This is my story that my family has always referred to it as "the wreck". The night that changed everything . I tired to just put this behind me. I cant let go of the feeling that someone needs to read this and learn from my nightmare.
so here goes
The night my life took a dramatic left turn ....didn't seem any different than any other. No one felt something strange or had a dream. There was no prewarning of any kind ....no weird feelings. I had a friend of mine come in from Arkansas . We had thrown a party for her on the 14th. I wanted all her friends to come to my house so that she wouldn't have to run herself to death making separate visits. I did another party on the 15th because the night before I had to leave in the middle of the party to go to work... I worked 3rd shift ... so I threw the second party pretty much so I could spend some time with her myself. I got about 3 people to show .... about 8:30 my daughter Heather reminded me that I needed to head up to the store for some cigarette's and soda ... I keep putting her off and finally I told her to come on and lets get it done before she drove me nuts and about that time Taylor my 10 year old came running out screaming shotgun .... most of the time I let Taylor ride shotgun because with his sister being 10 years older than him it made him feel like a big boy. This night I told him no. If he was coming he would have to ride in the backseat and he darted in the backseat without another word. I told the girls to hold the fort down and we would be right back..... well I would love to tell you something about that 6 minute ride that leads us up to the little gas station where this thing takes place but there is only a faint memory of Taylor and Heather picking at one another, there was some laughter and
I remember seeing the store right before the traffic light and that was all I remember. We went to go through the green light. Heather was driving. I was on the passenger side. Taylor right behind me. We were T-boned by a Nissan Frontier. A man named Johnathan Finley had hit us doing about 60 miles an hour. He had just left Nissan Motor Manufacturing where he worked 3rd shift. He went to ask for the night off and got it (Later ask me why he asked for the night off). After he hit us a gentleman said that Mr. Finley drove away from the wreck to the gas station that we were headed to he said that he ran up to Mr. Finely to see if he was o.k. and Mr. finely told him that " You didn't see a f**king thing" and went to drive off from the scene. At that very moment a cop that was pulling in to check on the store was probably the only thing that kept him driving off and leaving the scene. He hit us on my side it knocked all three of us out .... By the time Heather came to the EMT where already there trying to figure out what they were going to do with us. Heather said that she at first thought that there were diamonds falling out of her hair when she first opened her eyes ....its wasn't diamonds .. it was glass she said that she looked over and both me and Taylor were covered in blood and knocked out. Heather said that she thought at first that she had done something and it had killed her mother and her brother. later someone told her that it was a drunk driver that had caused all this mess. Heather walked around in a daze with just one flip flop on watching them work on her brother and I. They finally got me together and life flighted me to Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville Tennessee. Its like a 25 minute drive from my house to this hospital but apparently I needed to get there a little faster. They took Taylor to a hospital in Murfreesboro about 7-8 miles from the wreck and after they examined him they were afraid he had brain damage so they life flighted him to Vanderbilt .. no brain damage ...but he ended up with 8 staples in his right arm lots of bruising Taylor stayed in the hospital for 5 days. Heather ended up with a sprained ankle and cuts and bruising so after day 5 Taylor went home with his sister. Heather took care of Taylor ...while Robert my husband and my father-in-law Dan stayed at the hospital with me. I wasn't as lucky as my two kids .... I thank the Lord that I didn't give Taylor shotgun because I don't think my sons 10 year old little body would have faired as well if he had sat in that front seat. I don't know how well I faired ... I was rushed into emergency surgery. I had internal bleeding, It had broke my collar bone and my pelvis bone and they had to remove my spleen. They placed me in a drug induced coma (If you wanna hear about the coma dream check look up Coma dream on my blog) They couldn't get me to come out of my coma and that was a concern for a while so they put a trac in my throat because that tube that goes down your throat that you see in the movies is supposed to be a very temporary thing when it goes on for more
than 3 days they swap to a trac yeah I was in really bad shape. . now for the 8 days the doctors were presented with a entirely new problem. My stomach incision wouldn't stay closed they tried 3 times to close me and it would just pop back due to all the swelling I had going on. Well finally day 11 I came out of the coma ..... I remember not having any idea what was going one but that whatever it was it hurt like nothing I had ever felt before. Robert informed me that first the kids were o.k. that they had gotten pretty good banged up but were both at home. He told me that it was a drunk driver that had hit us ... there were moments at the beginning that I thought that this was still part of the dream i was dreaming in the coma... but my body day by day insisted that it was anything but a dream. I couldnt talk because of the trac and it was taking a little while for my brian to remember basic writing skills. They then packed me up and sent me to a recovery hospital for a month .... Well now that I had joined the party it was time to do something about my open wound .....
