It was the last day of spring break, so I did some lesson planning. After that, I met up with Matt, my significant other, to make business cards for my neighborhood association at one of the restaurants on Ingersoll [Avenue], because I get more work done when I’m not at home. We finished that up around 7:30-ish, and we started walking back towards where we had left the car because it was nice out. 

We were at the corner of Martin Luther King [Parkway] and Ingersoll, which are both pretty busy streets in Des Moines. When we were crossing MLK, I made it about halfway to the median when I heard Matt shout something, and I turned and looked, and there was this camouflage colored truck. It was coming at me, turning left off of Ingersoll, and I just yelled and then went flying, and I remember it hurting a lot. 

The driver of the truck was there as well as at least one other random human, and I remember him saying, “The other one’s about 30 feet away.” So, I don’t know if I got thrown 30 feet, or if Matt got thrown 30 feet, or if we each got thrown 15 feet. It’s a great math problem; we can do it as an extension at some point. 

They then let me know that Matt was unconscious, and so I needed to choose which hospital to go to. My sister and my best friend both work at Methodist, and we were only a couple of blocks away, so I told them there. They asked me a lot of questions. I am particularly grumpy because they entered me into the system as a “Jane Doe,” even though I spelled my name perfectly for them. And when they asked for my contact, I spelled my sister’s name, also perfectly for them, as well as giving them all the necessary information. But, evidently, that didn’t count, which caused problems later in paperwork.

Anyways, we got to the ER and they let me know that Matt was awake and that I was actually the one who was more injured. At that point, I assumed that something terrible had happened to him, but it turns out that he’s just a lightweight and gets knocked out really easily. 

After that, my sister came; it was really great having her there because she talked to all the doctors and nurses and helped us figure out all that stuff. She’s one of the diabetes educators for Unity Point, so she usually covers all four hospitals, but the other three educators changed their schedule so that she could be at Methodist during my stay. That was nice, cause I tend to be a people pleaser, and when she was sitting in on my meetings with doctors, she’d say to me, “Aren’t you gonna talk about how that hurt or how that medication wasn’t working?” so then I’d have to tell them. 

My best friend, Rachel, works in the ICU. She’s their ECMO specialist, which is a really confusing machine that takes stuff out of your body and puts stuff back into your body. Feel free to Google it. She’s also on the rapid response team, so when something bad happens somewhere else in the hospital, she goes to help stabilize the team until doctors get there. That gave her a lot of flexibility because she could come and hang out with me during her shift as long as no one was calling for her.

The staff at Methodist were amazing. Since my sister and Rachel work there, they stopped by at the beginning of their shifts. Also just strangers, who I’ve never even met before, were so supportive and silly when checking in. 

At that point, it was probably about two or three in the morning, and Matt got released from the ER, so he was able to come see me. That’s when we found out my very exciting list of injuries. My pelvis is broken in two places. I have a grade three laceration on my kidney (on a scale of one to four, with four being the worst and one being the best). My ribs are broken. I have three ribs that are each broken in two places, so you can either say my ribs are broken six times or three times. My lungs are bruised. 
Part of my C7 spine broke off, but it’s not an important part, so I now know that there’s part of your spine that just doesn’t matter. And then I have pretty extensive bruising along my shoulders and clavicle, as well as large amounts of road rash from my lower back down to my knees. So, that was me.

Matt, somehow, I don’t know if it’s lucky or not, got thrown forward so he had road rash everywhere on his face that didn’t have a beard. His blood vessels in his eyes popped, so they were blood red. His shoulder and arm both got bruised and swollen, and since he does manual labor for a job, it’s kind of a problem. But he is mostly recovered now, and I’m just hanging out.

I went into surgery around noon on Monday, so about 16 hours after I got to the hospital, and right before going into surgery, Matt handed me my phone and said, “I think your principal’s on the phone.” So Mr. [Lee] Griebel just happened to call me right before I was going into surgery to see how I was doing. I was like, “I’m about to go into surgery.” And he was like, “Okay, well, good luck.”

So yeah, I got some metal rods put on my pelvis and was in the regular hospital for three days, and then I was in rehab for a week and a half so I could learn to function without dying. Well, not dying, but just breaking myself again. 

