I was in a car accident last week, and this week I am struggling.
I think it's partly because I'm not sleeping well, mostly due to injuries. Nothing major at all, just bruising, maybe some muscle strains, but enough to ache at night and make it difficult to get comfortable. Also my left hand (which is my mousing hand) is the most injured, and since my job is all on computers, it does make working for long periods painful.
But more than that I am just feeling very flat most of the time, which again, may be mostly due to being tired, or maybe is also the after affects of the car crash. Or maybe I'm overthinking things. Either way I decided it was time to write the whole thing out, even though I don't have any profound observations to make.
What happened was that I was driving straight down a suburban street (a 60KM zone), and someone coming up the street in the other direction took a right turn in front of me. He said he didn't see me, he just focused on the car behind me. I remember looking in my rear mirror right beforehand and she was more towards the middle of the road than I was (I was planning to turn left at the following intersection). So I guess that's why.
I swerved, so I hit with the front passenger corner of the car, which was
probably better than straight on. Anyway, the car was a complete loss, but no
one was seriously injured.
All three kids were in the back, Liam ended up with a slight bruise to his shoulder from his seat belt (thanks to the booster seat it wasn't across his neck), and the girls don't even have that.
As far as I'm aware the other guy wasn't hurt either, though its perfectly possible he had bruises and muscle strains too - I wasn't even aware of most of mine until the end of the day, aside from the massive swelling of my left hand. But I was more focused on the kids' welfare really, and so, to an extent, was he. He was certainly also very shaken and clearly felt absolutely awful about the whole thing.
We were all pretty shaken. Chris was away at the time, overseas, which rather sucked, but I'm lucky that my wonderful mum lives nearby, so she came and picked us up to come home, and ran us around to the doctor later.
I'm also lucky to have wonderful friends, many of whom offered to help out or visit, and one of whom even took Mikaela to school and back the next day, which was completely out of her way. (Liam happily took the bus).
And I'm thankful for the kindness of strangers. There were two women in the two vehicles behind me, who stopped, called the police and took care of the children for me.
One of them just stood with her arms around Mikaela (it was freezing cold - someone said minus two degrees Celsius) and the other picked up Eliane, and someone else who stopped, I think, gave her a large warm fluoro yellow jacket to cover her. She must have stood there holding Elli for 20 or 30 minutes I think. At one point someone - possibly one of the fireys - came over to swap the jacket for his, because the first guy had to go. And then a women came out across the road with two blankets to wrap up the other kids.
The other guy was driving a ute, and I think the whole tray flew off, along with four bags of cement, a bunch of wooden planks (which came off but held together) and a can of wood stain, so there was plenty of mess to clean up, which I presume was largely done by the fire & rescue team, who seemed to all know what they were doing.
I guess I was in shock and it is all a bit of a blur, but the police officer in charge, the fire fighter who came and spoke to me, and then the ambulance guys who came and looked at my hand and checked the kids' pulses etc, were all very kind. The police officer called me later in the day to check how I was doing which was nice. Of course I said I was fine.
And I am fine really. The kids are all good, and don't seem particularly traumatised by it. I'm going to see my osteopath tomorrow after work, but my aches and strains are getting better anyway I think. My hand still hurts but it's been xrayed, nothing's broken, and it's much better than it was a week ago too. I'm just feeling very flat is all. Thanks for listening. I think I'll go to bed.
