Hit and Run

5/22/12

I was on my way to work yesterday morning when my car was hit by a car going around 35 mph.  He hit my passenger side bumper as I turned onto a one way street, he then fish tailed into the side of my car and pushed me onto a curb and into a concrete trash can. I didn't see him coming.  I knew I was in an accident only when I heard the loud crash and realized I had no control over my vehicle and was being pushed onto a curb.  I remember watching the concrete trash can approach quickly and scanning for poles.

The driver sped off.

A nice gentleman who heard the accident while in a parking lot called the police while I signaled another gentleman that was behind me in a car to follow the driver that sped off.  The driver of the hit and run vehicle went the wrong way down a one way street and escaped the guy following him.  That guy returned.

I was shaken.  I was cramping everywhere that my seat belt was restraining me including my abdomen where my precious baby was.  Sharp pains were shooting from side to side and from the center of my belly.  This is when I started sobbing.  My phone hit the windshield and was dead.  I felt so alone as I tried to get my car charger to let me operate my phone somehow, someway.  The fire department came and then the paramedics.  The police finally showed up and didn't want to take a report since there was only one car.  The paramedics challenged him and he finally and reluctantly did.  The police officer was mean to me, telling me he couldn't hear me and to speak up.  I was just happy to be making sentences since I was so frazzled.  He didn't speak to either witness and left before I did.

I borrowed the phone of one of the guys and called my husband who came down and took care of towing my car.  I thanked to the two gentleman that stayed to make sure I was okay and walked to the Ambulance.  I was admitted to the Trauma part of a nearby hospital where my RE is located because the ER was full.  This was my first and hopefully last time in Trauma.  I was in that room for a total of three hours and had one stomach ultrasound which was pointless because it showed nothing but a gestational sack. My husband arrived at the hospital during this ultrasound.  After the ultrasound  I asked if I could have a cracker around 10:00 since I hadn't had breakfast and was feeling nausea from pregnancy and was told I could have medicine to make the nausea go away.  I tried explaining that a cracker would do it but I got medicine in my IV.  Then I sat for an hour while I had to pee.  I had to pee for an hour and finally had my husband hit the call button.  The nurse answered and I told her.  No one ever came to let me pee.  So, finally, at the hour and a half point...I got up grabbed a urine jug out of a cabinet and pee'd standing in the corner of the Trauma room with my husband standing guard over the curtain and laughing at me.

I hopped back in bed and laid for another half hour and then a patient was wheeled into the room with me.  She was elderly and had liver failure and kidney failure.  She was swollen and unresponsive with tubes coming and going from every orifice.  I laid idly by just 5 feet away while she had x-rays, heart scans, etc.  I saw just her swollen toes at one point and they reminded me of Maddie's.  My sweet sixteen month old's toes so fresh and new looked like they had aged 85 years and I cried.  It hit me, I was in the Trauma ward with people that were over dosing and dying of complications with my 7 week old fetus in my belly.  New life and old life in the same room.  A life coming and a life going.  I prayed that God would take this lady as I listened to her grunt in pain and heard the nurses talk about how she only had a Granddaughter listed as next of kin.

I looked at my husband and bawled.  We were both beside ourselves.  We were in the wrong place.  An hour after Sandra checked in next to me we were moved into the hallway.  We waited there for a private ER room where an ultrasound could be performed trans vaginally.  We were surrounded by crackheads.  One vomited lying on a gurney while being wheeled down the hall.  Jamie moved away from her as she choked and gagged into a bucket staring right at me.  It was the worst feeling.  I wanted to be discharged before I even got to my ultrasound.  Jamie actually asked a nurse if we could be.  They realized we had waited a long time and got us into a room where I got an ultrasound and there was the beautiful heartbeat at 120 bpm, 25 b's pm faster than it was last Thursday.  Jamie and I both breathed audible sighs of relief.  We were so happy but will never go back to that hospital.

We went for lunch at 2:00 where I ate enough for breakfast and dinner.  We then went to get my rental car and then home for a nap.  Jamie woke me up at 4:30 to tell me he got news that my car was totaled.  We're looking for a new car now, unfortunately, because I loved my car and we had just paid off both cars.

Anyway, I am healthy and so is baby and I couldn't be happier despite losing a car.