I was the youngest person on the rehab floor by 20 or 30 years, aside from one other woman who was in a freak car accident. Just being around all of those people who had had strokes or bad falls really made me appreciate my youth and how healthy I am. It also made me really grateful that neither Matt nor I have any brain damage. My body hurting really isn’t that big of a deal when you think about what could have happened if it had been some kind of cognitive damage.


One of my sillier hospital adventures is when I dropped my wallet, and everything fell out onto the floor. I chose to spend the next 30 minutes picking everything up with a grabber tool instead of calling for help because I didn’t have anything else to do. A lot of the hospital stay is just coming up with little “missions” to pass the time. Changing the water in a flower vase while in a wheelchair is wild.

Finally, after over two weeks in the hospital and rehab, I was able to come home, which is great. It’s been really interesting because Matt has to take care of me, but he’s also still healing. It’s just been finding that fine balance of, “I know you’re injured too. I know you hurt also, but I need things from you.” We were actually really lucky because I have health insurance and a job where I can teach from a wheelchair. He, on the other hand, had health insurance last year, but when various political things happened, and the marketplace rates went up, he had to drop his health insurance. So he doesn’t have health insurance, AND he does manual labor. If our positions were swapped, we’d be in a lot more trouble. There’s a little bit of guilt there; he feels really guilty that I’m so injured, whereas I feel really lucky that I’m in a position where I’m like, “This sucks, but it’s not the end of the world.” Also, this has just made me think a lot about how we live in a world where we don’t have guaranteed health insurance for everyone, and something like this can really ruin someone’s life. 

I’m also a little bit grumpy because I’ve been training for the women’s barbell classic at the end of the month, which is a deadlift and bench press competition in Des Moines. I did it last year for the first time, and I did okay, but I didn’t do as well as I thought I would, so I’ve spent the last year getting in shape. Obviously, I’m not doing it now, but all of the bench press I did has made it a lot easier for me to use my walker because my arms are really strong. But also to go from a super high level of exercise and training to being exhausted from getting up and going the 10 feet to the kitchen is a weird switch, and it’s hard to stay positive. Learning how to use a crutch when you have broken ribs, but you still need to go upstairs, is just super exciting. I know it’s probably gonna be fine, but all that work I did is out the window. For now. 

Another interesting thing to think about is the mathematical piece of it all. Part of my training was that I did a 5K walk or run every single day. That night was actually 5K #359, and I was going for a full 365 … which I will get those remaining six days. Don’t worry. But the fact that I only got hit once out of 359 5Ks, odds-wise, isn’t terrible. 

Additionally, this is the second time I’ve been hit. When I was in my early 20s, a car made a left turn into me while I was biking, and I went over their windshield. I call that one my “freebie” because I didn’t break anything; I just got bruised and had really, really gross road rash. But because I had already been hit before, it’s something that I’m just very aware of. I used up my freebie, so that’s why this time was worse. My family jokes that I need to not do one every decade because I’ve now had one in my 20s, one in my 30s, and I’m not allowed to have one in my 40s because they don’t think I’ll bounce back from that. 

My friends and family visiting, and the wide variety of who they are and how they visit, has just been really great. The cards from students have been really sweet and silly. There’s been some random emails where I’m like, “I know you’re supposed to be in class right now. I appreciate the email, but I’m pretty sure you’re just avoiding doing work.”
This has really reminded me of the normalness of life. 

I did about two hours of grading advisory work today, and I’ve been resting ever since, so, clearly, I have a ways to go until I’m ready to do even a half day at school, and I’m gonna have to rearrange my classroom to make sure it’s wheelchair accessible. I’m not able to drive, but Ms. [Lori] Rezek lives down the street from me, so the current plan is that I’ll carpool with her to work, and my mom will come out to Adel halfway through the day and give me a ride home. Or, maybe it’ll go amazing and I’ll stay the whole day. I’m still kind of figuring that one out, figuring it out one thing at a time. 

As for goals, I have a trip planned for Europe at the end of June, so I want to be very functional by then. My future checkups are already scheduled, and I have an X-ray in the second week of May. Six to eight weeks is how long it takes for soft tissue injuries to heal, and so at that point, I should be better. That’s when we’ll be able to see what, if any, long-term damage will be, but in my mind, I am going to be perfectly fine by the second week of May.