Life changing event?

[Wildcard Ky]

Was there a single event in your life that completely changed you and how you live your life?

March 4, 1994: I was on I-75 just south of Lexington Ky. I had my two daughters in the car with me. A car came across the median and hit the car in front of me head on. Both were doing about 70 MPH. I narrowly missed the collision.

I stopped and got out to see if anything could be done for the victims. The lady that came across the median was obviously dead. I went over to the car that she hit. She was a young girl, unconscious but alive. She was badly hurt and having trouble breathing. I managed to get the passenger door open and got in the car with her. I held her head up to ease her breathing and just kept talking to her. In short time the ambulance arrived and they took over caring for her. I had never seen a body so badly broken in so many places.

Others that had stopped watched my girls while I was in the car with the young lady. After I got out of her car I went back to my car and my girls. The enormity of the moment and the delicate nature of fate hit me like a ton of bricks. I started thinking about had it been another 2 seconds, it would have been me and my girls that got hit. I'm one of those people that cries about once every 10 years or so, but I started crying and couldn't stop. I just held my girls and cried for a long time.

I used to be one of those people so caught up in the future and designing grand schemes for life. It all changed on that day. That taught me to live in the present and appreciate the things that are around me now. It took a tragedy like this to teach me to learn to stop and smell the flowers.

Every little thing that we have right now is precious, I realized that on that night and have lived according to that concept ever since.

The girl in the wreck survived, but spent about a year in the hospital. I went to see her a lot while she was in there, and got close to her and her family. My current wife and I married a year after the wreck, and the girls pastor performed the service.

 

[rgraham666]

Really good story Ky.

For me, it was going insane. Yeah, I know. I'm supposed to be using a 'lighter' word.

But I was nuts. I had tried to take my own life, had come perilously close to succeeding, and was in a hospital bed for a week almost comatose from drugs and depression.

It's been a long hard climb back to The World. I sometimes wonder why I bothered.

But having my perceptions that warped allowed me to strip away all the extraneous stuff and work through to the core of who I am.

So it was worth the trouble. Nothing good comes cheap.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

For someone that was insane, I find you to be one of the most sane and intelligent people I've ever had the pleasure of conversing with on the internet.

 

[rgraham666]

Merci.

I worked really hard for it though. And sometimes I can still feel the madness nibbling at the edges fo my mind.

Oh wait. That's just my bunny chewing on my jeans.

 

[psychocatblah]

I can't think of one singular even that completely changed me. There have been a lot of things that have changed me in different ways, some for the better, some for the worse. None of them that I'd change although I don't think I could go through them again. I'm still very much a work in progress thought.

I've mentioned before on the boards that my father died in December. I'm still not sure how this has effected me yet. I know that I've spent more time writing since that initial shock. Although on some level I feel alone. I'm an only child and my mother is leaning on me a lot for support and that's just really hard to deal with. I give it and I try to stay centered, but it's stressful.

It was sudden, an aneurysm, but I'm not sure it's taught me to live more in the moment. I'm not sure what it's teaching me, as I prattled on at before. Other than that I wish now I had some siblings to distribute some of this angst along. It's hard to have mother coming to me and on me for the answers like, "Why did he go?" or "What does death mean?" Maybe it's taught me I can't be a child forever.

 

[Guest]

Simple answer: the death of my father when I was ten (he was 34). Nothing else compares.

Perdita

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Was there a single event in your life that completely changed you and how you live your life?

and...

Every little thing that we have right now is precious, I realized that on that night and have lived according to that concept ever since.

I had a similar event, not as dramatic, but it affected me all the same.

It was about 5 years ago, I was working in Boston at the time. We were working on the waterfront at the time and there was also a crew working on barges less than 100' off shore, right in front of us.

I was standing outside the operators cab of one of my cranes, talking to the operator, when we saw one of the workers on the barge fall down. We were joking about how that must have hurt but we soon realized that something was wrong when he didn't get up.

Sure enough, we watched, helpless, less than 100' away as two of his co-workers started preforming CPR and screaming over their radios for the tug boat. The tug boat arrived, they got him loaded and went off hell bent for the dock and the ambulance that was already waiting. That was the last we ever saw of him. He was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at the hospital.

The rest of the day seemed a little strange to me. Work went on but it seemed like it was different somehow, it all seemed so petty somehow.

It wasn't until my hour and a half commute home that I really thought it over. Here was a guy that I had seen at the coffee truck and said good morning to occasionally. Just a regular Joe, going to work just like me. But something unexpected happened and he never went home.

He was 42 years old, wife, 3 kids. Those are the people who will miss him. His wife will struggle to raise the kids without him and the kids will grow up with only memories of their father, and those memories will soon fade.

His employer had him replaced the next day and the job went on in less than a hour.

Work for your job when you have to.

But live for your family. They're what really matter.