Now let me introduce you to the awesome quicker fixer-upper its called the "Wound Vac" Best way that I can explain the wonderful piece of medical hardware is they for some reason you cant close a wound and its rather large then they take this industrial saran wrap and you place it over the wound all around the edges of this plastic is this super sticky stuff that seals it to your surrounding skin ...now there is a tube that going into it and the other end goes into this machine that I swear sometimes sounded like an iron lung ...but it keeps the wound clean and it would help speed up healing and gave the doctors time to figure their next move which ended up giving me the time for the swelling to go down. So they sent me home. I weighted in at 103 pounds wet. My walking was that of a crippled 90 year old. I slept in our recliner because laying down completely flat was a non happening thing. Heather was taught to clean and change my wound vac ... never thought that I would have to ask my daughter to do that for me. The home health nurse would come twice a week and make sure that Heather was doing her job properly. I had to head back to Vanderbuilt to do a skin graph to cover my still swollen tummy to finally lose that wound vac ... and the graph would be a temp fix while still waiting on the swelling to finally go all the way down ...I remember coming to in the recovery room and the nurse putting something in my I.V. as I laid there I was in the same room with a woman that had just had a kidney transplant I think... and all I could do was to thank the Lord that my problems weren't that bad and I remember praying for her. They put me into another room healing time again...this time Heather babysat her dear old mom .... Finally they sent me home. I had a fever that they could figure out what it was or what was causing it ..... but I didn't care they were sending me home at this point. I was so sick of doctors and the smell of a hospital was becoming almost as familiar as home. How horrible is that. So I figured I would just keep taking my super amped antibiotics and I would be fine. I remember thinking I finally had made it through it all that I was home with my family in my house sleeping in my recliner .....after about 5 days the fever just wasn't going away. I tried to just pretend that it didn't exist...I would paint my nails and play on the computer and pray that it would go away .... but one afternoon around 5:30 I felt a pain in my tummy and something wet running down my belly and I asked Robert to come look at it ...he didn't have to say a word but the word was that he was going to call an ambulance that my wound had busted open. I called Heather and gave her the news we were headed back to the hospital. Finally in the ER they told me that the fever was a sign of an infection in one of my staples and they were going to admit me into the hospital again til they got it under control. They might as well have told me that they were sending me to a firing squad ..... I felt defeated that I didn't have "Just one more time" in me .... so they were pumping me full of some 1000.00 a pop antibiotics and Heather would walk me down and around the halls for my exercise ....one day I went to walk out of my room for my daily stroll and there was a sign on my door that stated that anyone that entered my room had to have gown and gloves and a mask ....this was my intro to the fact that I had caught I staff infection!! WhoooHaaaa!! Help me Lord .... I remember that this was the time that they took my drainage tubes out. Finally I got over the infection and the staff infection and got to head home..... I was finally starting to get back on my feet....my daughter knew that there was no point in asking me to do normal exercise so she got me where I lived. she would take me shopping everyday...not that we would buy anything, but she counted on me getting distracted looking at stuff and I would walk for hours on hours and this is how I got back in shape... i know I would come home hurting soooo bad and I would talk a happy pill sleep all night and go do it all over again the next day. Well here it is almost 5 years later.... for the last year I have been babysitting my lil nephew Frederick for my sister-in-law. I tried to go back to work at Pillsbury but their policy was that they couldn't rehire me after something like that. I guess insurance cost and all. I pray for Mr. Fineley all the time ... I hope that whatever this is that he had learned something for it ..... I want companies to come up with some kind of guidelines for employees that come into work under the influence. That there is a standard to go by to deal with them . Either sitting them down til they sober up or a cab or even calling the police on them. My lawyer was wanting so badly to name Nissan in our law suit..they never even bothered to return calls from my lawyer. I knew that big businesses can keep you in court up to 10 year before it would ever even bother