Part 1- The Accident

March 10, 2017

We were heading down to kalispell for arena cross. We woke up and started to finish packing. We were taking our time a little bit because we were waiting for the Merc to open. We left our house around 9:20, stopped by the Merc then just had to quickly stop by Scott’s parents house to get his swimming suit he leaves there to hot tub with. We decided to go the Del Bonita way and as our luck would have it we were randomly selected at the border to get our car searched! So we unbuckled both kids and headed inside. We were there for about 10-15 mins and Ruthie ran around and around in circles through the small waiting room the whole time. It hurts a little bit remembering that. I so miss seeing her tiny little legs running and dancing around. She’s such an active and busy girl, I can imagine it’s a bit like torture for her having to sit on the couch day after day after day!

Anyways, after being held up at the border, just a couple mins later we had to stop for a train!! At this point I turned to Scott and said “Man, this is REALLY not our day!” Little did we know our day was about to get a trillion times worse! We made one final stop in Browning to fill up with gas and go to the bathroom and then we were on our way. 
It was around 11 ish by now and Ruthie was getting fussy, and as per usual I had turned around a million times to hand toys, snacks, iPads, books etc. I kept keeping track of the time because at 11:30 I planned to give Ruthie a bottle so then she’d fall asleep for a while. Luckily her iPad must have distracted her enough because by some miracle I was still buckled in my seat and had somewhat forgotten about the bottle at the time of the accident which was pretty much exactly at 11:30 - the time I planned to take my seatbelt off and turn around to give Ruthie her bottle. Every time I think about this it sends chills down my back. If I had given her that bottle theres a VERY high chance I wouldn't be writing these blog posts right now. Its kind of unnerving to think about.

A semi passed us going the opposite direction which of course blew up a huge cloud of snow. We’ve all experienced this before, right? And after a couple seconds the snow clears and you carry on your way. Well the snow did clear after a couple seconds but instead of seeing the road ahead of us like usual, we saw a big blue truck sliding sideways pretty much RIGHT in front of our car-it was also coming from the opposite direction. I heard Scott say “Oh geez!” And his body simultaneously tensed and then it happened. There was literally no time for any other reaction. No one screamed or tried to swerve, he was that close to us. I know it’s only been 3 weeks but the scene of the snow clearing to reveal that stupid blue truck sliding right towards our car is still just so haunting to me. I picture it over and over, multiple times a day. It never gets less terrifying. It’s like a million thoughts raced through my head yet none at all if that even makes sense. Is it possible to hate a “moment”? Because I hate that moment!! I hate it so much!!

I was instantly knocked unconscious from the playpen that flew up from the trunk and smashed my head against the dash. Airbags did go off but I was told by multiple dr.’s I would have had to hit my face on something other than the airbag for it to split open. It had to be more of a blunt force trauma-hence the dashboard. The couple that came across our accident said I wasn’t yet responding to them. Scott was awake and talking and my babies were in the backseat crying. The moment I was trying to regain consciousness is another moment I hate. At first I had no recollection of what just happened and felt completely lost and was wondering where I was. I was crunched over, I couldn’t hear or see a thing; everything was pitch black because I had no vision at the moment. And I felt completely paralyzed. I literally couldn’t move one muscle in my body. It felt like every muscle in my body was seized; clenched as tight as they could be. It was a terrifying thought to think I was completely paralyzed. Every inch of my body was in excruciating pain. Every.Single.Inch!! I really can’t even explain how awful that moment was. I’ve never experienced such extreme pain. Slowly I started to remember the truck and realized we had just been in an accident. I was trying not to freak out too much. Eventually I tried moving, which seemed impossible. I told myself to wiggle my fingers, which I was eventually able to do. I then one by one told myself to move my toes, my legs, my arms, my head etc. Slowly, I was able to move more and more. I could still feel immense amounts of pain. I felt something on my head, pinning me down. I reached my hand up to try and push it off. I still wasn’t able to see anything and was in complete darkness so I didn’t know what it was, I thought maybe it was the car. 

