Conquering Fears

One of the reasons that I took the trip to Klamath Falls was to conquer a fear that I had. There is always an event that you experience that shapes your life. With me it was the car accident that I had when I was 18. As part of the accident it left me with several fears, some of which are just there and have little or no impact on how I lead my life. One of those low impact fears is that since the accident I’ve been to scared to go on the road where the accident happened and haven’t been back to the site of the accident. The one thing that that fear has done is left some questions in my mind that have prevented me from moving completely beyond the accident. Sort of a nagging prevention of happiness.

I apologize to Pat, Mary, and Bev and others that have heard the story so many times before but for those of you that are new to me I thought the background would be helpful to understand the impact it had on my life and the need to answer some questions about it and to conquer the fear of being on the road where the accident happened. When I was 18 I was a college student in Ashland, Oregon. As you have seen by the previous post my parents lived in Klamath Falls, Oregon. My sister lived in Hollywood, California and was having a troubled pregnancy. I was going home that weekend to run the family business to free up my parents to go to Hollywood to be with my sister. A lot of Klamath Falls kids went to college at Ashland so when someone was going home from college a lot of kids hitched a ride. Counting myself their were five of us in the car, Randy, Larry, Greg, John, and myself. The distance between Klamath Falls and Ashland is 60 miles by a route called The Greensprings Drive. The Greensprings drive is a curvy mountain road with often deep embankments on the side of the road. We got exactly 29 miles from Ashland when a semi-truck coming the opposite direction that was 48 feet longer (the law allowed only 45) was coming around the same curve that I was, to avoid missing me he swerved and jackknifed I hit his rear duals. The whole front side of my Impala caved in on me, pinning me in the car. All other passengers were able to get out without suffering any injuries except Larry who had a minor cut on his forehead. It took them three hours to cut me out of the car. They were afraid the car might roll backwards and go over an embankment if the tow truck didn’t hook it up properly. The tow truck finally decided the dash was the thing keeping me from moving and after removing a piece of chrome that had pierced my thigh hooked up the truck to the dash and pulled it off of me. I was awake for most of it but as soon as they got me out of the car I went into a pain induced coma. They took me to Ashland because they thought one mile would make a difference of me living or dying. All I remember is arriving at the hospital and two attorneys from the trucking company waiting for me in the emergency room. As soon as they heard of the accident they were on the road from Portland to get a statement from me. I have no idea why the doctors let them interview me but they did, I was barely coherent, and they took a statement from me that eventually lead to a huge seven hundred dollar settlement for me. 700 bucks. I also got the citation. The truck driver had a history of citations , was to long for the road but I was a college kid so it was my fault. The ticket was for driving on the wrong side of the road.

After a few days of touch and go they decided I was going to live but weren’t sure what was causing the amazing pain that was causing me to go in and out of comas. The pain once caused an hallucination where doctors said I did something that no other patient had done. At the time I had no feeling below the waist. I was in a pelvic sling. Those things are awful. I had a dream that I was in jail and had to get out. When they came into the room I was out of the sling on the floor. They moved me to Medford where there was a nicer hospital to do an exploratory surgery. They found a damaged psiatic (sp) nerve. The injuries were numerous, a broken hip, the cut nerve, a ruptured kidney, a dislocated hip, ten broken toes, a broken pelvis and so on. Doctors put the chance at me walking again at about 20% and most likely I would spend my life in a wheelchair. I beat the odds.

The good impact the accident had on me is it showed me how resilient I am, it helped me discover a sense of humor that I didn’t know I had, it showed me how many friends that I do have as I got letters from every where, and it directed me towards an occupation that I was good at. When the doctors mentioned the wheelchair thing I decided I needed an occupation that I could do sitting down so I changed my major from Physical Education to Accounting and went from a D student to Phi Beta Kappa.

The bad impact it had on me is it left me with a partially paralyzed left foot and an artificial hip socket. It also set me back socially. The hot dating years where you meet your first wife or husband are between 18 and 26. Those years I was recovering instead of dating. It made me about the most inexperienced man my age with women on the planet. One of the reasons I never married. I think I would have met someone and married had I had those social years that I lost. You just never know. Today I walk just fine, the foot doesn’t hold me back. Several here have seen me walk and they say they only see a limp when I’m tired. I’m also working on the fear of women thing.

One of the questions that I had about the accident was if there was anything that I could have done to avoid the accident. When in Klamath Falls I took the Greensprings Drive to the accident site. It wasn’t near as fearful of a drive as I thought it would be. I was able to pinpoint the accident site by a mile post. I was also able to park my car not far from there in a turnout and walk back to the site. The answer was very clear, I could have avoided hitting the truck but I couldn’t have avoided an accident. I closed my eyes and placed myself back to the day of the accident. I put myself in my car, I saw the semi coming. The choice was hitting the semi or turning the car and going over a six thousand foot embankment and kill everyone in my car. It was actually an amazing bit of driving that divine intervention had to have helped.

One fear off my list. I can move on now. What fear would you like to conquer?