Yes, I'll confess! The tale of my infamous truck accident is a bit lacking in detail. I learned to do this after repeating the story in perfect detail one too many times, or maybe it was one hundred too many times. The physical reaction to this post-trauma retelling began to gain notice, even in my distracted mind. To combat the stress, I began telling the story with less detail, altering the chronological order of some things, and generally staying away from a witness-stand style of recalling and reenacting. After all, I wasn't on trial, so why reinforce the PTSD! The great beyond to this life came closest when my lungs filled up with bone marrow.
Now that little detail is not often told in after-accident stories. If a bone is broken, the marrow sometimes escapes into the body. Kind of makes sense when you think about it, but more often than not only doctors think about such things. As I had no less than four long bones broken, a lot of goop entered the blood stream and began looking for a place to settle down and make a new bone, or whatever it is that bone marrow likes to do when it gains its freedom. Should the bone marrow settle out of the blood in the heart or brain, the patient is one of those who 'die of complications from injuries received in an auto accident' as the hospital spokespersons like to state. The patient may also perish if the marrow settles in the lungs; sort of a drowning in goo thing to use medical terminology. Heh, heh! I think the quack used fatty embolism, which I took personally, to describe the condition. In any case, the cure was to stick the doc's Craftsman 40-hp shop vacuum down my throat, at least that's what it felt like, and suck the gook out.
Another detail of this procedure is that the patient must be paralyzed because he will reject the schnozzle of the vacuum. Gee, da ya think? My desire to return the favor notwithstanding, the procedure worked and my condition improved quickly. I have no idea which of the docs performed the violation, so I guess their drugs had the desired effect. There you go, another detail of the recovery process. Now I'm going to run away from it again for my own sake and sanity.
Years later, details still cause trouble for me occasionally. Join any ol' line at the unemployment place without checking the little signs, as the Danny DeVito character did in Renaissance Man, and the patient, oops, we're past that now, the unemployed person may wait uselessly in the wrong line only to find out the horrible news at the front of the line. Strangely, this is one of my fears, and it is strange because it is not the end of the line that causes the anxiety, I'm okay there, but the pressure of the people waiting behind me. This is not a personal expression thing from cranky mugs or something arising from sharp-tongued loose lips of those in line, but sort of a pressure that builds in my mind. I do not know why this is, but I have felt relief in letting others go ahead of me. This can indeed cause baffled comments such as, "what a nice guy!" or "Have you gone loony?"
A detail that I relate in these blog entries may help you in your struggle. I can only hope, since telling every weakness of mine is to hand an enemy ammunition for whatever weapon he or she would use against me. Fortunately, I don't know of any enemies other than the spiritual ones. Well, there is the guy who asks after my mental health using archaic expressions, but he's just part of my inner dialogue.
God bless,Bucky
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