them...but a "I'm sorry we dropped the ball" would have been great. I don't know what I need to do but my hope is to get people interested in righting up guidelines to follow in case you have a visible intoxicated employee. I get aggravated at Mr. Finley because drinking and driving is a selfish act. I am more aggravated at the sober people that were around him that night and did nothing. To me that was worse. Please be involved when you see a drunk person about to get in a car ...either stop them ...if that isn't an option then call the law tell them that you just say a man (or woman) getting in a car________ headed_______and the licence plate number is ______. The reason that things like this happen to us is because Mr. Fineley's boss that night and probably several of his co-workers knew he was drunk and told themselves that it wasn't their business (he sat through a 10 minute _________ meeting before asking for the night off) They let that man walk out get into his truck and drive 4 minutes down the road and almost killed me and my kids ....... I had a boss back in the day and one of our guys came in drunk as could be he smelled of whiskey ...he wanted the night off ...my boss told him that he could leave after he finished some paperwork ...she handed he 3 hours worth of work just long enough for him to sober up before she let him leave (She took action) 6 years ago I had an accident. A girl came off the interstate ramp and ran right in front of me she had 2 kids both under the age of 2 in the back seat and she was high on prescription medication after our cars came to a stop I got out to check on her and she sped off didn't want to get busted when the cops came... I followed her for many miles her with a bust back tire running on a rim....yeah I could have stayed there til the police came but then they would have never caught her and got her help and maybe the next time the kids and her might not be as lucky ......I help the police find her and get her the help she needed ( I took action) Please the next time you see a drunk driver please step up , do the right thing and be the hero.
so here goes
The night my life took a dramatic left turn ....didn't seem any different than any other. No one felt something strange or had a dream. There was no prewarning of any kind ....no weird feelings. I had a friend of mine come in from Arkansas . We had thrown a party for her on the 14th. I wanted all her friends to come to my house so that she wouldn't have to run herself to death making separate visits. I did another party on the 15th because the night before I had to leave in the middle of the party to go to work... I worked 3rd shift ... so I threw the second party pretty much so I could spend some time with her myself. I got about 3 people to show .... about 8:30 my daughter Heather reminded me that I needed to head up to the store for some cigarette's and soda ... I keep putting her off and finally I told her to come on and lets get it done before she drove me nuts and about that time Taylor my 10 year old came running out screaming shotgun .... most of the time I let Taylor ride shotgun because with his sister being 10 years older than him it made him feel like a big boy. This night I told him no. If he was coming he would have to ride in the backseat and he darted in the backseat without another word. I told the girls to hold the fort down and we would be right back..... well I would love to tell you something about that 6 minute ride that leads us up to the little gas station where this thing takes place but there is only a faint memory of Taylor and Heather picking at one another, there was some laughter and
I remember seeing the store right before the traffic light and that was all I remember. We went to go through the green light. Heather was driving. I was on the passenger side. Taylor right behind me. We were T-boned by a Nissan Frontier. A man named Johnathan Finley had hit us doing about 60 miles an hour. He had just left Nissan Motor Manufacturing where he worked 3rd shift. He went to ask for the night off and got it (Later ask me why he asked for the night off). After he hit us a gentleman said that Mr. Finley drove away from the wreck to the gas station that we were headed to he said that he ran up to Mr. Finely to see if he was o.k. and Mr. finely told him that " You didn't see a f**king thing" and went to drive off from the scene. At that very moment a cop that was pulling in to check on the store was probably the only thing that kept him driving off and leaving the scene. He hit us on my side it knocked all three of us out .... By the time Heather came to the EMT where already there trying to figure out what they were going to do with us. Heather said that she at first thought that there were diamonds falling out of her hair when she first opened her eyes ....its wasn't diamonds .. it was glass she said that she looked over and both me and Taylor were covered in blood and knocked out. Heather said