One Little Girl - Part 2: You can't get rid of me that easily AKA The scariest thing that's ever happened to me

"You can't get rid of me that easily!" is a phrase that Tim has said to me many times over the course of our relationship, usually when I am lamenting something irritating I've done that could potentially drive him away. I have heard it in response to serving dinosaur chicken nuggets for dinner, and for crying about, well, nothing. "You're stuck with me!" is commonly said along with it.

This weekend while celebrating our 5th anniversary, I got the chance to use this phrase on Tim. We were talking about the ups and downs of the seven years that we've been together, and began discussing the car accident we were in a mere 3 weeks after we were married. I was asking Tim what he remembered from the wreck and he said he remembered coming to and looking out the window. He saw me lying on the ground and thought that I was dead. To this I responded, "You can't get rid of me that easily!" I thought it was clever.

When Tim wrecks a car, he WRECKS a car. Here's some pictures from the accident:

Yeah, a bit more than a fender bender, huh? But, you can't get rid of me that easily. Here's what happened.

So, like I mentioned in the previous post, Tim and I decided that we wanted to get married and keep our little girl, start a family a bit earlier than we had originally planned. We were married on June 28th, 2008. After the wedding, Tim lived with his parents in Overland Park and I moved into our new place in Lawrence, a 2 bedroom townhome. I was working for a summer camp in Lawrence and Tim was working in Overland Park so the plan was that he would live with his parents during the week and then come and live with me on the weekends. Fun way to start a marriage, huh? :)

So that's what we did. One evening I decided to drive out to Overland Park to meet Tim for dinner at Mi Ranchito. It was a very hot, Kansas July day. Tim was working at Budweiser at the time, and had spent the day unloading booze from trucks in the heat. I dropped my car off at my in laws' house and Tim drove us to the restaurant. We ate, got caught up and got into his car to head back to his parents house.

My heart is pounding just thinking about what happened next.

I don't really remember what we were talking about, but we were heading south on Quivira and were almost back to the house when Tim said, "I don't feel good." I was looking out my window when he said this, and responded with, "Well, do you think we should pull over?" He didn't respond and so I turned to look at him, and he was completely unconscious in the driver's seat, his foot heavy on the accelerator.

I began screaming at him to wake up. We were coming up to a stop light, with a red light, and cars were lined up in front of us. I didn't know what to do. His Mustang was a manual and I had no idea where the emergency brake was or how to engage it. I continued screaming and tried to pry his leg off the gas pedal. The cars parked at the stop light were rapidly approaching. We were running out of time. I was panicking. I grabbed the wheel, and sharply turned to the right.

And that's the last thing I remember.

We hit a tree and then hit a giant stone pillar. The details of exactly what happened with the car are a little fuzzy,  but the passenger side door was torn off, and despite wearing my seat belt, I was thrown from the car and landed on a patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street.

When Tim came to, the first thing he saw was my unconscious body laying there in the grass. Like I mentioned earlier, he thought I was dead. He thought that he killed his brand new wife and unborn child. His door was jammed shut and he was stuck in the car, screaming and trying to get to me. People began to flood the scene and quickly rushed over to him, telling him not to move or he might hurt himself. He shouted to the bystanders that I was pregnant. They turned me off of my stomach and told him that I was alive. Someone called his parents and they quickly arrived on the scene, and called my parents as well. My dad remembers asking my mother-in-law if we were okay, and her telling him that there was a lot of blood. An ambulance came and Kathy rode with me to the hospital. Another came and took Tim.

My dad met me at the hospital. I was beginning to come to. I distinctly remember looking down on my body from somewhere above and wondering where I was. I felt like I was waking from a dream. Bits and pieces of what had happened came back to me, but I felt detached and everything seemed fuzzy. I remember first asking my dad where my mom was. It turns out he couldn't get a hold of her. She was out somewhere and not picking up her cell. He continued calling and left messages on their home phone for her to call right away. The next question I asked my dad was if Tim was dead. I recall asking it in a matter-of-fact way, devoid of emotion, the way someone would ask if it was supposed to rain today.

What happened next was a blur. Tests were ran to see if Tim and I were okay- and to see why he passed out at the wheel. The answer to that question would not come for a while and would not be clear cut. He had no external injuries. I too, came away mostly unscathed. I had a concussion that would leave me with headaches and nausea for a few weeks, and many cuts on the right side of my body that would eventually scar. No broken bones, miraculously.  I remember my friend Kayla combing grass and sticks out of my hair. A few weeks after the accident, I found a piece of glass embedded in my scalp, and picked it out with my fingernail. They did several sonograms after the wreck and through the duration of my pregnancy and were convinced that the baby was fine too. I think we were all a little nervous about her until we were able to see for ourselves, when she was born, that she was okay.

A few days later, we were released from the hospital. Tim and I spent the rest of the summer moving back and forth between our parents' homes, resting and recuperating. The summer Olympics were going on, so that provided some entertainment. Tim was not supposed to drive until they figured out what made him pass out, and I was supposed to take a month off to heal from the concussion. Tim went back to working at Budweiser, in the warehouse, after a couple of weeks. I celebrated my 22nd birthday at my mom's house, with a pinata hanging in their tree. Some way to begin a marriage, huh? In August, we moved back to Lawrence and for the first time, lived together as a married couple. We couldn't wait to get out on our own again, to get back to school, something that we knew and understood. We had about three months to go before our little girl would arrive.

For a while after the wreck, I was apprehensive about driving. I occasionally had flash backs. I was especially nervous the first time I got into the car with Tim behind the wheel again. They said that he had neurocardiogenic syncope and for a while, he was on medication. The doctor felt that it was better for him not to be on it long term, so he eventually came off of it and was told that  eating lots of salt and drinking lots of water would help. Basically, blood would pool in his legs and leave him light headed. We've figured out more about his "condition" now, but that's a story for another day.

My right arm has some scars that I think will stay with me forever. I've got a nice one across my left foot. It was a few days before I saw that particular injury because they kept socks on me in the hospital. I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking it looked kind of bad ass. It may sound crazy, but I am thankful for them. I see the scars on my skin as a reminder of what could have happened. I could have lost my life, my baby's life, or both. All three of us could have easily died that day. Take one more look at the pictures of the car. Three people walked out of that situation virtually unharmed.

When they see the pictures, people usually tell us how lucky we are. But simple dumb luck could not save us from something like that. Just look at the picture and tell me how a pregnant woman could be thrown from that car and walk away unharmed. The car was going 45 miles per hour. Surviving that kind of this is beyond luck. Luck is coming home from the casino with more money than you took with you, or finding a $5 bill on the street. What happened to us was way more powerful and significant than that.

I really believe that God saved us from that accident for a reason. Why did the accident even have to happen? I don't know. Maybe so I would wake up and realize how precious life is, yet how delicate it is. The value of what it means to breath in and out for one more day. I don't know what is going to happen to me through the course of my life, I don't know how many more years or days I have left. But I just know and feel in my heart that God has a plan for me, for us, and that is the only reason that we are still here. I am here to do something great with the time I have left. My life was spared because I am not finished yet. No. My heart is still beating. Blood is pumping. I am alive.

You can't get rid of me that easily.