Check me out!

Hey guys! Thanks for checking out my page and following my journey. It's been an insane ride so far, but it has only just begun! Writing a blog and keeping my friends and family updated on my status is important to me, so here we go...

Monday, October 8, 2012

One year ago

One year ago today I was in a car accident. What followed that car accident is a journey I will never forget. October 8, 2011 fell on a Saturday. I had just dropped off my geriatric kitty at the vet for some tests. I was heading to have breakfast with my Dad and driving through the intersection at Corona and A1A northbound when I looked down to grab my make-up bag...one one thousands, two one thousand...WHAM!! I did not even have time to brake, time to react. I t-boned the front end of a sports car, allegedly running a red light (according to the State Trooper who later wrote me a ticket). I was in the left lane of the northbound lane and ended up in the southbound lane facing the wrong way. I remember hitting him, I remember trying to move and get up while the car was still halting to a stop, I remember laying over my console, partially in my passenger seat trying to make sense of it all. I had just been in a car accident. I immediately opened the passenger door and pulled myself around to sit upright and at the moment I felt a warm liquid begin gushing down my face. I pushed my hand against my head and then a stranger forced a towel to my head placing pressure on the wound. I was conscious, I had remembered every thing. I did not black out. I was giving another stranger who stopped my Dad's phone number to call him and let him know I was in a car accident, but I was okay. He was less than two blocks away. The fire truck appeared, then the police and the ambulance. They were asking me questions...lots of questions. Then I saw my Dad...I held it together until then. I cried for a few seconds as all the adrenaline rushed through me and then I pulled myself together. What just happened?
I was transported to the hospital via ambulance. More questions were asked as the EMT took the information they needed, then we arrived at the emergency room. I was rolled in to a room and my vitals were taken yet again, IVs were put in to my arm and soon I would be transported to a room for a CAT scan to make sure there was no internal bleeding. X-rays were also taken of my ribs, my knee and my neck to determine any whiplash, broken bones, or collapsed lungs. 18 stitches were put in my forehead later. Slowly, my family started showing up and I was really concerned and wanted someone to contact my friends that I was supposed to meet for the Gator game later that day. Then the doctor came in....and she wanted to do a MRI of my head because she saw an area of concern that could be a contusion from the accident or something more. I was rolled in to a MRI and what seemed like an eternity later the doctor returned. I was surrounded my my Mom, Dad, Step Dad, and Anthony when the doctor said the "abnormality" was not a contusion and they wanted to send me to Downtown Baptist Hospital for further testing. They had reason to believe it was a mass, but they would need a special MRI to determine the next course of action. A mass? I didn't know what to think, I didn't know how to react. I felt the mood in the room drop...you could have cut the worry and concern with a knife. It was suffocating. I called my best friend, Abby and for the first time said it out loud, "They found an abnormality on my brain." I choked. My parents immediately began crying, my Dad grabbed me and squeezed me tight. I knew I had to hold it together, I knew I had to be strong.
Fast forward and the mass they found was a tumor...a brain tumor. A biopsy would follow and then surgery to remove the tumor. Being diagnosed with a life altering brain tumor would change my outlook on life forever.



So much has happened in the past year. I wouldn't even know where to begin but to THANK everyone that has been involved in my life in the past year. To the doctors with the steady hands, the co-workers who understood the time I had to take off for medical leave, to my faithful friends who never left my side through it all and gave me a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on when I needed it, to my boyfriend who could have walked away in a time of the unknown, to my family whose undying love helped see me through the hardest times of uncertainty, to everyone that prayed for me and over me and who continue to pray for lasting healing and to God, I thank you! Words can not express what the support has meant to me. I think about the accident almost every day...I deal with the flashbacks and sometimes the nightmares that plague me while I am driving or when I am sleeping. And then I quickly remember that those I surround myself with have been and will continue to be my backbone in this journey.  I will speak my testimony to others and always believe I was given this journey very meticulously and purposefully by God. October 8, 2011 will forever be more than just the day I was in my car accident, more than just the day they discovered a brain tumor...I will celebrate today as a day I found new meaning in life.