…and The Ugly

And it’s really ugly….as in, no bueno. Sorry ahead of time if my sad story ruins your day!

So, like I mentioned previously, there was an “ugly” portion of my CB trip…this is it. While driving down there on Friday night, Megan and I were cruising along, chatting away. We were heading up Monarch Pass when we realized that everyone was flashing their lights at us. Wow, we thought, that is really nice of them to warn us about a cop (Sorry Adrian, if you read this!!)

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 Unfortunately, we crested the pass and were about 100 yards down the backside when we realized it wasn’t a cop they were warning us about–there was a motorcycle accident. Turns out, a biker dude had lost control of his bike when he crested the summit, spun out, and crashed into one of the poles on the side of the highway. Because Megan is a nurse and we thought she might be able to help, we stopped, and it was a good thing we did. The only other people there were his 3 biker friends and another car full of people. Meg was the only one who knew anything medical, so right off the bat she took control of the situation. The man hadn’t been wearing a helmet and he was in terrible condition with blood everywhere. She ended up soaked in his blood while she cradled his head to stabilize his spine. Even worse? His accident was apparently straddling two counties, so it took the first responders over an hour to get to us. In that time, Megan never left the man’s side, even when he spit up blood and broken teeth right into her face. She was amazing.

For my part, I did whatever Meg told me to do. I held him down for a long time, until the ambulance arrived, but then I got out of the way so that I wasn’t underfoot. However, it turns out that they were having a rough time getting the IV needle into his arm because of all of the tattoos, so the EMT actually called me back over and asked me to hold the biker down so he could insert the massive (16 gauge!) needle. The EMT finally got the IV in and running, but then somehow I ended up being part of the team that backboarded the man as well.

In essence, it was awful. Almost all of my female friends are nurses, most of my male friends are cops, my sister is a physician’s assistant, and my ex-boyfriend is even a firefighter. Me? I’m just a landscaper. Although I was originally pre-med, I vetoed that route and don’t typically deal in the world of blood and death. I’m not squeamish and it doesn’t bother me, but I’m also not used to seeing people in such traumatic situations. It freaked me. All of the paramedics, etc., were very unsure as to whether this man was going to survive, and they even had a helicopter coming to fly him out. Serious stuff. And very, very scary for me.

In light of that drama, you can now understand why locking my keys in the car 3 hours later at the campsite about pushed me over the edge! I was so ready to cry at that point, and I’m not even sure how I kept it together. Poor Megan even had it worse off because she was still wearing the clothes with the biker’s blood on them, and couldn’t get to her backpack cause it was locked in my car 🙁

But we survived. We woke up the next morning, the sun was shining, and it literally was a new day!

Have you ever seen any accidents like that? How do you cope with them?