My Accident and Second Chance

It's been a bit over two weeks since my accident. Yeah, I got hurt in a stupid, freaky accident. It so happens that I fell about 8-10 ft onto some concrete, and it just so happened to be face first. I had 5 facial fractures and a lacerated lip and to me that's quite a bit. The CT scans showed just how damaged my face was. My eye socket was almost completely crushed, my sinus was completely caved in, and my cheeks were so broken that they poked through my gums. My front 4 left teeth sliced straight through my lip and i think it's going to end up scarring a bit. It's a wonder that I didn't lose my left eye, because it's still blood red on the inside weeks later and that'll last for several more I'm told. It was half pure red, half white just a little while. Like a Yin Yang, but red and white.

The story behind it was this, late one night my friends and i were swimming and everything was fine as usual. We had just gotten some alcohol and just started to drink. I wasn't even drunk, hell I wasn't even tipsy so I can't really say that I was messed up at the time of the accident...it happened sober and I guess, that shit just happens.

Fast forward...the girls go back to the apt and for some reason my ipod and keys were left on the table...but my memory of that isn't clear anymore since i had a pretty bad concussion that seemed to kinda wipe a few minutes of my life away.

I run over to the gate and decide to hop it...looking for those guys. At the very top, for whatever reason I don't have any idea what so ever...I lost my balance and went face first into the concrete. Now I can't tell you why it happened. I was sober, it was a really tall steel gate & fence but thats not really a problem either. I didn't lose my footing or my grip, but for some reason i went over it and...hit.

I managed to protect the right side of my face with my palm, which turned black for a couple of weeks, but the left had cuts on it since i tried holding onto the gate almost in a way, and was unable to protect my face.

I opened my eyes and was in a pool of blood, which lasted for at least 3 days despite it having rained for two of those following days. What did i do? For some reason i didn't call 911, probably because I was in shock. I called one of my best friends who had been swimming with me, to come over. All I could manage to say was, come to gate, help, i hurt badly. The pavement, my shirt, my hands, face, and cell phone were red. My hair seemed to be wet, but that too was red.

* You know, that if you have a friend good enough to entrust them with your life, then you're doing something right in life. Those friends are priceless!

It's been a little over 2 weeks, and I am recovering from reconstructive plastic surgery. I had a little over 3 hours work done. They installed 5 titanium plates in my face, so I guess now I can be called Ti Man or Bionic Man, or something like that. Kinda weird having titanium in my face, but that's okay. In retrospect, I think it's kinda cool actually.

The swelling is down a lot, my lip is kinda healed. For the surgery they made two incisions at my eye, and then cut from the front of my mouth past the back of my jaw, so I have a huge line of stitches where my mouth was sewn back together. Yeah that part kinda blows, too. I could have ended up with a gimp eye after the surgery too, but I guess that I'm really lucky.

I lucked out with an extremely talented plastic surgeon. Hell, I'll go as far as saying he is a god amongst men because he pretty much restored my face. It's only a little over 2 weeks after my surgery and despite all of the damage there was, he somehow managed to ingeniously restore it. My eternal gratitude goes out to both he and his assisting surgeon, and all of the OR nurses.

Oh yeah, and during the ER and OR they found out that for some reason morphine doesn''t work on me like it's supposed to. 4 doses of that in the ER and they switched to vicodin lol.

I am extremely grateful for only having broken half of my face. No brain, spine, neck damage. no lost /cbipped teath...just 5 crushed bones and a cut lip is fine by me. Well, I have no feeling in about a third of the left side of my face, and my gums on that side as far as feeling is concerned, are pretty much as good as dead. A major nerve might have gotten severed said the surgeons so I might not ever get any of that feeling back. I sure hope that I do because that would kinda suck. That and a really nasty sense of vertigo when my head is to the side for anything especially sleeping.

What's sad is that it looks like I got whaled on, but that's not the story. You know, had i been beaten up then the story might have been a bit cool to talk crap with, but you know what... it was honestly an accident.

The ER, my surgeon, doctor and specialist say it looks like violence but damn really come on. If it was a cooler story I would have been all about telling it like it was, but it was a damn fence! I got into a fight with gravity and it kicked my ass is what it was!

I'll take this as a second chance at life, because when you think about it, it really was and i am eternally grateful for it.

I feel like a pirate in this photo, arrrg matey!