Chelsea Anne Brinkerhoff: November 2009

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My whole story about my car accident. Not for the faint of heart.

YES, IT IS TRUE! I did total my Mommy's car. I was being stupid and did not come straight home like I told my Mother that I was going to do. OK... here is the whole story like I remember it.

Mom came into work driving her cute little blue Maserati convertible , I agreed that if I took it I would come straight home after I went to a quick concert at the Art Museum. But, I thought that it would be fun to pick up one of my bestfriends in the world, Nate. He came running out when he saw the car, barefoot and jumped in. I could not get the seat belt to work for some reason so I joked with Nathan, because his Dad is a policeman, I told him not to tell, just to be funny.

We were just cruising around having fun. We decided to go on a long road that does not have alot of traffic on it. We drove down to the end once to check for police, then raced back. We didn't have any problems at all. Nothing happened to worry us. Nate was so excited and was jumping up and down saying "again, again!" I thought that it sounded fun so I turned around and went again. There was a stop sign in the middle of the stretch of road. From the other direction that we went before we could clearly see the road so we weren't worried about it.

I was going about 65 but slowed down to about 55 and we both looked to see if the road was clear or not. It was, so I punched it again. It was not more then 15 feet later that the road had a slight bump in it. I hit it just right. The car lifted up in a weird way. It scared me so I started to hit the brakes. I don't know how it happened, but the car swerved and hit the curb on the right side. I started to scream and told Nate that I was losing control. I was completely slamming on the brakes by now. The accident was not in slow motion like I heard that it should be. Everything happened so fast. I just held on to the steering wheel and braced my self. I closed my eyes and screamed.

I did not know that we had rolled until I was under the car. I just thought that I was flying out because we hit another bump or something. I could feel my self lifting off the seat because I was not wearing my seat belt. I felt arms come around my waist and interlock fingers and pull me back into the seat. All of the sudden, I was under the car. There was blood on the seat that was above me. M y first thoughts were, "Mom is going to kill me when she finds out. Then I realized that Nate was not in the car anymore. I started to really lose it. I really truely believed that I killed Nathan. I started to cry out loud and screamed for him. To my relief, I heard his voice. I tried to climb out but I could not move for some reason. I looked down to figure out why I could not move. That was when I realized that I was pinned under the car. I could not feel the lower half of my body starting at my hips. I could not keep myself from freaking out. I screamed for Nate to save me. He crawled back into the car with me, and held me. He said a prayer while I kept crying. I could not stop myself. After the prayer Nate started to move the dirt around my leg trying to see if he could dig it out. He could not, so I kept telling him to lift it off of me. I really thought he could do it. This is about the time that I started to go into shock. I felt so helpless.

I guess after 10 minutes of trying Nate decided that the best thing to do was to go and try to find help. We both could not find our cell phones so he told me that we was going to go find help. I really did not want him to leave me alone under the car, I kept yelling at him not to leave me, but he told me that it was the best thing to do, and he left. I was laying there. I have never felt so alone in my life. To make things worse, as I was lying there in the dirt, I heard my phone ring. It was Mom's ring tone, she is the only one that had it. I kept trying to find it but couldn't. I knew that she was wondering where I was. After what felt like a long time, Nate came back with another man. I heard Nathan talking on the phone with 911 and telling them where we were.

We started to hear the police sirens but it seemed to take them forever. I could only think about the pressure that was pushing on my bone. It felt like my bone was going to snap. My leg was stuck in two places because it was bent. In part of my leg, the circulation was completely cut off and was starting to turn purple. I thought that I was going to lose my leg. The police were stuck in traffic so they took about 10 minutes, so I have new been under the car for 20 minutes.
A man told Nate to go sit on the curb. That was the last thing that I wanted at the time. He started to ask me a lot of questions. He kept asking my name, who was the president, what happened, and what hurt on my body. I guess he was a fireman or something. I kept asking him to get the car off of my leg because it was cutting off the circulation to my leg. He told me that we had to wait for more people to come to help. That made me kind of mad. I had a car on my leg and he was telling me to wait.... yeah that sounds easy to do. We can hear the sirens again, and there were a lot of them. The fireman just keep telling me that they were coming. "Hang in there Chelsea, your doing great. They are almost here, everything is going to be ok. Chelsea, please try to stop screaming, they're on their way, they will be here any minute. Don't worry about Nate, he is just sitting down on the curb. No, you did not kill him he is fine." Finally, they came.

Two ambulances, and maybe two fire trucks and lot of policeman. That is a total guess because I could not see out of the car, but I heard them pull up. The guy that was there first had been holding my head still this whole time, started to yell orders to people. Thank goodness. They decided where to put the air bag to lift the car off of me. They took what seems forever. I kept trying to lean on my elbow to look for Nate, and I kept trying to pull the car off my leg. That really hurt my chest and my shoulder, so I started to cry. The men from the ambulance rushed over and started to ask me questions about what hurts and put my neck in one of those braces.

