Mexico Medical Student |

At least this time, I have a good excuse for not having posted recently.

I was on my way to school last week when this white VW Bug came out of nowhere right into my lane. There are trees all along the median, long overdue for some branch trimming–anybody who lives in this neighborhood knows this and proceeds slowly before turning. This car, obviously didn’t even think twice about entering oncoming traffic without any clue as to whether or not there was anybody there. By the time I saw the car in front of me, I didn’t have more than 1 seccond to brake. The short time gained by my inadequate braking allowed for that movie-like slowdown of time where you know the crash is coming but are powerless to stop it, a ruthless hostage to momentum and other physical laws.

Bracing for impact, the inevitable happened–my neck snapped forward, my right knee hit the instrument panel and somehow, though I don’t remember it at the time, my right arm also hit something or other. A quick partial second later, I realized that although my foot was still pressing on the brake with <500 lbs of force, my truck was still being propelled like a billiard ball 45-degrees to the right to a rapidly-approaching telephone pole at about a 45-degree angle. I hit the pole and suffered a whole set of whiplash events all over again, albeit not so violently this time. Enkaphalins already surging through my body, the truth is that I didn’t even feel the impact. It all happened in this odd 3rd person perspective, which as I mentioned, was completely outside my control. I was both driver and involuntary passenger.

Everything that happened afterwards was a blur. All I know is that people spilled out from their houses, probably just getting ready to go to work themselves, surveying the scene and making the calls necessary. One person living nearby was an oncologist, and he asked me all the appropriate “status” questions about moving digits, paraesthesias, head trauma, etc. and told me not to move until the ambulance got there. He actually apologized he couldn’t do more (which I was actually thankful for!) but honestly there was nothing to do–I wasn’t bleeding, in respiratory distress, or in any other emergent situation, just hurting really badly. As the shock and disorientation slowly wore off, I was also getting more and more pissed that this happened to me.

We live 4 blocks away from the scene, so I called Claudia as soon as I was able, and she arrived with our baby daughter, freaking out. Not exactly what I needed at the moment, but being torn about what to do with the little one while a spouse is in this condition in a foreign country–well, the reaction was more than understandable. As foreigners here, we always hear about the horror stories that other Americans (through 2nd-hand accounts mind you) have had to go through, from bribing everyone in sight to outright being thrown in jail for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I certainly didn’t know what was going to happen next from a standpoint of Mexican law. Thankfully, Claudia quickly snapped to, started handling some details, and eventually corralled her ‘posse’ with her–our viciously protective (especially of her) barracuda neighbor wives–to watch her back (and by proxy, mine) because this was about to get ugly.

To be continued…