The day started with the microwave needing replacing. The night before hubby put the veggies in to heat up and at the end of the 3 minutes — bzzzzzt, snap and crackle, but no pop. Then there was that burning electrical smell. Then the GFCI did pop. No fire. That was the end of our 12 year old microwave oven, but the good news, the broccoli was done. Dinner was uneventful after that.
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We spent the evening looking at microwave reviews and determined the one we wanted was a Toshiba model available at our neighborhood store. So, we went to get it because we didn’t want to order it on Amazon. Although I figured we could do without a microwave for a few days; hubby was having none of that. Off we went to the store that, in fact, did not have our selected microwave in stock.
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For some reason, some South Florida shopping center parking lots are designed to slow traffic down near the stores and have a perimeter lane on the outskirts of the lot. All the parking lanes have a stop sign before entering the perimeter lane. I wanted to make a left on a busy road called 441 and would need to cross 3 lanes of traffic to do it. My choice was to exit the lot at the Southern most point, so I would have an extra 500 yards to get into the left turn lane safely. Ok, so I stopped at the end of my parking lane and turned South on the perimeter lane, but I’m still in a parking lot, so I’m going about 15mph…. there are families with kids walking around, so slower is better. It turns out it was a good thing I was going slow.
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This parking lot has 3 exits on the West side of the shopping center. I crossed past 1 and was about to cross the second one when I slowed down some more to about 10mph when out of the corner of my eye I saw a big grey SUV coming to T-bone me in my little banana yellow Prius-C. I pulled my wheel as sharply to the right as I could as fast as I could and actually nearly completed the right turn when, BAM! I was hit on the left front corner panel. We bounced. My head hit the driver’s side window. The air bags did not deploy. The other driver moved out of traffic and I could see the SUV’s right front corner panel was gone, so I figure they were pulling left as hard and fast as I was pulling right. I didn’t speed up while turning right. I took my foot off the accelerator — chances are that if I had sped up, I would have been T-boned or hit in the rear door or rear fender. There was no getting away from this crash. I don’t think the other driver slowed down. We bounced a good 10 feet from where we impacted. Still it was a low speed crash with a loud crunch and no air bags.
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I was shaking. I wasn’t angry. I was concerned about everyone being ok. Hubby was ok, but angry. “How in the hell did they not see us! This car is $%#^ BRIGHT AS $%#% YELLOW!” [his favorite color] Yeah, so I asked him to stay in the car while I asked about the other driver and passenger. I had 911 on the line. I opened my driver door and heard a loud groan and the door didn’t open easily. The damage looked substantial, but I thought the car could be repaired. Now where this happened is at the intersection where 4 cities meet. The accident happened in West Park with Miramar, Pembroke Pines and Hollywood rounding out the intersection in a clockwise manner. The crash happened in the shopping center on the West Park corner. 911 had it’s hands full just trying to figure out what municipality had jurisdiction. I told them it was West Park, but why would they believe me? I was just standing there looking at Google Maps telling me I was in West Park.
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I just took a picture of the other car’s license plate. And then, BAM! I am reliving my memory of my 16 year old sister’s head hitting the wall by the front door when I was maybe eleven years old like it just happened. I jerked and started shaking big time. I worked the DBT. “I don’t have to feel this again. I know it happened. It’s ok to put it away.” 911 wanted to know if anyone was hurt. [Emotionally hurt, but there’s no need to call EMTs for that. I needed to go walk it off in a park. Look at the sky. Draw or paint something.] The other car’s people were fine, but shook. I was a bit slow. I told them I hit my head, but I had clear vision and I wasn’t nauseas. I couldn’t figure out why the other car’s left front fender panel and their right front fender panels were damaged. This SUV had no headlights. Unfortunately, I could not hide my shaking and the other driver got scared and wanted me to sit down, but I knew that was a mistake. I’ve been here before and needed to stay standing. [Awww, man! No! I was not ok and I was going to have to handle it anyway.]
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I had a goose egg starting to form on the top of my head, but I didn’t have a headache. I could read the small print on all the signage all around me. No nausea. No fatigue. And BAM! that time where I fell and rolled down a 40 foot hill and hit my head on the stones at the bottom. Nope it wasn’t a concussion it was PTSD. Again. I wasn’t all with it, but by then I had noticed the other driver was giving off the vibes of fear of the police. He wasn’t calling me a Karen, but he was afraid of the white woman, me. I asked the 911 operator if we could handle it privately and if it was required for them to come and they said they only had to come if my insurance company required it. So, I ended the call. And BAM! There it was that time I watched a police officer knock my husband to the ground screaming obscenities at him. [ugh, no I didn’t have to relive that either. It’s ok to put memories like that away. I don’t have to feel that again. It was bad enough the first time and after all, he wasn’t arrested or charged with anything, which I now recognize was white privilege.] No, I didn’t want to see an officer, either. Later, I figured out the other driver either didn’t have a license or insurance or neither. Having the police show up would just hand the other driver a bunch of fines that would further delay his getting insurance. Yeah, sure, maybe getting citations would be a deterrent, but probably not. I wasn’t going to add to his money woes. What I did know was in my current state, the police wouldn’t be good for the PTSD. ...and it wasn’t like the 911 operator was able to figure out who to send anyway.
