The Accident

  There are many events that happen in the course of ones life, some more significant than others.  The most significant thing that ever happened to me was my back being healed.  That totally changed my life and my outlook on the future.

  On December 26, 2014 I had an accident that caused a brain injury and did the same thing, and this post is about what led up to it and what has transpired since.

  To do it justice, I have to go back a little.  After moving to Idaho at the leading of the Father, I pledged to go where He wanted me to go and to do what He wanted me to do.  At His leading, I went to truck driving school and earned my commercial driver's license.  He had told me to go to North Dakota to work, so this is the reason I got the CDL.

  Through a miraculous coincidence I was hired sight unseen.  I was working on a car to drive out to North Dakota to find work when I received a wrong number phone call offering to hire me to drive a tanker truck in North Dakota.  The employer lives over 8 hours away from where I do and he just so happened to call the wrong number thinking I was someone else, hired me, then when he discovered his mistake he stuck with his decision.  I had not had contact with this person, nor did I know anyone that knew him.

  North Dakota was a very rough work environment and I worked there for 4 years.  There were a few wonderful people I met there, but many there were ruled by the most base of desires which created a constant conflict in my soul.  I can imagine how Lot felt living in Sodom and Gomorrah.

  I changed jobs a year after going there and the Lord had to teach me to wait on Him through that process as I made wrong decisions and He quickly corrected me before I was able to carry it out.  For the first 2.5 years I worked there, I worked for who He wanted me to work for.  After a health scare due to working too long of hours I jumped ship into a job He did NOT tell me to take.  It was total misery for the 5 months or so I worked there!  In my misery, I saw an attractive job at home, so once again I did not wait but jumped ship again without truly seeking and waiting.

  Though my employer in Idaho was good to work for, I found myself battling things I had previously not had a problem with.  I had faced similar things in North Dakota and they did not affect me at all, so why the battle now?  I finally realized that it was due to not listening for and obeying the Lord.  I prayed for about a month, wanting to know what the Lord wanted me to do now that I was in the pickle I was in.

  On December 26 I went and got a load of logs, took it to the mill, went back for a second load and was once again on the way to the mill.  As I was driving, I entered into intercessory pray, praying for the perfect will of the Father.  I told the Father I was not satisfied with being in His permissive will, I wanted to be in His perfect will.   After 30 minutes of touching heaven, I pulled into a service station  at about 3 pm to use the restroom.  When I got out of the truck and walked in, I slipped on the ice in front of the gas pumps and my feet shot straight into the air.  I came down on a concrete corner and was knocked out.

  I do not know how long I was unconscious, but around 30 minutes or a little less.  The first thing I really recalled was sitting inside the truck and not being able to see very well.  I tried to adjust my glasses and realized that they were bent, so I took out my gerber pliers and straightened them.  I felt like throwing up and I didn't know why.  I knew something had happened but I didn't know what.

  My head was killing me so I felt of my head and there was a sore spot about the size of a silver dollar on the top back of my head, but no bump and I couldn't recall hitting my head.  I looked around to see if perhaps if someone had hit me, but I didn't see any damage.  Next I wondered if I had a heart attack, so I felt of my arm and shoulder, but nothing there.  What had happened?  I knew that I had pulled in to go to the restroom, so I thought perhaps I would check with the attendant and see if I had gone inside.

  I walked carefully inside the store, and the store looked vaguely familiar as if perhaps I had been inside it long ago. (I had stopped at the store on several occasions recently.)  The attendant confirmed that yes I had come in and got a key from him for the restroom, but I had zero recollection of that.  I took the key again and went to the restroom.  I vaguely remembered the toilet, I thought that perhaps I had thrown up in it, but I wasn't sure.

  I went back out to the truck, my confusion and unsureness growing.  What had happened to me?  I got back in the truck, and by now I thought that perhaps I had fallen because my head was so sore, but I did not remember any details.  Another odd thing was that I had a load of logs on the truck that I needed to get to Kettle Falls, and I knew that, but I had no idea where the mill in  Kettle Falls was even though I had been there many times.  I thought then that perhaps I needed to go home, but I had no idea where home was either.  I called my wife, so she told me not to move the truck, call my employer.

  My employer's wife was in the area and came for me about 30 minutes later.  She took me to a emergent care place close by, but they couldn't take me since it was a head injury.  She then took me to Holy Family/Providence hospital emergency room where I had to wait 2 hours or so to see the doctor.  While I was waiting, my wife arrived with my daughters and son in law.

