Last August I was in a bad motorcycle accident that has ultimately changed my life. I had never been on a motorcycle before so a friend of mine asked if I wanted to take a ride on his with him. We rode through the country roads, and it was a thrilling experience! It started to get dark, so we had decided to head on our way back home.
Only going about fifty miles per hour, a fox appeared on our right and started running alongside of us. We then decided to slow down and come to a stop, but before we could, the fox jumped right out in front of the bike and we hit it, which ejected me off the bike.One should always be aware of your surroundings and in this case, wild animals near roads. If we had seen the fox sooner we could have scared it off somehow or perhaps come to a complete stop. Another lesson I learned was to always wear a helmet on any bike. I was wearing a helmet, which only caused my skull to fracture and my brain to hemorrhage. I later learned, had I not been wearing a helmet, I could have possibly been a vegetable the rest of my life or even dead.When I had got to the hospital I was unconscious, and woke up three days later in the Intensive Care Unit.
I was confused, trying to figure out where I was, and why I had a neck brace on, a tube through my nose, bandages on the right side of my body, and heart monitors all over my body. The doctors then told me that they had to run a lot of tests on me, and my body was shutting down because of the place in my brain that was hemorrhaging behind my fractured skull. This was just the start of the struggles I would have to face in the near future.I had many questions, but the doctor then told me I had road rash from the crash, which left me with three to four layers of skin missing on parts of the right side of my body. He continued to tell me that the impact from my face hitting the pavement caused my brain to collide with my skull, causing it to hemorrhage. My body was told to shut down, causing my heart rate to drop to the low thirties; I had stopped breathing on my own so they had put the tube in my nose to give me the oxygen and help me breathe.
After being checked out of I. C. U, I was admitted into a normal hospital room, where for the next week I would relearn walking, eating and how to become independent again. That’s where I really learned that I should never take things for granted. Finally, I got to go home and this is where my biggest task of all was.
Being a mother of three young children, I required a lot of family help. Even though all of the bad things were going on, I kept positive and found an amazing motivation inside that I never knew I had.I was determined to take this second chance life had given me and make it worth something. I decided to go back to school and further my nursing career, and to be there for my kids no matter what. I am proud to say that I am accomplishing all that I have set my mind to little by little. Bad things happen to everyone all the time, but one can take the bad and make something good out of it. I believe I am living proof.