There Is Nothing Like Surviving A Close Brush With Death
To Make You Truly Appreciate All The Wonders Of Life.

In October of 1999 I was Hit & Run as a pedestrian, apparently by a Semi-Truck !  However, since I'm still here, and NOT in a Pine Box pushing up Daisies, I figure that that means that I must have WON that encounter !

The most embarrassing part is that my last remembered thought of that night was, "Hmmm, Hitchhiking out here after dark, wearing dark clothes could be dangerous, I could get hit.  Naw !"  

Next thing I know, instead of being alongside Highway 138, out in the High Desert, near Phelan, California, I'm in a cab, rolling down the Hollywood Freeway, past the Capital Records Building, watching the meter roll $35-$36-$37...  And I'm thinking, "Hey, I don't think I've got that much in my wallet...  Hey, I don't HAVE my wallet !  Hey, what's this sling doing on my arm ?"

I figure my mind's probably doing me a favor by locking away those 4 1/2 days of memories I'm missing.  My Mental Records Filing Clerk is probably saying something like, "Hey, there's lots of pain in those records, and not much of anything else.  You don't seem to need to know about it, and so unless and until you ever do, I've locked that file cabinet drawer."

Physically I escaped with little more than a two inch gap shattered in both bones of my lower left arm, and fortunately I'm right handed. <Whew!>  Even more fortunately I got excellent medical care, so in the long run no major 'arm was done.  The rods they surgically implanted to hold the arm bones together till they grew back, were finally removed in December of 2000. <YEAY!>  Once that was done, and I healed up once again, I ended up overall barely any the worse for wear.

In case you wonder why I'd put this whole tale into a web page, well, I'd done so shortly before that second surgery, figuring that it might be a while after the surgery before I'd be back in shape to type the full explanation in person anytime the topic came up in a chat, which I was doing a a lot of for 'Occupational Therapy'.  Since then I've thought of pulling this page, but decided to leave it up for a while yet.