At this point I started hearing again-first just a loud ringing but eventually it went away and I heard voices. My vision was slowly coming back as well in my left eye-the one that wasn’t swollen shut. Scott was saying he couldn’t move, he did reach over for a second to try and help me push the playpen off of me. But he really couldn't help much at all, he was pretty trapped in there. I had been trying to push whatever was on me off with my left hand towards the window, that wasn’t working so I tried using my right hand. Shooting pains shot through my hand! I knew I wouldnt be able to push whatever was on me off so I resigned myself to waiting for someone; surely someone would find us soon and get us out. I sat there trying to reassure myself and keep calm. And then I heard another voice outside the car, it sounded a few feet away. It was a man’s voice “We’ve got to get them out of the car! It’s leaking gasoline everywhere. We’ve got to get them out before it starts on fire!” When I told Scott this, when we were in the hospital afterwards, he was like “Uhh, ya that was probably an awful thing to say when we were still in the car!” (He has zero memory of the accident at all) BUT I’m so glad he did say it because instantly something in my brain just switched, probably my motherly instincts and right away I thought “I’m getting out of this car and I’m getting my babies out!!” **Insert Heavenly Angels here** I immediately brought my injured hand up since I knew it was the only direction to push whatever was on me off. Within seconds and with a TON of pain I shoved the playpen off of me, undid my seatbelt and slid right out my window. I glanced into the car quickly to see what had been on me as I slid out and saw the playpen. This probably doesnt seem like much, right? I didnt think so either at the time. But after others and myself had seen the car in person or pictures of the car-my window in particular- I really shouldnt have been able to get out of the window at all, let alone with ease! Thinking back to this moment too, when I was hobbling out around the car and the lady who was helping us saw me cried out “Oh my gosh! It’s the mom! Oh my gosh! She got out! How did she get out?” She kept saying these things for a couple minutes. She really was making a big deal about it which I was just too in shock to recognize at the moment. When I got out of the car I felt my face as I could tell I could only see out of my left eye. The whole right side of my face felt extremely swollen, my eye was swollen completely shut and there was blood dripping all over my clothes. I was pretty worried I was going to be blind. (Thank heavens that isn’t the case!)

As I was wandering around the man was shouting to people to get something to break Roczen’s window open. His window was the only one that didn’t shatter and his door was jammed shut and wasn’t able to be opened. I continued around the car to Ruthie’s side (She was behind the drivers side) I looked through the shattered window and panicked when I saw her empty carseat. I started looking around, literally expecting to see my baby lying somewhere lifeless on the road. SUCH a horrible moment. Luckily I glanced across the road and saw a lady putting Ruthie into her truck. I had seen Ruthie’s soother on the ground and knew she would need it. I grabbed that, went back to her window where I had seen Roczen’s blanket and grabbed that too. He was still in his carseat crying and asking what had happened. Heart broken, I told him we had been in a car accident but that he’d be ok. The lady came back at this point and helped me limp across the street to her truck. I told her we needed to call 911 but she told me she already had and that they’d be here soon. I climbed in and held Ruthie while waiting for Roczen and Scott to get out too. My blood was dripping all over Ruthie and the truck, I felt a little bad about making such a mess but just too sore and exhausted to do anything about it. A few minutes later Roczen was brought to me. I was feeling very nauseous and was trying not to throw up or pass out. Ruthie was crying on and off but Roczen was silent and appeared to be struggling to stay awake. The lady got in the truck to wait with me. I kept asking about Scott and she told me he was stuck in the car and they were waiting for assistance to get there to help cut him out. (It took over 2 hours to get him out of our car)

The ambulance showed up shortly after and they started asking us where on our bodies hurt. I was then strapped down to a board and put on a stretcher and taken into the ambulance. They brought both my kids in and one of the EMT’s asked the lady who had been helping us if she was coming with us. I quickly begged her to come be with my babies as they’d have no one with them. She quickly agreed and just said she needed to go tell her husband who was the man who had been helping us as well.

The next several hours are a blur. It seemed like we hadn’t been there very long at all but when I asked the time it was already 4:00-almost 5 hours had passed. Time seemed to be passing in a strange manner. I know they asked me for numbers of people to contact. I knew Rick and Barb were already in Kalispell so I was planning on having them call them but when they came back with the phone I realized I didn’t know either of their numbers. I just had them written in my phone, which I didn’t have with me. So I told them my parents home number and my dad’s cell number. I got to talk to them for a bit and told them to come be with us. We got CT scans and x-rays. I don’t really have any idea what was going on with the kids since I was getting worked on the whole time we were there. I knew they weren’t far away though as I could hear Ruthie crying. It is SO horrible to hear your baby crying and literally not be able to do one thing about it or even go to them. The nurses kept telling me that crying was a good sign and I know thats true but it was still just so hard laying on that table unable to go to them. I remember being freezing cold and asking for more and more warm blankets. I also kept begging to get unstrapped from the board. I was getting extremely claustrophobic but they kept telling me I had to stay strapped in. My legs, body, arms, head were all strapped down. 

