The Wreck of '93

[personally referred to as Snay Day, because Mr. Snay drove into us]

Skip worked in Radio Broadcasting for 13 years on-the-air at various stations
and then 15 years as Chief Engineer for WXQR in Jacksonville NC.
He started work writing software (mostly) at MTS in Clayton in February 1993.
Clayton is a two-hour drive from Jacksonville, where we owned a house.

I went with him on March 5 so I could look for a closer place to live.

Three miles into the trip, a pick-up truck ran into the driver's side of our car.

The Rescue Squad rushed us to Onslow Memorial Hospital.
Skip was flown to UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill because his heart was unstable.
I was flown to Pitt County Memorial in Greenville because of head injuries.

Skip's left collarbone broke and his ribs were broken in eleven places.
There was no way to put a cast on the broken bones,
so they were allowed to heal the best they could.
His left lung collapsed, so they inserted drainage tubes.
He was cut open three times (same incision) because of extensive bleeding.
His spleen was so badly damaged it had to be removed.
His heart stopped three times.
He was in the hospital twelve days.

My left eye orbit (skull) broke in several places and my eye was severely damaged.
They reconstructed the left side of my face,
used a piece of titanium wire to hold the outer corner together,
and inserted teflon mesh under my eyeball
to keep it from falling through the rebuilt sinus area.
My spleen was damaged (but not removed) and my left lung collapsed,
so I had a drainage tube for ten days.
I was in the hospital eleven days.

Some people might think that because our hospital stay was less than two weeks,
we must not have been in very bad shape.

They would be wrong. We were in terrible shape.

We could not manage by ourselves, so Skip's brother stayed with us for a month.
We could not handle the packing required for moving,
so several of our friends pitched in and moved our stuff to a house near Clayton.

The main reason our hospital stay was so brief was because we were NOT SICK!

Most hospitalized people have a disease of some kind.
We just had very broken bodies.

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