A few months ago we decided that Jared needed a new car. He was perfectly happy with his old one, but it was too small. I would watch him struggle every day to get out of that car. He needed something bigger. And he said with his reflexes being a little slower, he wanted something with 4WD to handle in the snow. So we knew a new car was pretty much a necessity. I definitely wanted him to feel comfortable driving. So we got a Murano back in September, and he has LOVED that car!
Last Thursday (Dec. 20th) I got a phone call at about 9am from Jared's phone. I obviously expected to hear his voice on the other end. Instead it was another man. He basically told me that my husband had been in an accident, he was there with him, the ambulance was on it's way, and that he didn't see any blood. He told me he must have blacked out while driving. I asked if Jared was conscious. He said he was, so he put me on the phone with Jared. I asked him if he had had a seizure, and he told me he hadn't. I just basically told Jared where to have the ambulance take him so I would know where to go.
I immediately rounded the kids up and threw them in the car and drove to the hospital. I honestly had no idea what to expect or how bad he would be. I had the kids wait in the car so I could go in and make sure that they had brought "dad" to the right place. Jared had just gotten there. He was completely strapped in from his neck down. The paramedics told me it looked worse than it was, they said he had to be strapped down as a precautionary measure. Jared complained of soreness in his back and neck, so they took some x-rays, all of which came back okay. The policeman arrived and went over the details of the accident with me. He had two witness statements. Jared was basically getting off the freeway, and the off-ramp immediately goes from 65mph to 35mph, and Jared didn't see the sign, so by the time he slowed down it was too late. He went through a ditch, drove across the freeway on-ramp (on-coming traffic), flattened a fence and crashed into a ditch. He told me that we were lucky that no other cars were involved, and that he was pretty sure the vehicle was totaled because pretty much every airbag deployed.
And that was pretty much it. He got a ticket for not maintaining control of the vehicle, and we were released from the hospital. He was really sore, so we stopped to get the drugs prescribed for the stiffness and pain. As I was walking through the grocery store (waiting for the prescriptions), I was finding it harder and harder to hold back the tears. I already felt like I was completely beyond my stress limit. I just couldn't believe this had happened, and to be honest, I was pretty mad, not at Jared, just mad that it had happened when we already have so much to deal with right now already.
Later that day, I looked at the pictures of the accident. One of the paramedics sent them to Jared's phone. That was when my frame of mind completely changed, and I realized just how lucky we were. Lucky he didn't hit another car, lucky another car didn't hit him, lucky he was in a bigger, safer car, lucky he didn't hit his head at all, lucky he didn't hit the tree that was literally touching the side of the car, and extremely lucky he didn't hit the power line just a few feet away. This really could've been ugly!
