Thinking of Stephen King These Day & Nights

In Stephen King's book ON WRITING he shares along with lots of good stuff for writers the story of his being hit by a car or was it a van and his recovery. I should check but am in too much pain right now.

I was in a bad car accident when I was 21. I was sitting in a car in the passenger "death seat." Riding with a good driver  but we were hit by another car that was speeding toward us on a two lane highway just off the turnpike in Youngstown, Ohio. Passing through on our way from our Christmas in Chicago our hometown on our way back to New York City  and we didn't know that this stretch of road did not have a speed limit.  Thus the speeding car. Teens driving without insurance.

We were turning in front of them to reach a motel and their car was very far away. We just didn't know how fast they were going and that by the time we had turned broadside on the road about to enter the road to the motel their car hit us. My side of the car. Thank goodness it was a 4 door because their care drove halfway thru our car and bounced out 80 feet before stopping. They hit our car towards the back seat doors or I wouldn't be here writing this today.

When I came to, and back then there were seat belts that only reached across your lap,  it was like a centerfold from the New York Daily News.  My door was open, I was hanging by my seat belt out the door and the driver has made his way over to me although we both were bleeding internally. I remember feeling very cold and that I was dying.
A kind woman driver stopped and called a nearby hospital and also gathered up what was left of our Christmas presents.
I didn't feel any pain until the the ambulance came and they moved me. Then I knew. My back was in extreme pain. And back injuries were serious.

In a nut shell, the impact crushed one of my vertebrae and it took a year to recover. A long story not for now.
But after that I always thought nothing so terrible would happen to me again. I mean what are the odds? After a bout with cancer in 1996 I should have known better but optimistic me. Now I do know better. Something terrible can happen at any time and it scares the day lights out of me!

Because more recently, August 26, 2013. I experieinced what finally convinced me. And now makes me think of Stephen King a lot as I work on my books in pain with lack of adequate pain killers because of recent government Big Brother regulations.
This accident, far less dramatic, I simply? fell in my apartment and dislocated my right shoulder. Falling probably because of my weaker right ankle, the only holdover and relatively recent development from the earlier car accident. .

The pain from the dislocation blew any concept I ever had of pain completely out of the water. And I was home alone. And couldn't reach my phone. After realizing the ceiling was not going to open with golden clouds and a large helping hand, but that this situation was entirely in my court, I realized I would have to get to my front door to get help.

The position I was in after the fall and stayed in was left leg tucked under me, right leg straight out in front of me, my head on my knee - a position I never thought I could do! Inch by inch I moved to my front door about 15 feet away from where I fell. It took an hour.

Once I got there, luckily my arm was long enough to reach overhead and turn the locks and open the door a few inches.  Remember, my right leg was straight out in front of me so I had to turn around in my postage stamp size tenement foyer to reach up and yes! I reached the locks and opened the door and began calling for help. I know all my neighbors but no one was home at 9:30pm that night.

But thank God, it being a tenement, built about 1917, with open staircases, a neighbor on the floor below me was taking out the trash to the chute and heard me. I know him too and his family but if he hadn't been taking out the trash just then it would have taken God knows how long for me to get help. He called an ambulance that took me to the ER at the hospital nearest me.

Now 3.5 months after I am still in recovery. It seems the shoulder is one our most complex joints. I not only dislocated the shoulder but also shattered the top of my humorous, the long bone between the elbow and the shoulder.

Now Stephen King had and sorry but I'm not looking up the details now, just writing from memory of reading his book, seriously injured his pelvis. I remember reading that once he could get back to writing and that was a while he could only write for short periods of time - about a half hour bec of the pain while sitting.

I was much luckier. But after surgery and 5 days in hospital I spent 2 months living in a rehab.. My hand did not look like a hand. It looked like a grey balloon. Quite striking.  My forearm and upper arm swollen, the skin stretched tight and the muscles hard as wood. They had tensed at the time of injury and never relaxed on their own. But exercise helped with that.

Now I'm home, working my day job from home, and working each day on my books while in what the doctors call discomfort but we the injured call pain. It's hard but yes, getting better. Although my pharmacist tells me recovery will prob take all of six months. Therapists come four days a week to teach me exercises or torture me depending on your point of view.  But on my own with doctor's orders not to push, pull, or carry with my right arm it's a challenge.

Which is why, knowing that Stephen King was injured more seriously than I, he is my role model for getting to the computer and working each day regardless of how I feel.
                                                                                                                                                               Jacqueline  Stigman
                                                                                                                                                               12.16.13.
                                                                                                                                                                NYC