Archives for December 2006

When I was just a child of 5 years of age I was in a bad car accident. The accident happened on a rainy summer night. This was back in the days when you didn’t have to wear you seat belt in the back of the car – even though my parent always did make us wear seat belts, for some reason I wasn’t wearing mine that fateful evening. Perhaps because I was sleeping in the backseat, maybe I’d asked my dad for permission to take it off when I laid down. I don’t remember now, but I know that if I’d had it on I wouldn’t have been injured.

We were on our way up to the cottage. I was traveling with my father and one of my older brothers. I don’t know why my mom and sister weren’t with us because that was unusual, but they weren’t.

We were driving through a small town and my brother was driving. As I said earlier I was asleep in the backseat of the car. The bridge was narrow and there was only two lanes- one each way. A man, who turned out to be drunk, began driving his car in the wrong lane straight towards our car. My brother couldn’t move over to the opposite lane because of oncoming traffic. All he could do was slow down for the impact.

I must have rolled off the seat and hit my head hard on something. I awoke to the sound of my brother and father yelling. They might have been arguing because I think my brother wanted to get out of the car and beat up the other driver. All that stopped when I sat up and they saw the blood running down my face.

A really nice couple happened to stop to make sure that we were all ok. I don’t know if we’d pulled the cars off the bridge or not … because if we hadn’t I don’t think traffic could have got past us- but someone this car reached us. The lady approached and she saw that I was injured. She offered for her and her family to take me to the hospital while my dad and brother waited for the police and a tow truck.

Now these days no parent would just hand off their young child to strangers, and even then I’m sure my father hesitated but the couple had, oh I don’t know at least three other children in the car and I’m sure that made them look trustable, and in the end they did end up to be very trustworthy as they did take me to the hospital.

My father and brother met me at the hospital and they were there in time to watch and help me get through getting my first ever stitches. I had a huge gash at the top right of my forehead.

Now, being so young at the time of the accident I don’t know exactly how my parents settled with the insurance company regarding the damaged car. I do remember that the car was totaled. The old car had been a Dodge and I think we moved on to Toyota’s for a while after the accident.

I do know that my parents worked with a Car Accident Lawyer to secure some funds in case I needed plastic surgery to repair the scar on my forehead. We got a good sum of money with barely any hassle if I remember correctly. I’m sure the case wasn’t too hard to fight. The other drive was drunk and I was injured. I’m just lucky it wasn’t worse.

The money that had been secured by the lawyer was placed into an account in my name. I never did use it for plastic surgery because, luckily, the scar is right at my hairline and it healed very nicely. Instead I used the money to pay part of my way through college. Nice! I’m sure that if my parents hadn’t have fought for some extra money for my injury that nothing other than money for the damaged car would have been forthcoming. What an irony it would have been had they not and then I ended up having a horrible scar? I’m glad that they did- the money that the lawyer helped them get helped me become a nurse, so the money helped me help others.