CD

 

[Guest]

awesome story CD.. family should be first

______________

having worked the last 15 years in ER's and ICU's.. everyday held something to make me stop and think.

nothing ever changed me or my life as much as finding out a secret.. finding out the ex was doing really bad things that i had no idea about.

it taught me that you will never know someone as well as you think you do.

it taught me that no matter how shitty a mother i think i am.. im pretty damn good.

it taught me that i will always be there for my kids.. always.

 

[Guest]

12 yrs ago my fiance was run down in a cross walk. She spent three months in a coma before it was determined that she was totaly brain dead. Her parents asked me to pull the plug.

The woman who hit her was a local lawyer, on her way to court after a two martini lunch. She was appearantly arguing with her secretary on her cell phone. Didn't realize she was going 45 in a 25 zone. Didn't see the red light. Didn't see Susan in the cross walk. She stopped a block down the street thinking someone hit HER.

She was tried on reduced charges of speeding and reckless operation, fined $1000 and given 30 days suspension of driving priveledges. When the judge ordered the fine and suspension, she did the indignant "OH! I never!" routine and stormed out of the court.

For months friends and family tried to console me with, "It's gods will.", "She's in a better place." and "The lord works in mysterious ways."

To this day when I hear those expressions it makes me want to choke the person that said it.

Someone said recently, "I still belive in god. I just hate him."

That pretty much sums it up for me.

 

[Guest]

Family tragedy -

Perdita, I didn't realize you were so young when you lost your father. I'm so sorry.

This time a year ago we were caring for my terminally ill brother. We'd just returned from UAB Hospital where they told us experimental treatments for his malignancy were useless. So they drove him 800 miles to Missouri in an ambulance (we followed - average speed 90 miles per hour the entire way). We cared for him daily with Hospice at my parent's home until he passed away there. He was 42.

There are lots of terrible anniversaries to come this summer and I already find myself in that same melancholy (that's really too nice a word for it) daze at times.

How has this affected me? It took joy away for awhile, of course, took my writing, my music. We turned inward - my husband and I chose to completely center our lives around our two kids.

How will this affect me? Recently I've thrown myself into my marital arts training (which I totally neglected for about six months). I signed my young daughter up for a women's self-defense class at the Y. So now I'm wondering if I'm attempting to get strong to defend against something I can't really control anyway?

Geez, a psychiatrist would love this nonsense.

It's just too soon to tell.

But I do know that my husband, my friends - in real life and here on Lit - have made the difference to help me survive.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

12 yrs ago my fiance was run down in a cross walk. She spent three months in a coma before it was determined that she was totaly brain dead. Her parents asked me to pull the plug.

The woman who hit her was a local lawyer, on her way to court after a two martini lunch. She was appearantly arguing with her secretary on her cell phone. Didn't realize she was going 45 in a 25 zone. Didn't see the red light. Didn't see Susan in the cross walk. She stopped a block down the street thinking someone hit HER.

She was tried on reduced charges of speeding and reckless operation, fined $1000 and given 30 days suspension of driving priveledges. When the judge ordered the fine and suspension, she did the indignant "OH! I never!" routine and stormed out of the court.

For months friends and family tried to console me with, "It's gods will.", "She's in a better place." and "The lord works in mysterious ways."

To this day when I hear those expressions it makes me want to choke the person that said it.

Someone said recently, "I still belive in god. I just hate him."

That pretty much sums it up for me.

I'm so sorry to hear this. I've never been personally affected by a drunk driver, but they piss me off to no end. Drunk drivers cause so much death and injury in this country, but our legal system still treats it as a slap on the wrist.

To me that woman should have been tried on negligent homicide and nothing less. She gets indignant about a thousand bucks and not being able to drive for a month while your fiance loses her life, and her loved ones are left with this pain for the rest of their lives.

There's no justice in that. Our legal system failed miserably once again.

 

[cloudy]

This is not nearly as traumatic as some of the experiences others have had, but it has affected me deeply.

I am WSI certified (Water Safety Instructor), and have been since I was around 17. It's much more involved and difficult than your standard life-saving certification, and you have to be re-certified every year, including CPR certification.

I worked for JCPenney, in management, for years and had never really had a crisis until this time.

An elderly lady was in the store shopping with her three daughters. Two of the daughters were making a purchase and the other went with their mother just outside the doors into the mall to sit down - apparently the woman was feeling short of breath or something.

I was just making rounds, and the one that had gone out came running back in, screaming "Something's wrong with mother!"

I yelled out to the associate at the cash register to call 911, and went to see if I could help. The woman wasn't breathing, and I immediately starting performing CPR, and kept it up until a shopper, who identified herself as an RN, stepped up to help. (For those that have never had to do that in a r/l situation, it's tiring as hell).

We kept her going until the paramedics got there, and then I tried to go on about my day. I learned later that night that the lady had died in the ambulance on her way to the hospital. She had had heart surgery a year or so before.

I think I cried for days, and no one could understand why.

