Dressage Life |
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My Accident
In the blink of an eye your world can change. How you deal with the results can and will effect how you live and how people perceive it. On October 27th, 2003, I had a car accident with the 1994 Ford F250 that had a huge bush bar on the front. I was heading up to the barn to ride my horse when a car rolled out of driveway onto the road directly in front on me. At first I thought it was a car backing out of the driveway until I was close enough to realize that there was no one inside. I was traveling at about 50km so there was not enough time for me to stop and avoid hitting the car. The car was coming from my left so I swerved to the right towards the ditch to avoid hitting the car on the road and possibly involving others on the road. I hit the driver's side of the Toyota Corolla just behind the rear wheel. As I hit the car the rear window of it shattered and flew up over my truck with a lot of the glass ending up in the bed of my truck. I had hit the car so hard that it spun around and I hit it again on the front passenger side. I got my truck stopped and slowly got out. I looked at the front of my truck and the driver's side fender, the hood and the grille with the headlight was smashed. I turned to go and look at the car when I seen Steve, who kept his horse at the same barn where I kept mine. He had seen the whole thing and stayed with me until the police came. When I looked at the car and thought holly crap I squished it. The car was a right off. The entire trunk area was flattened and the front passenger side was smashed in. After almost 10 minutes the person who had the car finally came out. A teenager who had forgotten to put the parking brake on. The car was a 5 speed and parked on a hill. He didn't seem overly concerned that the car was a right off, but wanted to know how he was going to get out west. I had hit my arm on the door upon impact with the car, but at the time I didn't think I had really hurt it that bad. 3 days later my arm especially in the elbow hurt so much and I could barely move my arm. I went to my family doctor and was told I had what was called tennis elbow. I thought OK that's not too bad it will get better. Fast forward to almost a year and a half since the car accident and my arm is no better. I had multiple physiotherapy treatments, acupuncture and specialists that had done nothing to improve my arm. My family doctor referred me to a physiatrist. Physiatrists are specialists in the diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal injuries and pain syndromes. At first this doctor thought the same thing that I had tennis elbow, but I insisted that he should look outside the box. An MRI was done of my neck and a Syrinx was found between C6 and C7. A Syrinx is a fluid like cyst that sits in the middle of the spinal cord and is also called Syingomyelia. I was then referred to the neurosurgeons at Toronto Western Hospital. I was told by them that surgery is not recommended because of the high risk of infection with a shunt and the symptoms rarely get better. So basically there is nothing that can be done and the symptoms can stay in remission or increase. I had an answer. This is something I have to live with everyday for the rest of my life. Links about Syingomyelia http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/syringomyelia/syringomyelia.htm
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