PORCH PONDERINGS

Accident

PROMPT March 27th

In your entry today, write about one of the most frightening moments of your life.


Hubby and I had a few ugly words and I rushed out of the cabin. I headed up the mountain in the Jeep to pick up a friend for church. It was a Sunday in March 2008. It had snowed just a bit in Gardiner, MT. There was a bit of slush on the road.

The road up the mountain to Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park is a twisty turny one. It takes you from about 5,200 ft to about 6,700 ft in about five miles and follows the Gardner River. It also crosses the 45th parallel of latitude, halfway to the Arctic Circle.

I went a bit slow after passing through the North Gate. Glancing for a second off to the left at the river, a movement in front of me caught my attention.

Headed straight at me was a huge truck. I stomped on the brake, the clutch and screamed. Crash! The truck pushed the Jeep back hundreds of feet. Airbags went off. My seatbelt grabbed my chest, cut into my left thigh. I gripped the steering wheel. Screamed and screamed. My legs were still on the brake and clutch. The car’d died. The front end was a crumpled mess.

The other driver was now at my door. “Are you okay?”

I was shaking. No blood. But I was shaking. I was able to get out of the Jeep and walk around. But the pain in my leg and my chest were intense.

Someone asked me if I wanted an ambulance. But I just wanted someone to call my husband, he was at church. So he came.

Husband stayed with the Jeep and the park Rangers. The church pastor’s wife took me the 50 miles to the hospital. On the way there, I wished I had taken the ambulance. I was short of breath, and my leg really hurt.

Nothing was broken. But I had a bruised sternum and a huge bruise, seroma, in my upper thigh. I also sustained an injury in the lining of the left hip. The sternum bothered me for a few years. The seroma is a soft tissue compartmental injury. It bothers me still. I had surgery a few years after the accident to repair my hip injury.

The truck that hit me didn’t get a ticket. He was towing a trailer with snowmobiles and was traveling faster than the speed limit and was in my lane. The Rangers blamed the road condition at the time of the crash. But his insurance paid.

Scariest day of my life, so far. But I could also add the night my second husband had a stroke. We had to life-flight him to the hospital for emergency brain surgery. Or the night current husband told me to call the squad, and he almost had an appendix burst. Scary.

So kiss your beloved before they leave. Say a prayer before you take a car drive. You never know.