Car Crash Causes Fear of Life
My freshman year of school, around the middle of May, I was coming home from school. At the time my family and I lived out by Highway 46 so we had to drive over the bridge that leads out of town. The next thing I knew, our truck was spinning across the bridge and hit the other side.
As we were crossing the bridge, a silver SUV decided to try and switch lanes at the last minute. The driver of the SUV whipped the car into our lane and our truck slid into the right side of the vehicle. Little did we know there was a little girl on the passenger side. The little girl and her mother were fine.
We all pulled off to the side of the road and the lady who was in the SUV kept saying “I have to take my girl to dance.” We realized that she was not American and therefore was not familiar with U.S. procedure in the case of a car accident. We tried to explain to her that she should talk to the police before leaving. Once we got her to stay, my dad called the police; it took about 20 to 30 minutes for them to arrive.
When the cops arrived, they came to the truck and asked if we were okay. Funny enough, the officer used to be my D.A.R.E. officer in elementary school. At the moment I did not realize I was hurt so I just said, “Yeah I’m fine, I’m just a little shaky.”
Previous to the car crash I had found out my knee was messed up, but doctors could not pinpoint the cause of the damage. After the car crash, doctors did not realize I had knee issues before the crash so they thought I had only bruised my knee, but I also sprained it. Since no one realized it was more than just bruising, I was walking on a sprung knee for two days. The pain ended up being so bad that I was sent home from school to get it checked out. Luckily, the damage was not bad enough at the time to need surgery, but I ended up having to wear a knee brace for months.
I went on for three years without the proper care for my knee and in September of my junior year, I finally got the proper care. It turns out I had to do therapy for about 2 months that consisted of stretching the muscles and tenants in my knee and icing it down. The car crash had only made my previous knee issue worse. My knee is now damaged from this crash and it can still be seen.
Living through a car crash has given me a fear of bridges and driving, two things that are pretty much unavoidable in life. Also, I still experience some pain in my knee to this day. Although the outer scar on my knee has healed, the emotional and physical injury I received from such a crash is still healing.