This article is a follow up to my introductory article about a year ago, "https://steemit.com/steemit/@metalmonkey/what-brought-me-here", my forced new beginning. I'm going to go into a detailed description of the car accident which has left me partially disabled, almost paralyzing me and the struggle we have had to endure as a family. Why would I do this you might ask, simple we need help getting through this as it's been three years since this car accident. We are financially tapped, exhausted and have two little boys. It can't go down like this.
June 27, 2015
We enjoyed a nice evening at a friends house. Me, my fiance and our 24-day old son. Had a great supper and watched a few new shows my buddy was really into. We decided it was time to head home as it was getting late and our son had been passed out awhile. It was an extremely dark night I thought as we started driving, no moon in sight, kind of in an eerie way.
I had decided to take a shortcut instead of the way we would normally go, down an old rural highway, it would save us about 5 minutes. Something in my gut told me to take the normal route, I was actually under the speed limit because of this feeling, however, I shrugged it off and kept driving. Spead up the speed limit, and bam there it is, a big fat cow in the highway. I'm not even sure where it came from it happened so fast, just popped out of a shadow, I slammed on the brakes and realizing we didn't have enough time and it was heading right for the middle of the windshield, surely no one will survive I thought, let off the brake and swerved to the right to try to avoid it. There just wasn't enough time as this all happened in about three seconds, I clipped the cow on the front driver's side probably about 70 km/h, it landed up on the hood and slide up and slammed into the bar around the windshield, double whiplash.
I was watching the windshield separate as the cow laid up on the dashboard, still driving not able to see the highway just trying to keep the van on the road, and wondering will it start kicking, a wave of panic came over me thinking about it falling into the vehicle. I frantically started swerving, hitting the gas and two-footing the brakes. It worked the cow flew off the windshield. I got out of the vehicle expecting to find an extremely angry bull, our baby was crying, my fiance was freaking out, I was freaking out and there were headlights coming towards us. Things were not good. I didn't even have time to get the rest of my family out of the vehicle. Things get a little blurry around here, I couldn't hear the tires squealing but I could smell the burning rubber. It was a one ton truck with a horse trailer in tow, it stopped within inches of our van. I found the cow about twenty feet up the highway from where we had stopped still mooing, I felt so bad for it.
We found the cow owner, she tried to cover the whole thing up, called 911 and had a police officer sent out, it was so dark he almost hit the cow on the side of the road with a spotlight on. It appeared everyone was ok, I still can't believe 911 let a guy in shock decide if we needed an ambulance as there was a 24-day old infant involved in this accident, so grateful our three-year-old wasn't with us because we had recently switched him to a front facing car seat.
About an hour or two later the pain started to set in, the shockwave took months to leave my body, everything hurt. I was left with 9 disk extrusions and protrusions, multi-level stenosis, multi-level degenerative disks, multi-level arthritis, rotator cuff impingement, degenerated shoulder with arthritis, an impingement in my lumbar and my thoracic "maybe" according to doctors unlikely however my MRIs say otherwise. They blame my shoulder on work because I was an industrial sandblaster, again wrong my right shoulder is blown out by hitting a cow, I'm left-handed, I blast with my left shoulder.
Doctors here in Alberta won't help me, they say I'm too young for surgery so I sent all my imaging to a spinal clinic in Seattle, they want to do surgery on my multi-disk bulge in my neck, double disk removal, and fusion. I haven't worked in three years, the surgery has a 6 week recovery time. I have tried numerous things for treatment, I almost have enough equipment to run a physiotherapy office. I take 6-7 different prescriptions a few times a day to numb the pain. None of these things relieve the pain and if they do in one spot it is very short term.
I can't do anything about everything, just take it one day at a time. The neck surgery is expensive but I need to prove that I need the neck surgery so insurance will cover the surgery. This involves me getting a new passport, flying to Seattle, getting the new MRI to prove the condition of my neck and get the doctor's notes saying why I need the surgery and why it's not getting better, fly back to Calgary. Once this is all done it should really calm down the rest of my back, multi-level stenosis sucks.
I did have car insurance, they only have to cover you for two years on disability. I had life insurance, it didn't cover soft tissue injuries. So I'm left with credit and savings which are both gone. I do have a lawsuit which could take another 3 years to get to court. We are ready to give up, things are falling apart. If you can help in any way it would be greatly appreciated. If you want proof, ask and I can provide the accident report and MRIs.
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