The aftermath of being hit with a truck

This has been so fun, y'all. Lemme tell you...

Yesterday I had this ghastly headache that began about 15 minutes after I got rear-ended, and it continued for hours (ended up lasting until I woke up this morning, and now it's beginning again), so I finally called my doctor back and told his nurse what was up with me. I was having jaw pain along with it, which I am very familiar with (this comes from being thrown off a horse years ago). She advised me to just go to the ER at Swedish, since they'd have to send me there anyway for scans if I came in. Luckily there was a Swedish ER in Edmonds, which is close to where I live, so I went to that one.

They took some x-rays of me and did a CT scan of my brain, and the good news is that I'm not dying. The kind of obvious news is that I have a little whiplash, and I'm supposed to treat it with Ibuprofen and possibly massage therapy if the guy's insurance will pay for it. We shall see. My neck is killing me today. The muscles are so sore from getting whipped around. I took some Ibuprofen, and I'm hoping it will heal up quickly. At least the horrible headache is much less today.

Amusingly, I don't think anyone told the discharge nurse what I was there for, because she started to tell me about what can cause headaches and offered me this list of different kinds of headaches.

Her: So headaches can stem from a whole bunch of different sources, and it could be just tension or-

Me: I got hit by a truck. (I didn't mean to be rude by interrupting, but I also didn't want to listen to a lecture intended for hypochondriacs.)

Her: What?

Me: I was rear-ended by a truck today. I know exactly why I have this headache.

Her: Huh. Well, yeah, that would cause it.

Me: Yep. I'm only here because I wanted to make sure there wasn't anything seriously wrong with me.

Her: That's a very good idea.

Then she gave me the paperwork and suggested I have the guy's insurance pay for massage therapy, which I will look into. Sigh. Thank you all for the kind comments. I promise I'm not dying. xoxo

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Must be Monday

Disclaimer: I'M NOT DEAD.

I've had nightmares for two nights running now, and this morning I got rear-ended by a truck.

These nightmares are the stressful, emotionally draining, exhausting kind. So when I wake up, I feel like I never slept at all. The exhaustion just permeates everything. I was covered in sweat this morning when I woke, and it felt like my sodden hair was heavy with nightmares.

I got up and got ready to go to work, then headed down Aurora (Patrick was not with me as he has a recording session today and took time off from his day job). I believe it was about 80th or so when the line of cars in front of me began moving, then stopped, and so I stopped as well. The guy behind me in the truck did not stop, and CRUNCH. I shrieked a tiny bit at the impact (I'd known a second before he hit that it was coming, as I'd glanced up to see the truck's motion in my rearview mirror and knew he was moving too fast to stop), and my body went forward, was caught by the safety lock on the seatbelt, and then slammed back into the seat. Ouch. I'm glad the headrest was there, but my head still hurts from hitting it!

I'm glad he wasn't going very quickly, probably 10-15mph at the most, and it didn't do much to my car. Apparently Civics are very resilient. The trunk still works and it's not crumpled or anything. There's just a dent in the trunk lid and some paint scratches along that and the bumper. The only thing that happened to the guy's truck was a dented license plate.

He was nice and apologetic, and we exchanged information. I'm going to try to get the car into the shop today for an estimate. He thought of more stuff than I did, namely taking pictures of the info instead of writing it all down and checking to see if the trunk still worked. I was sort of in shock, and my hands were shaking so hard I could barely type into my phone. I'm calmer now, and actually pretty impressed with myself that I didn't freak out.

Then I got back on the road and went to work. Even made it on time. I hope my cough goes away, the nightmares stop, the car is easily and quickly fixed, and the rest of this week is better!

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