The title of this article speaks for itself. I was involved in a car accident when I was 18 weeks pregnant. It wasn’t a serious car accident, but it was a car accident nonetheless. What was so sad to me as that it was an avoidable, minor, the three car collision that happened right in front of my house. Under normal circumstances, the event itself wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But I’m pregnant. I’m experiencing a high risk pregnancy following an IVF procedure, which makes my condition even more high risk. And not only that, but I survived a serious car accident almost 7 years ago that still affects me to this day. The big fat reality of mine is that that fateful car accident will affect me for the rest of my life.
I was extremely shaken up by the aftermath. I started crying and mumbled, ‘I can lose the baby,’ to my husband. It was a red light when the whole ordeal happened on our busy street, so my husband got out of the car to talk to the people in the other two cars that were involved in the collision. In one car, he saw an elderly man who was driving alone. In the other car, he saw a woman driving who had her mother in the passenger seat and her children in the back. My husband was firm, but calm with all who were involved. He especially thought the woman would be understanding as she was a mother herself. He told her he had his pregnant wife in the car, and that she (me in that case) was shaken up. He assumed they would all talk things through right at the intersection. But as soon as the light turned green, the other two cars disappeared.
I completely expected the elderly man to do such an ignorant and selfish deed. But the other driver, who was a mother and had her own mother in the car, was a different story. I was disappointed in her selfishness. I almost wanted to get out of my car and tell her that, and I regret that I didn’t. I was too busy trying to keep myself calm so that I wouldn’t have a seizure. But you know what? Karma’s a real b*tch. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, her actions will get the best and worst of her. My nerves and my body got the best of me, and I did end up seizing. My husband called 9-1-1 and told the operator what she needed to know about the situation. She asked further questions like whether I was bleeding or had vaginal discharge. I was honest about my answers and responded with a ‘No’ to all. The operator then told my husband that the help was on their way.
We were expecting the ambulance to come. Instead, firefighters and the police showed up. The firefighters were there to take medical care of me while waiting for the ambulance to show up, and the police was there to get more information on the collision. We ended up waiting for more than an hour, and the ambulance still didn’t show up. The firefighters couldn’t do much in that time besides take my blood pressure several times throughout the hour. An ambulance operator called my husband to check up on me and my status after more than an hour of waiting. He said that there’s still a waiting period, and the time it’d take for them to get to me was still unknown. It was still unknown when the ambulance would show up. I wasn’t a priority to them, so the firefighters told my husband to drive me to the hospital himself.
The visit to the hospital was dwelling and nerve-wrecking. Anxiety was rushing through my veins. All I wanted was make sure my baby was okay. My husband reassured me that the baby, in fact, was okay. But I needed to see it for myself in order to sleep at night. Following some agonizing few hours of waiting, it was finally confirmed by the doctor that my husband was right all along – the baby was okay. And so, I was happy to be going home at 3 o’clock in the morning.
A few days after the car accident, I was talking to a friend of mine and I told her about my very eventful night. She has friends who work in the medical industry, specifically in the 9-1-1 and the ambulance area part of things. She told me that because of the gas prices, the amount of ambulance vehicles available at a time is reduced to the point where there’s a shortage. I feel extremely lucky and privileged that my health crisis wasn’t as severe as it could’ve been. But it sure makes me wonder, ‘What if it was more serious than that?
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