everyone's suffering heart / ground pepper /
New Years eve, everyone came over to my Mom's to celebrate. My uncle made lots of food, and my Dad sharpened his knives and made potatoe salad and drank lots. We took a group photo series where he kept biting Esme's foot until she eventually got angry cried and he laughed. The next morning he sent it to our relatives in China. Like, look at me, I'm so annoying! Then, he got t-boned by a delivery truck in the middle of an intersection on his way to the office.
When I went to pick him up, I didn't know if I would be able to find him, then I saw the thirty feet of water shooting out of the ground, and his beloved old porsche underneath it sitting in three feet of water. I'll never forget the sound of that waterwall, and the cops surrounding the scene taking videos of it.
My Dad walked across the street sheeplishly to greet me. I hugged him. He kept talking about how much he loved his car, and how he can't believe he totalled it. He thinks he might have ran a red light because he was thinking about how to fix the garage gate, and it was a road he drove every single day. I joked that he was such a go-big-or-go-home kinda guy. First car accident, and not only did he get his airbags deployed, he took out a fire hydrant and he totalled his car.
After they turned off the water, Dad wanted to retrieve his tools from his car, and that's when I first saw the extent of the damage. The front of the car was almost torn off. Tools were all over the trunk, it was good luck none of them hit him on the head. I was thinking If he had failed to step on the breaks a split second later, he would have been toast.
My Mom showed up and immediately started questioning how he could have possibly ran a red light. Kind of berating him for, vaguely everything, as she cannot help herself but do about everything. He wanted to go to the office and finish packing the UPS for the day, but we all thought he should probably go see a doctor. First we had to go to the towing place because he wanted to get the ski rack off the top of his car. He also wanted this Stanford Dad license plate he got while I was at Stanford. After we got these things, we went back to his house, and he cried. The porche man, his companion for 10 years.
His wife took him to the emergency room because, well really because I called this number I remembered from this billboard ( Car accident? Call this lawyer ) and anyway, the lawyer told me to go to the emergency room because you need X-rays and CT scans. My Dad went, and they found bleeding in his brain and he got transferred to another hospital ICU.
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This is where life changes. When the music changes? Or when I don't know I am out of metaphors and jokes. I didn't make a joke for three days. I thought about needs and wants. I called doctors. I triaged with nurses. I did cognition tests. I got scared and then I thought again about goals, and how to achieve the goals, and went about achieving all the goals I had set out, then I fell asleep for four hours. Then I woke up and called the nurses again. I made sure to be polite. I made sure to be calm. I took notes.
I thought about the inside of my Dad's head. How the accident made him smash his head somewhere in his car, but he didn't remember it, he didn't even feel it. How that impact made a tiny bit of blood bleed from inside, and because he's on blood thinners, the blood kept getting bigger and bigger. It was just 5mm, but it moved his brain 4mm to the left, and it continued to swell, as any injury does, until it became 8mm of blood and moved his brain 6mm to the left. He had a headache, and then he lost words.
First he started to get a headache. Then he got sleepy. Then he forgot details of the accident. A few hours later, his head throbbed with pain, sweat covered his head. Then suddenly he forgot the name for head. He forgot his name. He forgot his mother's name. He felt like there was a gear in his head that was stuck. He couldn't understand what anyone was saying. One side of his face drooped. He saw only half of each person, and then he had to try to see the other half. He couldn't figure out how to use his phone anymore. He didn't know what was going on anymore.
___
He's better now. It's taken me so long to write this, it's taken all the urgency out of it. Life no longer dependence on me writing down the details, so i'm going to stop now.
When I went to pick him up, I didn't know if I would be able to find him, then I saw the thirty feet of water shooting out of the ground, and his beloved old porsche underneath it sitting in three feet of water. I'll never forget the sound of that waterwall, and the cops surrounding the scene taking videos of it.
My Dad walked across the street sheeplishly to greet me. I hugged him. He kept talking about how much he loved his car, and how he can't believe he totalled it. He thinks he might have ran a red light because he was thinking about how to fix the garage gate, and it was a road he drove every single day. I joked that he was such a go-big-or-go-home kinda guy. First car accident, and not only did he get his airbags deployed, he took out a fire hydrant and he totalled his car.
After they turned off the water, Dad wanted to retrieve his tools from his car, and that's when I first saw the extent of the damage. The front of the car was almost torn off. Tools were all over the trunk, it was good luck none of them hit him on the head. I was thinking If he had failed to step on the breaks a split second later, he would have been toast.
My Mom showed up and immediately started questioning how he could have possibly ran a red light. Kind of berating him for, vaguely everything, as she cannot help herself but do about everything. He wanted to go to the office and finish packing the UPS for the day, but we all thought he should probably go see a doctor. First we had to go to the towing place because he wanted to get the ski rack off the top of his car. He also wanted this Stanford Dad license plate he got while I was at Stanford. After we got these things, we went back to his house, and he cried. The porche man, his companion for 10 years.
His wife took him to the emergency room because, well really because I called this number I remembered from this billboard ( Car accident? Call this lawyer ) and anyway, the lawyer told me to go to the emergency room because you need X-rays and CT scans. My Dad went, and they found bleeding in his brain and he got transferred to another hospital ICU.
---
This is where life changes. When the music changes? Or when I don't know I am out of metaphors and jokes. I didn't make a joke for three days. I thought about needs and wants. I called doctors. I triaged with nurses. I did cognition tests. I got scared and then I thought again about goals, and how to achieve the goals, and went about achieving all the goals I had set out, then I fell asleep for four hours. Then I woke up and called the nurses again. I made sure to be polite. I made sure to be calm. I took notes.
I thought about the inside of my Dad's head. How the accident made him smash his head somewhere in his car, but he didn't remember it, he didn't even feel it. How that impact made a tiny bit of blood bleed from inside, and because he's on blood thinners, the blood kept getting bigger and bigger. It was just 5mm, but it moved his brain 4mm to the left, and it continued to swell, as any injury does, until it became 8mm of blood and moved his brain 6mm to the left. He had a headache, and then he lost words.
First he started to get a headache. Then he got sleepy. Then he forgot details of the accident. A few hours later, his head throbbed with pain, sweat covered his head. Then suddenly he forgot the name for head. He forgot his name. He forgot his mother's name. He felt like there was a gear in his head that was stuck. He couldn't understand what anyone was saying. One side of his face drooped. He saw only half of each person, and then he had to try to see the other half. He couldn't figure out how to use his phone anymore. He didn't know what was going on anymore.
___
He's better now. It's taken me so long to write this, it's taken all the urgency out of it. Life no longer dependence on me writing down the details, so i'm going to stop now.