The Half-Year Anniversary of My Near-Death

Just six months after my barely-not-fatal car crash and I’m still nowhere near 100% healed. Even though I had an alright day today, remembering how much progress there’s still left to go on my injuries set me back to the sour mood I woke up in.

It’s hard not to wake up sour when a sharp pain in your chest bolts you up and out of bed at 5am, though. Not a new pain by any means, but one nearly as tender. It’s above my tit, to my right of the sternum–part of the zone that got especially slammed into the seatbelt. That seatbelt helped save my life as much as it bruised me so I feel like I can’t complain too much. I am lucky, all things considered. But I’m also sick of not being able to lay on my side without paying for it in the morning.

And don’t get me started on the rest of it. The injury suit, the endless appointments. And I have to be my own case manager! Technically the attorney has one assigned to me but I’m always the one making calls and shit. For example, I have to call someone tomorrow to get someone else to set up an appointment where a third someone probably gets a fourth someone to do some medical thing to me because the third is a doctor and doctors never do anything. The medical thing probably has me stuck in another cramped tube and it lasts for 30 to 60 minutes and it leads to absolutely nothing. I want it to be over already. I want to throw a big fit about it even though I know there’s nothing to do but continue on until it’s all over. I should be allowed to yell at the guy who did this to me on the phone every day until I got it all out of my system. I hope he had a worse Christmas than I did…

I turn 29 in a couple of weeks and, even though I knew it’d be a long shot, I was kind of hoping I’d be more back to normal by then. I think one of the nice people in the ER said it was likely I’d be better in 6 months, maybe that’s where I go the idea. Maybe it was just blind optimism. Either way… I’ll give you an update at the 1 year anniversary, I guess. Hopefully some stuff changes for the better between now and then.

I’m hoping to at least be a few percentage points better by March (by what metrics are the points measuring? I dunno… health points) because that’s when I plan on going out east for my friend’s wedding! Man, I am so pumped for that. My girlfriend said she’d even help me go by train as a fun travel treat. It’s hard to be sour when I remember how much I have to look forward to, actually…

Ouughh… here it comes… my inherent sweetie pie nature, re-emerging—uuurrrgRARRARGHHHG [my shirt violently rips apart to reveal an identical copy of the shirt underneath]

Nicky Flowers - 01/05/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)