  What an agony the wait was, feeling so nauseated, throwing up, head hurting.  Finally I was taken back and sent for X rays and CT scan of my head, and since I still didn't know what happened a ECG to check out my heart.  The CT scan was horrible as they put a liquid through my IV and I was trying to hold still while throwing up.

  The doctor gave me an injection of something that stopped the vomiting, so that helped.  Finally around 11:30 pm I remembered slipping on the ice and hitting my head.  That brought a great relief as up to that point I didn't falling.  A few minutes later the doctor came in and I told him that I was sure I had not had a heart attack, that I remembered falling.  The doctor said yes, he had come to the conclusion that I had a concussion and the test results all confirmed nothing was wrong with my heart.  He also said there was no bleeding on the brain which was a relief.

  I was off work a day or two, then returned.  I was feeling really bad, so they just worked me in the shop doing mechanic work, and I drove a dump truck a few times but didn't get back in the log truck. I was afraid to get in a log truck as I didn't remember where any of the mills were, though I knew the names of all of them.  It was three more months before I remembered how to get to the mills.

  My head pounded terribly bouncing along in the dump truck, and I often got dizzy or faint when working in the shop.  I would come home from work and go straight to bed and sleep until time to go to work in the morning.  It was a struggle for survival as I slogged along.  One day as I drove the dump truck I received a phone call from workmans comp and they recommended I go to a regular doctor for an evaluation.

  As I had no regular doctor, I went to an emergency room.  After evaluating me, they referred me to a neurologist.  The doctor would not recommend for me to stop working, leaving that decision to the neurologist.  I slogged on until finally the day came for the neurologist appointment.

  The neurologist immediately took me off work and prescribed some medicine for the throwing up I was experiencing and to help with the headaches.  That began the long road to recovery.

  So what are the symptoms?  It manifest in several different way.  A pain that radiates like a wide belt on the left half of my head.  My left eye not being able to focus or wandering off.  Super sensitive where I hit my head (even 11 months after the accident).  Confusion, not being able to reason.  Severe sharp pains directly behind my left eye, or a throbbing headache through my temples. A burning in my head like its on fire.

  I have always been a go getter, always going and doing.  If I was sick, I "powered on through it".  With this injury, I've found that the harder I press and the more determined I am to do something in spite of the pain, the longer I will be in bed unable to do anything.  For many months I felt like I was becoming a bed hugger.  I'd get up and start on something, start feeling bad, go lay down.  Get back up for a bit, then go lay down again.  I called it "catching a headache".  If I immediately went and laid down when I felt the symptoms coming on, sometimes I would catch it in time and would get to feeling better.  If I pressed on, I felt like the proverb "The foolish proceed forth and are punished!".

  So how has the Lord used this?  I think that the Lord put me on the fast track to reforming my way of thinking and doing things by giving me a knock on the head.  I had long ingrained patterns of thinking that would not have been changed easily, but this injury facilitated that .  When I would engage in something He wanted to separate me from, I suffered extreme headaches which forced me to reevaluate the importance of what I was doing, or question what the Lord was wanting me to do in that particular situation.

  When I moved from Texas, He had told me to leave the churches but I had never had a point in my life where I did not go to church.  For a time I obeyed, but after a while my longing to be in fellowship with other believers led me back to a church building.  Since I would not listen to Him softly telling me to separate myself, now I had to suffer extreme headaches from going to church.  Every Sunday that rolled around, I questioned if it would be worth the three days of really bad headaches and possibly throwing up I was going to suffer if I went.  But of course I should go to church, shouldn't I?  Or should I?  I finally realized I was going directly against what the Father had instructed me, so I separated myself and immediately I had a day or two less headaches a week.  I may be hard headed, but I don't like headaches!

  I also have had to separate myself from the company of some people and other social events.  That has been really hard to do as I enjoy interacting with people.  I've learned ways to get around some of the issues with my head, such as wearing ear plugs to cut down on the sensory input, or finding a quiet place for a bit and closing my eyes.

  As of this writing it has been almost a year since the accident and I'm still off work.  I'm doing much better now.  I keep a diary of my progress every day and can see steady improvement.  Sometimes now I will go for over a week without having to stay in bed with a headache.  My reasoning is still affected at times, but it seems to be for much shorter periods of time now.  Rather than days and weeks on end of not being able to reason, it will be hours or a day.

  On my good days I am able to work around the house, and even on bad days I will do a little something small just to get out of the bed.  I think having to stay in bed is the worst sentence I could serve!