The fire man said " Chelsea, your going to start feeling the pressure come off. You have to tell us when you feel it lift off, ok? " That was one of the best feelings that I have ever felt. The pressure was gone off of my leg. Then, one of the worst feelings I have ever had, was when the blood came rushing back in. Ouch, that hurt! But they could not get me out, they did not want me to move too much. They got the "Jaws of Life" and started to cut right by my head. It was a very loud, scary noise. I could feel when they cut it completely through. Everyone started to clap. I just wanted out. The man from the ambulance started to pull me out by the shoulders but I started to scream because my chest and shoulder hurt so bad and pulling on them did not help! They slipped a board of some sort under me and started to pull me out.

After about 45 minutes of being pinned I was out! They strapped me to the board and lifted me to the ambulance. I kept yelling for Nathan, and they let him come in with me. They asked me what my Mom's phone number was and then shut the doors. The people in the ambulance kept asking me what hurts and I said "Well, when my mom gets to me.... everything!" But i eventually told them. They were about to put an I V in my arm, but I started to get mad. don't you DARE , I kept threatening them. Nate kept telling me that they needed to. He came over and held my hand while they did it. He kept my mind on Jimmy and his lamb Boogie. Soon it was all over and they hooked me up to the fluid. They started cutting of my pants and one of my favorite shirts. I kept telling Nate to close his eyes and we started to laugh because it was so awkward. But don't worry they kept covering me with blankets. I started to get dizzy and I kept coming in and out of consciousness. I could not get a grip on what was happening to me, something was not right. Nate told me later that I would be crying and then I would go quiet and very still, the nurses in the ambulance would wake me up, I would start to cry and shake, then all the sudden I would go quiet.

We got to the hospital; they took Nathan away. I was surrounded by a ton of strangers. They were all pulling at me talking to each other. I was crying to myself. I did not like this place. I want to be home watching T.V. or playing with Jimmy. I wanted my Mommy and Papa. About 10 minutes later there was a face in the room that looked somewhat familiar to me. I took a couple double glances at him. I kept looking at this man, not knowing how I knew him, he looked so familiar it was erie, then it clicked. The tears sprang because I was so embarrassed about what I did to the car, I did not know how he would react to me. Would he still love me? I was terrified. "Daddy I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry dad." He looked me in the eyes and said "I don't care about the car, I just care about you." and I knew that he meant it. Mom and Megan came, I cried then too because I knew that I let her down. I did not listen to her, I did not come straight home.

After a while I started to be myself, and joked with all the nurses, that made it easier for me. They put me in a cat scan... alone. The only noise that I could heard was the machine telling me to " breath in... hold... breath out". I wanted to talk to people, but they all left me, I cried. The nurse came and got me and put me back in the room. Nathan's mom came in he room, all I could say was "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, is Nate ok? I'm so sorry." I'm glad that she could hear me through the sobbing. She just reached down and held my hand and told me everything was going to be O.K.

The doctors found that I had a hairline fracture in my all ready bad ankle, and a crack in my sternum. BUT I'M ALIVE.

There is no doubt in my head that I was saved. I later thanked Nate for holding me in the car, but he said that he only grabbed my shirt. Someone held me in that car and it was not Nate. I'm glad that angels can fly fast, and that I was with a boy that had enough faith that the first thing we did was pray. I'm still here and no one was sure why. When the doctor in the emergency room found out that the car rolled 4 times he said" good thing she was wearing her seat belt, or there is no way that she would be alive." I looked at him and said "I wasn't." He just shook his head in disbelief.

Everything bad that could have happened, didn't. Right before we rolled, we missed a light pole by 5 feet. Nathan wouldn't have lived through that because it was on his side. The whole fact that we ended up on the soft dirt...I don't want to think about what would have happened if we had landed on the pavement. Nathan has some cuts and a bruised shoulder, that is all! I did not get ejected out of the car, that in itself is a miracle. The drivers seat was broken in half, so it was better that I was not wearing my seat belt. I landed in the only safe part of the car. It just doesn't make sense. I guess you can just call me "9 lives" or " lucky". God must have very big plans for Nathan and I. He must have saved us for something really important. Logically, we should not have been able to live through an accident of this magnitude, especially with the few injury's that we both had. I'm so glad that God intervened in my life, and sent someone to hold me in the car while it was rolling. I will forever be grateful for that. I hope that I never let him down. I'm going to make this 2nd chance really count for something.

Thank you for your support. I know that you have been praying for me, that is all a part of the miracle. I love you all, and it is people like you, that keep me living. I'm healing faster than I could have ever imagined! Thank you again.