My father’s accident

The driver of the three tonne truck was able to walk out of his vehicle after the collision. My father wasn’t so fortunate; he had to be cut out of his.

Both were taken to the nearest health facility, which is the Arima Health Centre. My father managed to call us to say he was in a "little accident" but he’s all right, he’ll be home soon. He was being overly optimistic.

While at the health centre my father was in excruciating pain. The emergency X-ray showed that his femur had been ripped out of the pelvic girdle from the force of the impact, shattering the natural "cup" that the ball of the bone rotates in. Meanwhile, as the doctors were making this discovery, the man whose truck slammed into my dad, was lying in bed cussing, "Ah take one f.ing drink everybody want to tell meh ah was drunk. Ah wasn’t no f.ing drunk!" One of his relatives that came to see him at the health facility was overheard saying in the corridor, "Nobody could tell me he wasn’t drunk when he hit that man. I sure he was drinking." The other people there quickly told him to hush.

My dad had to be transferred to Mt Hope when health personnel realised the extent of his injuries. He was subsequently moved to a private hospital.

As I write this column my father is being operated on. Earlier last week he had undergone surgery to put a pin in his leg. The purpose of this was to help stabilise the leg as the femur could fall out of its socket at any time. He had to wear a surgical collar to help keep his spine aligned.

The purpose of the surgery today is to reconstruct his pelvis. Each fragment has to be reattached by the use of surgical steel pins, the femur carefully put back into place.

After this, my dad will need to undergo intense physiotherapy to regain use of his leg. Even this may not guarantee his full renascence. His doctor explained that there is a good chance that the injury will lead to degenerative arthritis in the hip.

I have never known my father to sit still. It is legend in my family, his energy level, his apparent lack of need for rest.

He would go for days it seemed, operating on less sleep for an entire week than the average person would need in one night. The accident has changed all that. Now, all he does is sleep — or at least try to. It is a vicious cycle. He tries to sleep to escape from the intense pain that has become a staple in his life, but sleeping is quite difficult because of the amount of pain he is in.

The man who hit my father is in no such pain. He was discharged soon after.

What comes next for us is a nightmare. The doctor has advised us to ensure the case goes to court. The police who came to the scene of the accident did not measure the man’s blood alcohol level. So what follows is a possible "my word against yours" scenario. I could proceed to write a diatribe against the ills of drunk driving. I could write paragraph upon paragraph about how unfair it is that the person whose fault this accident was has escaped injury free.

It is very likely that right now he is driving, while my dad undergoes hours long major reconstructive surgery for an injury that his doctor has described as severe.

The doctor also explained that a blow so strong as to cause that type of injury is traumatic, that there is a chance that, while operating on my dad, they could discover further internal injuries that they did not count on.

The accident has thrown all our lives off axis. My mother’s days are spent in the hospital visiting and taking care of my dad, except for the day she spent at the blood bank meeting and thanking those who came to donate the blood my dad would need for his operation. My brother had finished school just days before the accident so he has been at her side.

My sister and I, what with school and work, have not been able to spend as much time. Still that does not mean that it has not affected us. The mind bends at the thought of the amount of money all this is costing. And somewhere, the man that hit my father has returned to life as normal.

Comments? Please write suszanna @ hotmail.com