Too Much Speed and No Helmet

At the age of seventeen, on May 7th, 2008, I was so close to death that I could have kissed it. The reason was too much speed, no helmet, forgetting to break, and panic. 

I walked right by the helmet, not even pausing to think about it- and why would I? Nothing had ever happened to me before. I got on the red three-wheeler (which I, lovingly- to this day-, call Big Red), just as I did everyday, and peeled out of the driveway. Up the road I went, turning around in the same place as usual. 

Back down to my house I went- first gear…second…third…fourth…fifth…. I was in fifth when I saw the mail truck and panicked…so they say. 

I veered off of the road to the right and went over a small bank- had I not had the experienced that I had, I would have rolled it then and saved myself a lot of agony. I managed to hit a post- I was going between 45 mph and 55mph- and got flung from the three-wheeler, leaving my shoes behind, and hit a pine tree. It did not end there though- Big Red hit me. 

The lady who owned the tree found me- how soon I don’t know. She had to call for an ambulance three times before they came. When they finally arrived, I only knew my phone number- no name, no address…nothing. The funny thing about that is the fact that that was the first time that I could remember my phone number and we had been living in the house for a little over three monthes.  

They transported me to a field where they life-flighted (which I find very ironic since, six days prior, I had said, “One of these days, I’m going to fly in one of those (a med-flight helicopter).”) me to the local hospital and then, from there, to OSU Medical Center. Since no one knew my name, I was labeled as Trauma 28 and they performed emergency brain surgery.

The sad thing is that I don’t really remember the accident…not really. What I know is what I’ve been told. The only thing that I remember is right before I hit the tree, I remember thinking, ‘Oh, shit!’ and the pain of the impact. And I remembered that seven or eight monthes after the accident.  

I was diagnosed with two broken ribs, three broken vertebrae, multiple facial fractures and breaks, and Tramatic Brain Injury (TBI). They kept me in ICU for a few days and then put me in the executive suite- since I was a minor.


Things were very distorted. I can’t place exactly when things happened. It seems like only a minute…it seems like a lifetime.

The first thing that I remember from OSU (I think) is thinking- or saying, I’m not sure-, “This isn’t real. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me!” That wasn’t a lie. Bad things didn’t happen to me. Of course, if I actually said it, it would have sounded a lot different. 

Two of my friends from school came to see me at one point. One of them didn’t say anything, but Mindy (my best friend at the time) was strong- even though she wanted to cry. She didn’t cry in front of me, even after I pulled on the neckbrace and said softly, “It hu’ts, Minnie, it hu’ts.”

I talked like a child and I couldn’t say my “r”s correctly. There are three things that I actually remember about the visit:
1. They were both holding my hands
2. Bending my arm with the IV in it and it beeping. I apologized, “Oops, so’y.”
3. Telling Mindy, “You gotta call Alex. You gotta call Alex an’ tell him I okay!”

At one point, I tried to jump out of bed- though I couldn’t walk- because I was late for school. Another time I woke up and demanded paper and pencil so I could do a math equation. I began reciting the periodic table of elements one morning. 

I also remember telling anyone who would listen that I wasn’t skipping school, that I was in the hospital. On the day of my accident, my Chemistry teacher, Mr. Dixon, had given us a speech about how it was irresponsible and wrong for kids to be skipping school at the end of a school year. I guess it stuck with me because I was worried that he would think that I was skipping school (which I kind of laugh at it now because, of course, he knew that I was in the hospital). I wrote a letter to him and gave it to Mindy to give to him telling him that I wasn’t skipping school that I had had an accident. He was, really, the first person to make me feel welcome at Philo, so I didn’t want to disappoint him. His chemistry class was actually the reason that I ended up loving chemistry so much- I had hated it in Newark.     

In ICU and in my room, I remember singing (out loud or in my head, I’m not sure) Sweeny Todd: “There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit and it’s filled people who are filled with shit an the vermin of the world inhabit it…but not for long! They all deserve to die…!” heck, I was even singing it in Children’s…especially when I watched it one afternoon! Now that I think about it, it was probably REALLY inappropriate to be singing that song in a hospital- what with people do actually die in them, and evrything. 

Near the end of my stay at OSU, they gave me a walker and they walked me down the hall. It seemed like forever, but it took minutes…I was so tired of being on my feet in minutes. They put me in front of a window and had me look out. I don’t even remember what I was looking at, I just remember being really sad.  

I was then transferred to Nationwide Children’s Hospital for Rehab. I had physical, speech, occupational, and recreation threapist…and massage ( my favorite was massage).  

When first got to Children’s, I cried for the first time (that I can remember) since before the accident. I thought that I would never be able to leave the hospital, or, if I could, I would be unable to live without assistance. I was a handicap in my own eyes. 

On May 17th, three of my best friends came to see me- Mindy, Chase, and Jimmy. I was on a lot of pain medication, but I remember a lot of the visit. That was the first time, I think, that I had smiled in ten days. My boyfriend at the time came when they left, and we went down to he cafeteria. That was the first time that I had eaten anything without getting sick since before the accident (almost two weeks had passed since the accident). When we went outside, I walked around the park once or twice, and then went back to sitting in the wheelchair (I could only stand to walk for so long). 

I was released on May 23rd, two weeks and two days after the accident. I suppose that I made leaps and bounds in my recovery- I learned how to walk without help and talk as normally as before. The only therapy that helped was physical, though. As much as I hated it and it put me through Hell, it was really helpful. I sounded like an idiot, so I fixed that on my own. 

The recovery over the last few years hasn’t been easy. Over that first summer, I built up my endurance. I forced myself to stand and walk until I thought I would fall over. I joined the school marching band (though I remained in the pit and played the bells) and forced myself to overcome or ignore the headaches as much as I could.

I have overcome a lot of memory problems as well, but that is going to be a lifelong battle (I still forget silly things like names- not that I was really ever good with them- and such), as the headaches and pain will be.

Now, four years later, I realize that I’m not the same girl that I was then. I still like a lot of the same things, but I look at a lot of things differently too. I have become a bit more talkative, but, at the same time, I can only stand to be around people for so long. If I am around people for a while, later I will retreat into solitude. I don’t mind being around people, but, at the same time, people scare the crap out of me and they make me nervous- I’m not quite sure why, but they do.

To think that, had I put a helmet on, I could have avoided so much pain.


Tabitha Chester