that she thought at first that she had done something and it had killed her mother and her brother. later someone told her that it was a drunk driver that had caused all this mess. Heather walked around in a daze with just one flip flop on watching them work on her brother and I. They finally got me together and life flighted me to Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville Tennessee. Its like a 25 minute drive from my house to this hospital but apparently I needed to get there a little faster. They took Taylor to a hospital in Murfreesboro about 7-8 miles from the wreck and after they examined him they were afraid he had brain damage so they life flighted him to Vanderbilt .. no brain damage ...but he ended up with 8 staples in his right arm lots of bruising Taylor stayed in the hospital for 5 days. Heather ended up with a sprained ankle and cuts and bruising so after day 5 Taylor went home with his sister. Heather took care of Taylor ...while Robert my husband and my father-in-law Dan stayed at the hospital with me. I wasn't as lucky as my two kids .... I thank the Lord that I didn't give Taylor shotgun because I don't think my sons 10 year old little body would have faired as well if he had sat in that front seat. I don't know how well I faired ... I was rushed into emergency surgery. I had internal bleeding, It had broke my collar bone and my pelvis bone and they had to remove my spleen. They placed me in a drug induced coma (If you wanna hear about the coma dream check look up Coma dream on my blog) They couldn't get me to come out of my coma and that was a concern for a while so they put a trac in my throat because that tube that goes down your throat that you see in the movies is supposed to be a very temporary thing when it goes on for more
than 3 days they swap to a trac yeah I was in really bad shape. . now for the 8 days the doctors were presented with a entirely new problem. My stomach incision wouldn't stay closed they tried 3 times to close me and it would just pop back due to all the swelling I had going on. Well finally day 11 I came out of the coma ..... I remember not having any idea what was going one but that whatever it was it hurt like nothing I had ever felt before. Robert informed me that first the kids were o.k. that they had gotten pretty good banged up but were both at home. He told me that it was a drunk driver that had hit us ... there were moments at the beginning that I thought that this was still part of the dream i was dreaming in the coma... but my body day by day insisted that it was anything but a dream. I couldnt talk because of the trac and it was taking a little while for my brian to remember basic writing skills. They then packed me up and sent me to a recovery hospital for a month .... Well now that I had joined the party it was time to do something about my open wound .....Now let me introduce you to the awesome quicker fixer-upper its called the "Wound Vac" Best way that I can explain the wonderful piece of medical hardware is they for some reason you cant close a wound and its rather large then they take this industrial saran wrap and you place it over the wound all around the edges of this plastic is this super sticky stuff that seals it to your surrounding skin ...now there is a tube that going into it and the other end goes into this machine that I swear sometimes sounded like an iron lung ...but it keeps the wound clean and it would help speed up healing and gave the doctors time to figure their next move which ended up giving me the time for the swelling to go down. So they sent me home. I weighted in at 103 pounds wet. My walking was that of a crippled 90 year old. I slept in our recliner because laying down completely flat was a non happening thing. Heather was taught to clean and change my wound vac ... never thought that I would have to ask my daughter to do that for me. The home health nurse would come twice a week and make sure that Heather was doing her job properly. I had to head back to Vanderbuilt to do a skin graph to cover my still swollen tummy to finally lose that wound vac ... and the graph would be a temp fix while still waiting on the swelling to finally go all the way down ...I remember coming to in the recovery room and the nurse putting something in my I.V. as I laid there I was in the same room with a woman that had just had a kidney transplant I think... and all I could do was to thank the Lord that my problems weren't that bad and I remember praying for her. They put me into another room healing time again...this time Heather babysat her dear old mom .... Finally they sent me home. I had a fever that they could figure out what it was or what was causing it ..... but I didn't care they were sending me home at this point. I was so sick of doctors and the smell of a hospital was becoming almost as familiar as home. How horrible is that. So I figured I would just keep taking my super amped antibiotics and I would be fine. I remember