Thursday, February 10, 1994

Car Accident

On February 4th, I was involved in a car accident. I lost most of my front teeth, hit my head on a steel dash board (later found out this caused a brain injury), and died for a few minutes. Let me explain....

We bought this old 1963 VW bug from a crook (later we found out he was a crook). We also bought a dog from him, Keystone. I drove the VW all over town for a few days, it was neat. My mother decided to take it out on the highway, to see how it performs, to make sure it was safe. Well, thats when all hell broke loose. We were doing about 70, keeping up with traffic, when the damn thing started fishtailing all over the highway. Cars backed off, and let us fishtail, at about 70MPH. My mother screamed out "we are going to hit, I have no brakes". The tie rod broke, so she had no steering, the brakes failed, so she had no brakes. We hit a concrete median at around 70MPH, and stopped immediately. I remember feeling no pain. Weightless. Paramedic's were there in seconds it seemed. I ran from one of them, across I-70, up a bank, and back, in the blink of an eye without getting hit by any cars. Again, weightless and free feeling. The next thing I remember was being in front of the ambulance, hearing the sirens. I remember asking the man "are we okay? Is my mother okay? Where are we going? What hospital?" I found it bizarre that he never answered my questions, so I rested my head on the window. We arrived at the hospital, and thats the last I remember, until I woke up from a damn near coma. My mother was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, staring at me until I woke up.

Later that evening, I was telling my mother how exciting it was to ride in front of the ambulance, watching how fast we were going. She looked at me in amazement, and said something I will never forget "Joshua, you were in back with me, the doctors were struggling to get you conscious and everything. I was fine, you were the one that had the most head damage." I told her I was up front, and she said "you were in back, with 2 paramedics trying to save you."

We won the lawsuit, and things are fine today. I have some side effects of things, like a slow reaction to stimulation, headaches, eye twitches, among other things that make the world seem like it is playing in slow motion. I have a brain injury, to the left front. Docs said I will probably always be 16 years old, God I hope not!!