Monday, January 28, 2008

The recent car accident

This will be part one:

A couple of days ago I told you about my car accident with my daughter. I put a short quick post up on this blog to request prayers. That's all I could do at that point. THANK YOU everyone for your concern and prayers for my daughter and for my speedy recovery. We are supposed to leave in a week for Rome! If you can still spare a few prayers, please continue because we have a ways to go in our recovery.

Since I left you all "hanging" and without details of the accident, I'll give you a little more information now. Please be patient with me because It's not easy to type this out and I have to get rest, too.

Friday afternoon I picked my daughter up from school and proceeded to do a couple of errands. It was my husband's birthday too. We were on our way home and traveling slowly down a certain street because of the many crosswalks. I noticed that the car in front of us didn't stop to allow the woman who stood at the crosswalk cross the street. I slowed down to a stop and motioned for her to cross if she'd like to. She nodded and started across the street. We waited while she walked across. Suddenly I was deeply shocked to feel intensely a sharp painful blow to the back of my head and neck as if someone had taken a huge baseball bat and slammed me there! It was incredibly searing and excruciating. My mind couldn't comprehend in that instant what had happened. However, my daughter's face told it all to me. When I saw her pain and her fright too, I realized in the next instant that it had happened to her as well and that meant we were just hit from behind. We were in a car accident. The blow was from the force of the "monster" truck" which had been speeding down the street behind us (we found out later) and made no attempt to slow down or stop because the driver was oblivious to us there. We took the full impact since we were standing still.

I was freezing and in pain. I didn't know at that time that the back of my car was gone - a formerly big strong Mountaineer. The freezing twenty degree air rushed in our vehicle and partnered with the shock that we were already experiencing; causing us to shake profusely. In those 2 or 3 minutes that followed, it seemed that no one knew what had happened. I reached to open my window and pleaded with a passing driver to call the police that we were hurt. The woman who was crossing the street came to our windows and asked us, "Are you all right?" "No, we're not all right, please stay with us." I asked her. She did. I wanted her to tell the police what had happened.

I reached my right hand towards my daughter, trying not to move my neck or body too much and took her hand to pray together. "Please dear Lord, help us. Blessed Mother Mary, please be with us. All of you Angels and Saints be with us and pray for us."

Someone asked me to move my car off the road, I don't recall who. People were surrounding my car, on my daughter's side and mine; all talking at once. I suddenly remembered to call my husband. I was in shock. I tried to pull my cell phone from my purse. I dialed his cell number. No answer. This is not the time to not answer your phone, I thought. I dialed his work number. I knew that he was leaving about that time to come home. We were going to go out to dinner for his birthday.

I got the answering machine. "Sweetie, we had a car accident!!!" I said into the phone and then placed it on my lap because everyone was talking to me and my husband hadn't answered the phone. After a few minutes, I realized that I should pick up my phone and I saw the word, "connected" on the screen.
"Are you there?" I asked the phone, hoping my husband was listening by some miracle and not just his machine.
"Where are you?!" my husband asked me.
I told him where we were. "Be careful," I added. I knew he would be tempted to speed to get to us and we certainly didn't need two accidents!
He said, "I'm on my way."

All we could do then was to stay still, pray and try not to move our necks while we shivered in the cold, hoping for medical help to arrive soon.

(I will try to continue the story soon.)

4 comments:

Cmerie said...

Oh! How scary and awful! I am continuing to keep you and your daughter in my prayers.

God bless!

EC Gefroh said...

Goodness Donna! I'm really glad you and your DD are okay.

sksherwin said...

Oh Donna! I just read this now! I hope you're both doing okay!!!! How scary! I will pray for you and your daughter!

Alice Gunther said...

Oh, Donna, how devastating! I am just reading this now (I was literally in the middle of writing my book when this news broke and not reading anything on the internet to keep on track--I can't believe I missed this.)