thinking I finally had made it through it all that I was home with my family in my house sleeping in my recliner .....after about 5 days the fever just wasn't going away. I tried to just pretend that it didn't exist...I would paint my nails and play on the computer and pray that it would go away .... but one afternoon around 5:30 I felt a pain in my tummy and something wet running down my belly and I asked Robert to come look at it ...he didn't have to say a word but the word was that he was going to call an ambulance that my wound had busted open. I called Heather and gave her the news we were headed back to the hospital. Finally in the ER they told me that the fever was a sign of an infection in one of my staples and they were going to admit me into the hospital again til they got it under control. They might as well have told me that they were sending me to a firing squad ..... I felt defeated that I didn't have "Just one more time" in me .... so they were pumping me full of some 1000.00 a pop antibiotics and Heather would walk me down and around the halls for my exercise ....one day I went to walk out of my room for my daily stroll and there was a sign on my door that stated that anyone that entered my room had to have gown and gloves and a mask ....this was my intro to the fact that I had caught I staff infection!! WhoooHaaaa!! Help me Lord .... I remember that this was the time that they took my drainage tubes out. Finally I got over the infection and the staff infection and got to head home..... I was finally starting to get back on my feet....my daughter knew that there was no point in asking me to do normal exercise so she got me where I lived. she would take me shopping everyday...not that we would buy anything, but she counted on me getting distracted looking at stuff and I would walk for hours on hours and this is how I got back in shape... i know I would come home hurting soooo bad and I would talk a happy pill sleep all night and go do it all over again the next day. Well here it is almost 5 years later.... for the last year I have been babysitting my lil nephew Frederick for my sister-in-law. I tried to go back to work at Pillsbury but their policy was that they couldn't rehire me after something like that. I guess insurance cost and all. I pray for Mr. Fineley all the time ... I hope that whatever this is that he had learned something for it ..... I want companies to come up with some kind of guidelines for employees that come into work under the influence. That there is a standard to go by to deal with them . Either sitting them down til they sober up or a cab or even calling the police on them. My lawyer was wanting so badly to name Nissan in our law suit..they never even bothered to return calls from my lawyer. I knew that big businesses can keep you in court up to 10 year before it would ever even bother them...but a "I'm sorry we dropped the ball" would have been great. I don't know what I need to do but my hope is to get people interested in righting up guidelines to follow in case you have a visible intoxicated employee. I get aggravated at Mr. Finley because drinking and driving is a selfish act. I am more aggravated at the sober people that were around him that night and did nothing. To me that was worse. Please be involved when you see a drunk person about to get in a car ...either stop them ...if that isn't an option then call the law tell them that you just say a man (or woman) getting in a car________ headed_______and the licence plate number is ______. The reason that things like this happen to us is because Mr. Fineley's boss that night and probably several of his co-workers knew he was drunk and told themselves that it wasn't their business (he sat through a 10 minute _________ meeting before asking for the night off) They let that man walk out get into his truck and drive 4 minutes down the road and almost killed me and my kids ....... I had a boss back in the day and one of our guys came in drunk as could be he smelled of whiskey ...he wanted the night off ...my boss told him that he could leave after he finished some paperwork ...she handed he 3 hours worth of work just long enough for him to sober up before she let him leave (She took action) 6 years ago I had an accident. A girl came off the interstate ramp and ran right in front of me she had 2 kids both under the age of 2 in the back seat and she was high on prescription medication after our cars came to a stop I got out to check on her and she sped off didn't want to get busted when the cops came... I followed her for many miles her with a bust back tire running on a rim....yeah I could have stayed there til the police came but then they would have never caught her and got her help and maybe the next time the kids and her might not be as lucky ......I help the police find her and get her the help she needed ( I took action) Please the next time you see a drunk driver please step up , do the right thing and be the hero.
