leery of that. I looked for other options. I found a women’s homeless shelter that had a wonderful program, but they couldn’t allow residents to have pets. I couldn’t find anyone who could keep Rosie for me so I was not able to go to the shelter.

I didn’t call my son about the problem because he lived so far away, and i didn’t want to burden him with anxiety.  I am intimately familiar with anxiety and i don’t wish to bring it to anyone else.  But i did ask on Facebook if anyone local could take care of my dog for a while so that i could get into the shelter.  No one was able to, but my son’s partner saw the post and i got a phone call from my son, saying his partner had seen my post and they wanted to help.

Eventually I accepted the invitation from my son and his roommates to come to live with him. I packed everything I could fit into my 1998 Mercury Mountaineer along with Rosie, and with the invaluable help of a good friend, headed out of Colorado and set out for Oregon.

I drove for the first day and we made Grand Junction by the evening of the 3rd of July. The next day we set out again and crossed into Utah. It was a hot but otherwise pleasant day.

If I remember correctly, I took the first driving shift and when we stopped for a restroom, gas and snack break, we switched.

Shortly before 1pm on July 4th, as she was driving, my friend strayed slightly off the road onto the shoulder. The shoulder in this area was narrow and the road dropped off. She pulled the truck back onto the road but over-corrected because it was necessary to over-steer to get back up from the somewhat steep grade.

I can still so clearly remember it. As we got back onto the road, I thought for a millisecond that we might be okay. I quickly reassessed as I felt the pull of the momentum and realized we were going to roll. It seems that we all have that innate sense of when the critical point, the point where a movement can be stopped, has passed.

As we rolled I remember seeing the world go upside-down, come back to upright and then rock back and forth a couple of times before completely righting itself.

As the world spun around I recall rather calmly wondering if I would live through the event, and if I did, would I end up paralyzed or in some other way incapacitated. I don’t think I screamed; i’m not really a screamer. I might have cussed, ,because i am a good curser,  but I don’t remember.

We landed almost completely perpendicular to the road. Fortunately no one was directly behind us or coming in the opposite direction when it happened, but my first reaction was to tell my friend to pull the truck off the road because I didn’t want to cause a pile up. (The truck was still running.). Other drivers had stopped by this point and advised us to leave the truck where it was and get out to safety.

My foot hurt. My door was jammed shut, but the driver’s side could be opened and they helped my friend to the side of the road. I climbed across to the driver’s seat and another kind person, or perhaps two, helped me to the side of the road where someone had stopped their pick-up. My foot hurt. A lot.

I couldn’t bear any weight on my foot. They helped me up to the bed of the pick-up and I scooted up. I looked at my foot, which along with serious pain had an odd floppy sort of feeling. What I saw was a bloody mess.

Bystanders who stopped to help worried I would get shocky and encouraged me to lay down in the bed of the truck so I could elevate the foot.

All I wanted to do besides stop the pain was reach my son. I knew he was keeping track of our progress and I wanted to let him know what happened.

A kind man called him on my cell phone. I imagine it was one of the scariest phone calls my son ever got. But at least I was able to talk to him and assure him I was no longer in danger. Help was on the way and I would be okay.

We were in a rural area and it took about 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. The state patrol was there a bit sooner. A number of people stopped to help, including two doctors and at least one nurse.

Everyone was incredibly kind. One man took Rosie to the shelter for an emergency hold, and made sure I knew where she was, and the shelter knew the circumstances. Others stayed with us and comforted us as we waited. They kept telling my friend to sit down, but she wanted to help pick things up that had spilled across the road and along each side as the broken truck rolled over. I suspect she was a bit in shock and fixing things was her way to deal with what happened.

One man brought out a windshield sun shade and held it over me at the side of the truck to block the sun. It was very hot and the sun was full and intense. Someone gave us all water, including Rosie.

A state patrol officer took brief statements from my friend and me. Finally the ambulance came. They loaded me onto a stretcher.  I recall that process being one that i was concerned about because jostling my foot was the last thing i wanted to do.  They got me onto the stretcher without much additional pain, for which i’m grateful.  My friend rode in the front of the ambulance as we went to the hospital. They gave me something for the pain. It helped somewhat.

We arrived at Utah Valley Hospital and emergency personnel gathered around us. They took my friend away to be checked out. She had a nasty bump on the head and another on her elbow, but the x-rays were negative for anything serious. (Rosie had a scraped up muzzle and nose, but amazingly was otherwise uninjured.)

We spent a week or so in Springville, Utah before we could arrange to continue our trip since we had the vehicle to take care of.  We also had no way to complete the trip given that all of my stuff was in the car and we also had Rosie with us.  Another kind friend flew down to Salt Lake City, rented a van and we loaded up and finally headed back out on our trip.

It was an adventure, but we all made it to Oregon!  I’ve had other adventures (or misadventures as the case might be) since then, but i’ll save those for another time.