About a week afterwards, I was paged and told that I had a visitor. It was the woman's son. He told me that the doctors had said that even if she'd been in the hospital that she wouldn't have lived, but he wanted to thank me for trying. He said that too many people would have been afraid to try, or to get involved. The memory of his heartfelt thanks still brings me to tears.

I will always, always remember him, and his mother. He taught me not to be afraid to help someone if you can.

The one good thing that came from this experience was that I was able to push a program through for all the stores in our region - all management had to be CPR certified so that there was always someone in the store that was trained and able. Last time I heard, they were planning on making it a requirement for all the stores in the company. I hope they have.

 

[seasparks]

For me it was when my friends daughter drowned

She fell into an unattended swinning pool and was in the water for hours before anyone found her.
Since then I have been working on an invention to help prevent that sort of thing.
The good news is that it works and will be on the market soon.
The bad news is that it came too late to save Melissa.
It still half kills me that it took the death of a friends family member for me to turn my attention away from inventing frivolous
and trivial things to something worthwhile.

 

[rgraham666]

It occurs to me that maybe one of the biggest problems we North Americans have is how little we know of death.

Once it was a part of our lives, we lived with it, and we had less fear of it.

Now, it crashes into our lives unexpectedly and shocks us enormously.

Perhaps, if death wasn't such a stranger to us, we wouldn't require these rude shocks to awaken us. And knowing how close death is, we would be more careful about how we act towards each other.

 

[Guest]

 

[oggbashan]

Being in No Man's Land between two armies for three days when I was ten years old.

They tried not to shoot at us but...

I learned how to dig a foxhole fast. I also learned that you can die at any time and that real combat is scary.

The worst thing was knowing that you could die for no reason except being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It hurts me that every day ten-year-old and younger children somewhere in the world are still facing that sort of experience and I cannot do anything about it.

Og

 

[Liar]

Like RG, I guess I too went insane, or at least had a bona fide mental collapse.

Five years ago. Life was a blur, in a stroboscope tempo, lived on endorphin and caffeine rush, and a maximum of three hour's of sleep/day. I thought I was a god and that I could take on everything. Worked like insane, climbed a seemingly glamorous corporate ladder, ran my own escalating side projects, fuelled, used and abused a creative fire, seeked mental and physical adrenaline thrills, partied all night and slept with anything that could draw a breath.

Then one day, I couldn't move my hands.

I couldn't move my head. I sat in front of a flickering computer screen, and forgot how to breathe, how to think, how to even worry about that. I passed out on top of my desk at work, and had to be carried out into a waiting ambulance because although I came around and seemingly resonded calmly to my coworkers concerned questions, I couldn't move. I don't remembet that part, all I remember was waking up at the hospital the next day wondering what the hell was going on. I still couln't command my limbs or concentrate on anything for more than 30 seconds. For three weeks, the tv was my best firend, while I struggled to get a grip on the pasic parts of life again. Things like eating.

And then I dropped everything for a four month respite without work, without deadlines, without computers, fax machines, tv, radio and mobile phones. I rid myself of a plethora of superficial connections I had called friends, gave all the music and writing and theatre projects I had been running and/or patricipating in my very best wishes and signed off. I moved out to my dad's summer house over a low season, where I had the whole island village to myself. For three months I did nothing but read books, and polish the woodworks of an old sailing boat. My family and girlfriend called now and then, and came by on weekends, but that was all human interaction I had.

After that I went back to work, worked half days, and was very careful not to bite off more than I could chew. It's been a climb back to normal ever since, and I know now that there are envelopes to push and others to leave the hell alone.

Reading this thread I see lost of deaths, and other real traumatic incidents. I sometimes feel almost jealous that I don't have anything tangible like that to explain what happened.

 

[kinky shy girl]

I've read through this thread and the only reaction I have is Wow.

mine: a few years ago, a close family member was diagnosed w/ a rather large brain tumor. the docs told us that they weren't really sure what caused it. long story short, the surgery was successful and the tumor turned out to be benign. Very slim chance that it will grow back, but we have to wait and see.

during this time, i learned how some doctors can be pricks while some docs are really wonderful. I learned a lot about alternative meds, preventive care, nutrition, fitness, and other subjects. I also quit smoking the day after the surgery. I had tried several times before, but I knew it was time to stop. Since then, I try not to stress out about silly, insignificant things. It could always be worse, ya know?

 

[DirtyJJ]

There are some amazing stories on this thread; I have been fortunate enough to never have experienced such tragedy first hand. When someone I know dies, I am always reminded of how precious life is and how you can be gone in an instant. Like some have said, it's too bad it takes a sad or tragic event to realize this. What is even sadder is that the feeling often fades and you go back to your usual way of putting things off and not living each day to the fullest.

Right now I am thinking about my good friend who was badly injured in Iraq last week and is on his way home. Thinking about what he went through and has yet to go through makes my little problems seem not so important.
DJJ