I am currently working on a project in creative writing. The source of this project is that I was badly injured in a traffic accident. The accident has had an impact on my life both physically and spiritually. I have been considering the significance of knowing the background story in order for the reader to grasp the poetry. I have yet to come up with an answer. I’ve been contemplating whether or not I want to share my experience. At first, I didn’t want to. My state has been like that of a wounded animal withdrawing. It’s been challenging for me to talk about the trauma not knowing the outcome. If I didn’t believe that things would eventually work out, I probably wouldn’t have posted this text. Only my closest family has been through the entire journey to rehabilitation. Making others understand what I have been through has been a challenge. My mother consoled me by sharing her experience and explaining that in order to comprehend what someone is going trough, one needs to have experienced something similar. I thought about that a lot. I think she is right. My former self, prior to my trauma, would not comprehend. I see this text as an attempt at something. Of what I am not entirely sure.
In late August I had an accident with my moped. In a split of a second, my life came to change very drastically. A cyclist made a sharp turn into my lane. In order not to run into her or anyone else on a crowded street, I skidded in a circle and landed on my left knee. I´d never felt such acute pain. I was laying on the street and I just couldn´t stop screaming. The leg almost looked normal, but the knee and leg had lost all stability, and it kind of felt like it had the texture of spaghetti. I have always classified fractures as banal injuries. Just put on some plaster and six weeks later, life is back to normal. So when I was informed in the emergency room that I had a very ”serious and nasty” facture and that the rehabilitation will be very ”long and horrible”, I took the information quite chill. I took it so easy that the doctor wondered if I hit my head too. When I replied ”no”, he asked to inspect my helmet for cracks. Seven months later I am still in recovery, and it has been a complete horror show.
X-RAY № 02
The tibia below the knee was crushed and all the ligaments detached from their brackets. The severe swelling of the leg resulted in numerous complications. Instead of undergoing one surgery, I have had to endure three. During my initial surgery I contracted a skeleton infection caused by Staphylococci. I was hospitalized for nineteen days.
I remember waking up from my first surgery and hearing my surgeon say that I resembled Robocop after he performed an external fix on my leg. He had drilled four holes in my skeleton and attached two metal pins that held my leg in place. Since I was too swollen to have surgery straight away, the purpose of the external fix was to ensure that the bone didn’t grow back together incorrectly. The external fix resembled a sickly medical experiment, leading me to think of Dr. Mengele rather than Robocop.
Another thing that comes to mind is the foot pump that mechanically squeezed my foot. Every other second, for many days. The purpose of the foot pump was to bring down the swelling so that I could have surgery. In the event that the swelling remained, they would be reluctant to perform an incision as it is uncertain if they would be able to sew me back together. Due to the injury being so complex, I was moved to another hospital to have the procedure done by the country’s top orthopedic surgeons. I recall my new surgeon gazing at me as if she had finally found something that was challenging. She made me feel both safe and scared at the same time.
The second surgery left me feeling worse. Three plates and fifteen screws were inserted into my shin bone. All the ligaments that had come loose from my knee were attached to the metal. The surgery involved making two seventeen-centimeter incisions on each side of my knee. The leg is still recovering from the extensive intervention in its skin, muscles, and nerves. My brain lost connection with the muscles in my thigh and knee. I basically had to learn to walk again.
X-RAY № 03 and X-RAY № 01
I could neither bend nor lift my swollen leg. The worst part was that it required two nurses to transport me to the bathroom. One nurse had to carry my leg in a sling made from one of the hospital sheets while the other nurse rolled me in a wheelchair. Later on, I shared that story with one of my doctors. He stated that it was the most terrible thing he had ever heard. I assumed it was a regular thing. When I was about to stand up for the first time in rehab, it felt as if my leg was going to explode from within, just from the blood flowing through the vessels in my leg. I became completely dizzy and it was as if the sound became dull and distant. I heard the physiotherapist clapping in the background, as if I had achieved something significant just by standing up. It was like in the movies. I almost fainted during the sitting-down workout, and I was by far the youngest person in the room. The next day, I received encouraging feedback from an elderly lady that I was brave to return to rehab. It has been a humbling experience to say the least.
I also spent a lot of my time wondering what my future would look like and if I would ever walk again. For a long time afterwards, I had difficulty watching people on TV using their legs. I also had nightmares about people running. During my hospital stay, the Paralympics were being broadcasted on TV. I remember watching a feature about a young girl who had won a gold medal in swimming only a year after her foot was eaten by a shark. Following her near-death experience, she desired to live life to the fullest. As soon as I saw that feature, I knew that this story would never leave me. For several reasons. Throughout my rehabilitation, she has been a prominent figure in my thoughts. For me, it wasn’t the right moment to observe gymnastics. Since watching TV didn’t relax me, I turned to writing as my therapy. During my hospital stay, I wrote nineteen pages of creative freewriting. Freewriting is a writing technique where you don’t limit yourself and write whatever comes to mind without any constraints. Once I got home, I wrote twice as much. The material is large and nuanced. Most of it is written under the influence of pain and heavy medication. There are sections that are insightful or entertaining, while others are pure nonsense. I started to review the material, but I felt that it was too close to my trauma for me to start processing it. While in hospital, I wrote three poems that I think I like.
EVIDENCE
Steeling the act,
of repressing emotions
One damp pillow,
collected into evidence
ONE TO TEN
Pain and suffering
quantified,
in a scale from one to ten
Where one,
reflects almost no pain
And ten,
translate into the worst possible pain
MEMORIES OF DEAD TREES
Mourning the absence of color
of a fading photograph
Erasing the unspoken,
the unseen,
and recording what has been forgotten
Memories of dead trees,
and being at two places at once
The rehabilitation didn’t end with my hospital stay. My odd little adventure continued when I got home and for various reasons I have been more or less isolated in my apartment for just over six months. An involuntary social and existential experiment which I will return to in POETRY POST № 02.
To be continued.