I've been meaning to write about this whole incident where I got hit by a car, but life got in the way. So this is a little delayed, but I wanted to get it down for posterity.
On the 31st, I was studying at Z'otz. I left around 11:30 and began biking home down Carrollton. I was in the bike lane, approaching Spruce St., when I registered the car.
I don't quite remember exactly how this happened but I remember seeing the car in my periphery, realizing they were turning right. Braking as hard as I could and thinking "I am going to get hit" while simultaneously thinking "it's okay, it's okay." I remember the back end of the car slamming into my front tire and I vaguely remember thinking I would just fall over, even as I went soaring over the handlebars.
My face and shoulder hit the street first and there was this feeling of sick dizziness as I realized I was conscious but that something was very wrong. I looked up and saw the car driving off. Then I spat out a chunk of my front tooth. Two guys that had seen the whole thing ran over and one of them picked me up off the ground. He kept asking me if I was okay while running around frantically...propping my bike up on its kickstand, retrieving my shoe that had flown off in the road and putting it back on my foot, yelling about how those people drove off and they must have been drunk. His friend stood by quietly and asked if he should call 911.
At this point, my brain kicked into what I refer to as "crisis reason mode," wherein I start thinking in this very detached, "logical" way. I realized I probably wasn't concussed and nothing felt broken (except my tooth). I told them not to call the police because it wasn't going to do any good without a license plate number. I kept repeating, "My tooth. My tooth broke. It's really fucked up." The frantic guy made me show him and then assured me I looked "beautiful" and "gorgeous." They told me their names and I nodded and said I was just going to walk home, that it was only 2 blocks. I never cried, which I remember thinking was strange. I felt like the whole thing had happened to someone else. I called my mom a few times but no one answered. Then Blair called and I told him what had happened. He wanted to drive out to New Orleans but I told him I was fine. I talked to Erin online a bit, then started to undress.
I'd almost worn a sundress that day but the air had chilled a bit, so I wore jeans and a long sleeve shirt instead. Even with that, I had skinned my knee, shoulder and foot pretty badly, as well as road rash on my forearms. My face had begun to swell up. While I looked at all this, I began shaking and slowly realized I was probably in shock. Blair called back around this time and I calmly told him I thought I was in shock. At that point, he insisted on coming to New Orleans and I stopped arguing with him, because I was starting to feel really fucked up.
I took a shower and called the police, finally, only to be told what I already knew: that nothing could be done, that the cameras on Carrollton were disabled, that without a license plate number there was no hope. The cop was nice about it. Blair showed up and and hugged me before taking me to Walgreens to get soup and Orajel and some sort of protective cap to cover the exposed nerve in my front tooth. As we walked in, I started laughing and turned to him. "You know, people are going to think you beat the shit out of me." I was right; the cashier looked so angry when Blair was checking out that he could only glare at his register between sneaking horrified glances at me.
Back at home, I mustered a few sips of broth before giving up because of my tooth. Blair and stood in my bathroom while he tried to make the gum to cover my tooth malleable enough to apply. We thought we got it at some point, but when I put it on, it just fell off. Our laughing at how ridiculous it looked probably didn't help. I gave up, took some Ibprofun and squirted a ton of Orajel in my mouth before finally going to bed around 4am.
We got up around 8:30 so I could start trying to find a dentist to fix my tooth. I called my mom and told her what happened. Telling your mother "I got hit by a car" is a pretty difficult thing to do, especially when your mom is as emotional as mine is. I finally convinced her I was okay, no I wasn't wearing a helmet, stop YELLING, I KNOW. Once she calmed down, she called her endodontist and got me an appointment that morning for a root canal and a build up to cover the tooth. The next day, she bought me a helmet. She would have gotten me a full body flashing protective suit if she could have.
Overall, damages were a broken front tooth, facial abrasions, skinned knee, shoulder, foot, and arms, bruised cheekbone, ribs and kneecap (which is still bothering me :/). I'm very lucky, because it could have easily been a head injury. I'm pretty grateful for the kindness of those dudes who helped me, for all the concerned messages, texts and calls I got, for Blair being amazing enough to take off of work to come play nursemaid to my stubborn self and, mostly, that I'm still alive and okay.
About an hour post-accident. Pre-swelling and before the abrasions really started to show up.
Friday, after temp. tooth placement and swelling setting in. Kind of hard to tell here but the abrasions looked quite a bit nastier in person (though have since healed completely!) and the act of "smiling" here and trying to open my left eye all the way were pretty godawful. This was in my mom's car, on the way to get a helmet :)
