Accident History: Part 5

That largely sums up my major surgical moments, at least initially. Although I had a variety of other minor procedures during my 55-day tenure in the neural ICU, I was unaware of or am simply unable to remember them. (That's not to say that I "remember" any of my tangible procedures from my time spent in the ICU. I have a vague remembrance of several minor, non-surgical procedures, but the vast majority of my hospital time is forever lost to me. I do remember several nurses, especially those who spent time with me towards the end, but much of my time-served is only remembered in the hallucinatory shades of ICU psychosis.)

I've also lost vision in my left eye as a direct byproduct of my traumatic head injury, and because my optic nerve itself was damaged and beyond self-regeneration, my only plausible hope of restoring binocular vision is through embryonic stem cell therapy, which is, to say the least, in an embattled state here in the U.S. (I don't think I need to rant about my position on embryonic stem cell research and the ethics of its implementation here. Suffice it to say that I am a major proponent and scorn the effort's of this current administration and its associates to undermine its advancement here in the United States.)

The long and short of my hospitalization is this: after spending nearly two months in a hospital bed and embodying the fallible nature of probability, I was discharged to an inpatient rehabilitation facility to begin my next step on the "road to recovery."

Accident History: Part 4

In addition to my flailed chest, my nose, jaw, and right clavicle (collarbone) were broken. Because moving or thrashing about would have exacerbated these (and other) injuries, I was placed in a drug-induced coma for several weeks to allow for the aforementioned to heal "naturally."

Both of my eye orbits and right humerus were also fractured, but my left-side orbit was allowed to set and heal during the coma stage. However, my right-eye orbit and right humerus both required surgery: reconstructive plastic surgery for the former, titanium plating for the latter. My left femur met with a similar fate. It was compound fractured and needed to be rodded to restore the bone's structural integrity. (Both the arm and leg required titanium pins and screws, respectively, in order to hold their hardware in place. Titanium screws will have another role in another leg, but not for over a year.)

Accident History: Part 3

My other injuries were many, but several screamed for precedence. Cue triage.

In conjunction with my bronchial tear, both of my lungs had been punctured. This necessitated the surgical implantation of an array of chest tubes for both re-inflation and stabilization and a tracheostomy to facilitate the continuous usage of a respirator. (According to my family, the respirator was a major irritant, and, when conscious, I would constantly pull it off of my trach in frustration.) The crash had literally flailed my chest, resulting in a ribcage riddled with breaks and fractures and forming a clear basis for my extensive respiratory damage.

The closed-head trauma I sustained during the crash became another issue of immediate importance. I had major swelling of the brain, but because I hadn't actually split my head open, it was swelling into a dangerously finite amount of space. This injury was my greatest initial hurdle beyond surviving the crash itself. Until the swelling could be checked, the risk of permanent brain damage rose alarmingly, and an advanced brain monitoring utility called a LICOX machine was "installed" into the top of my head to monitor my intracranial pressure (ICP) and act as a "brain catheter" to help siphon off excess fluids and relieve pressure.

Although my ICP was eventually brought within safe limits, the traumatic brain injury that I had sustained coupled with my narcotics regimen and an inability to verbally express myself due to the trach's aspiration-preventing, speech-impeding "balloon" would cause my true mental state to remain in doubt until much later.