Eventually the lady who had come to the hospital to be with Roczen and Ruthie came in to tell me she was about to leave. I feel SUPER bad but it was this exact moment where I started to feel super sick and knew I was going to throw up. I started shouting that I was going to puke. Puking while laying on your back and unable to move while strapped to a board is pretty awful. I had puked once while on my back and the nurses were scrambling to find some suction or something, I just remember them all start to frantically run around talking about suctioning. Finally as I kept puking one of them decided to ditch that effort and told the other nurse to help her flip the board over sideways while I continued to throw up. Having been on my back when it happened, I got it all over myself and hair. They tried cleaning it off as best they could but I had crusty pukey hair for like 2 days before I was finally able to get out of bed and into the shower. So gross. 

Sometime around here the police officer came in to talk to me. He told us he ONLY ever gets called to accidents where there have been multiple fatalities. And was like, “I don’t know how to put this other than to say, You are very lucky! When I saw the cars I knew no one could have survived and was beyond shocked to learn that there wasn’t even one fatality!” He attributed it to the airbags and safety features of our car. The nurse next to me quickly piped up and stated that it was probably angels that saved us! And as much as I know the safety features in our car definitely helped I also know that there were angels there protecting us!!

The dr. came in at some point to and told the nurses to cut my clothes off. I begged them not to cut them off haha I was wearing my favorite pants and a new ish hoodie!! I had had the pants for a few years and they were the best ever!! They were the first pair of pants that I didn’t have to hem at all!! (Probably meant to be capri’s for normal height people lol) Lesson learned, when going on a roadtrip wear hideous clothes you don’t mind getting cut up! I heard them talking about a gash under my right knee and lifted my leg up to look at it. As I was doing it the nurse was like “You probably don’t want to see this!” The gash was right to my bone. They had to do two layers of stitches, internal dissolvable stitches and then stitches on my skin. They were going to stitch the two gashes on my face but decided to go with glue instead. Next they came in to wrap my ankle. They started wrapping my right ankle. I told them that one didn’t even hurt at all and that it was my left one that hurt. The dr. pretty much told me I was in shock and probably just didn’t realize it was actually the right one that was broken. I kind of left it for a minute but then was like “Yaaa, no. It really is the left one that hurts” So then he decided he better go check, so he left the room and came back a minute later and was like “Yup you were right!” haha 

Eventually I heard them wheel Scott in on the other side of the curtain. They pulled the curtain back so I could see him. He kept apologizing, even though it wasn’t his fault at all. I really don’t know what happened next. I might’ve fallen asleep for a bit or just laid there while they got Scott all sorted out, I really don’t know. I know they were arranging flights for Ruthie and Roczen. And I know my parents came in at some point. Eventually they put Scott and I in an ambulance and we were off to Kalispell.

Scott had a really bad concussion and asked the SAME 4 questions over and over again pretty much the whole ride there, although I do think we both fell asleep near the end. The guy riding in the ambulance was very nice and kept answering Scott as if he’d never heard the question before. Scott kept begging for water but the guy kept saying he couldn’t have any. I had asked for water several times in the hospital too and was told the same thing. They did however, say they could swab my mouth with a wet cotton ball or something. Ugh! Never again! It had such a nasty taste to it I quickly decided I could do without water. Eventually the EMT in there with us told Scott he could give him a little squirt of saline or something, not too sure. Scott said it was super salty! And this made him really sick and he immediately threw up. When he was asking for water again later on the EMT reminded him of what happened last time haha They gave me some pain meds right before we got in the ambulance and a bit later I asked for some more. The EMT told me he could give me a bit more fentanyl. All I had ever heard was people dying using that drug haha So I told him never mind but that only lasted like 10 minutes before I was asking for the pain meds again and gladly accepted some more fentanyl. 

When we got to Kalispell, it was around 8:00pm, a bunch of Dr’s came in to look us over. I still had my contacts in and trying to get that contact out of my extremely swollen eye was quite the struggle. At one point the Dr. had me try and so I was pulling back what felt like layers/rolls of skin to get to my eye but it didn’t even feel like my eye. I wear contacts every single day and am very familiar with my eye. I literally had no idea where to even touch to get my contact out. My eye felt very swollen, large and squishy and just not shaped the same. So I told the Dr. I just had no idea what I was even doing. So after awhile of him trying again he finally got it out. I don’t remember what else happened here but eventually we were all moved into rooms. Roczen and Ruthie were on the floor below us and Scott and I had rooms next to each other.
This is where I’ll finish up here. I’ll make another entry about the days after the accident.