A lot of people have been asking me about my time out of the
office, so I thought I would send you a “Moody Email” to fill you in on my
adventure last Friday morning. Feel free to read at your leisure with a snack
or a cup of tea; this one is long.
As I stepped out of my apartment and into the street to
cross through the beautiful park by my home, I was hit by a car. I saw the car
at the very last minute and tried to back out of the way. Unfortunately, I
couldn’t clear it in time and the impact sent me flying backwards onto the
pavement. Luckily, I have a lot of padding in my lower half and all of that
bounced, but it bounced me right on to the back of my head. I never blacked out
and was conscious through the whole event, including the phone call to (my boss)
telling her that I was “bleeding from the head, but would be in as soon as I
can.” Well, when I saw the amount of Moody Juice flowing out of my head, I knew
that probably wasn’t going to happen. **As a side note, all of the blood (and
there was a lot of it) came out of my jacket, scarf, shirt and sweater. I am
now convinced that my blood is magic. Like a unicorn’s**
The driver stopped and was obviously shaken by the event.
Lots of neighbors also stopped to help, including a woman who picked up my
umbrella and shielded me from the rain while we waited for the paramedics and a
gentleman who wrapped his coat around me and kept telling me in his Barry White
voice that everything would be alright.
In the midst of all the chaos, there were a few ridiculous,
dare I say funny, moments: when the paramedics taped my head down to the board
but also taped my right eye shut and were confused as to why I couldn’t open my
eyes when they needed to check my pupils; the paramedic who was
concerned that my blood pressure reading was “too high” to which I replied, “Of
course it is! I just got hit by a fucking car!” (whoops); and my neighbor in
the emergency room who was handcuffed to his hospital bed and kept screaming
out, “I need a doctor. I just peed myself”.
I had a CT scan and my brain is normal (whatever that means
for me) and l left the hospital with 6 shiny new staples in my noggin. I had
some dizziness Friday and Saturday, but no nausea or loss of vision. The only
lasting side effect of this whole ordeal is the insecurity I now feel when I’m
walking on the street. It has gotten much better, but you’ll probably still see
me waiting patiently for the light to change even as hordes of people zoom past
me. Of course, there are other thoughts that pass through my mind like
the realization that my last thought on Earth could have been, “This is
happening” or that instead of me going through my rain/blood-soaked clothing,
it could have been my parents or the fact that the beautiful ER doctor saw me
in just my undies and how I really wished I would have put on something lacier
or, at the very least, shaved my legs.
Last night, I spent a few hours in the Harlem Hospital
trauma center waiting to have the staples removed (which they did without
painkillers. WTF?!). I made friends with a thuggish older lesbian who sat down
next to me. As she pulled out a beer and tried to open it with her teeth, my
maternal instincts came out and I said, “You’ll break your teeth. Let me do
that”. I opened it for her and when I handed it back to her, she looked me in
the eye and said, “Thanks, mami.”
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