A Visit to Dana

Today we decided it was about time we pay a visit to Dana our neighbor who was injured when run over and pinned under a car on I83. She is currently at a Manor Care facility and is the youngest resident there. What a shitty place to recover. Her roommate is an 89 year old dialysis patient. She's directly across from Physical Therapy and next to the nurse's station. It's a wonder she can get any rest at all. The food stinks and it sometimes spoiled. She went through three milk containers today before she got one that didn't have any solids. But, with all that and the fact that she is missing her two front teeth she's in pretty good spirits. She should be coming home next week which she is really looking forward to. Her left ankle is healing well and she no longer has pain in it. Her right knee and hip are healing well too but that leaves her somewhat uncomfortable still. Her finger is fractured but she's not so worried about that. Her 2 broken ribs are completely healed. Something is wrong with one of her discs but she's not sure yet and she has to finish repairing everything else before she gets to that. She seems most upset about the scars from the hip operation (runs across her lower abdomen) and the one straight up and down her belly area. She's also got a lot of burns and scrape scars on her hands arms and legs. She think she looks like a monster. I don't. She actually looks kid of cute and childish with those front teeth missing.
She remembers the initial accident which caused her to get out of her car but she does not remember getting hit or anything else for the next 5 days. She's afraid of remembering actually. She had to go to shock trauma yesterday for a check up and had a hard time just traveling on 83. I'm sure it was nerve racking. She has had bad dreams about getting hit by a car in the neighbor's driveway. That must really suck.
As for pain, she says it's not so bad and they are slowly weaning her from the Oxycontin. She's quite a trooper. She's mostly bummed about her 21st birthday coming up in October and not knowing how well she will be. I'm sure that will give her plenty of reason to work harder to recover.
So, I guess this just makes me that much more grateful that my injury is so minor. We never know how lucky we are. Accidents like this really help to put life in perspective, don't they.