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So we spent the next half hour with my insurance company on the phone. They confirmed the police didn’t have to show up, but they’d like for them to come — still not required. The other driver gave me a copy of his insurance card that turned out to be bogus. I also got a picture of his expired Driver’s License. Sigh. I did get his real phone number and called him right there. We took pictures and uploaded them to our insurance company. I called my daughter to come and follow us home. We picked up the debris. BAM! There I was cleaning up after Hurricane Wilma when I got knocked to the ground. [No, I don’t have to relive this one again. It’s ok to put it away. There are happier hurricane memories — like when the storms missed us altogether.] The last thing we did was make a call to my doctor to go through a safety protocol. Goose egg on head, but no headache, clear vision, not groggy, no nausea, still shaking — go get a head XR at urgent care. Oh, and don’t take anything for your anxiety until you get the medical all clear. Yeah, got it. The other driver helped us pull out the front fender so we could drive the car home which we did.
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I ordered a microwave (remember the busted microwave was the catalyst for all this drama) from an on-line store — not Amazon. I was ordering while sorta watching a show when they portrayed a car crash and it was so unexpected that I jerked, and BAM! it was like I was in the car crash again. That was when I figured out the other car had been in multiple crashes and had never been repaired. We did find out we could survive without a microwave oven for 3 days without much fuss.
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The next day I had to give a phone deposition of the car crash to my insurance company. The insurance rep was kind, but told me they would likely never be able to recover the damages from the other driver. I uploaded the pictures of the bogus insurance card, expired driver’s license and the good phone number. They explained that the other car was uninsured and hadn’t been insured for years. The other car’s owner was a woman, but the driver was a man with an expired driver’s license. Sigh. By then I was no longer feeling generous to the other driver. My front driver’s side fender is pretty well crushed. The door groaned every time it’s opened or closed. The computers freaked out, but once we pulled out the fender it was rollable and the car’s computers stopped objecting. It took me 2 days to find a collision center that could fix the car before mid December. It took 7 hours to arrange for my insurance company to send a tow truck to take the car in for repairs. It took the collision center 4 days to do the estimate. We had received a non-binding estimate of $2,700 based on our uploaded photographs. None the less, when we got the final estimate from the collision center, it was totaled. 82% of of the cash value of the car was damaged. Apparently, the 10 foot bump was over a curb that severely damaged the underside of the car. The collision agent at my insurance company then called to give me instructions for transferring the title to them. Every contact I had to retell the story of the crash. Answer questions about the other driver and why I didn’t have the police show up. Which in retrospect wouldn’t have changed anything other than give him more problems in his life. My insurance company still wouldn’t be able to get anything from him.
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That was 3 weeks ago. I have uninsured driver coverage for a reason. I was determined to not be at fault for the crash. I medically confirmed I didn’t have a concussion. What I have had is episode after episode of memories that really can’t be repacked away as benign. Some memories can’t be “fixed”, what I have to redo is tell myself that I don’t have re-feel them with the same intensity. I can tell myself those memories have made me stronger and kinder. Still the odd things happen like last week when I was walking through a grocery store parking lot, I saw out of the corner of my left eye was motion and heard a grocery cart and for some reason; that startled me with a very noticeable jerk. I laughed at myself. The man pushing the cart apologized for scaring me. That was a nothing burger, but I jumped. When doing my work a chart will have a condition, a description or a phrase that pops me back to an unbidden memory and I have to manage it back.
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Here I am thankful that the crash didn’t give me physical injuries. I am not happy how jumpy I’ve become. My doctor is reassuring me that I know what to do. How to manage this and I am managing these blasts from the past. In the same 3 week period my 20 year old refrigerator and 23 year old clothes dryer both started a death spirals. We got a Black Friday deal on the fridge, but the clothes dryer we are trying to coax a couple months more out of it. My husband is still dealing with some serious health issues and hasn’t been able to work for 2 years. All this and I’m still grateful things aren’t worse. On my birthday I laughed with my sisters about it. It was like every thing went to pot all at the same time. Well, I’m not dead, so I must be getting stronger. I still need to find another car. The settlement is not going to be enough to replace the car. I’m annoyed to have to deal with this and the PTSD. Then again, I’m grateful I’m not living in a tornado destroyed area. It’s a mixed bag of being thankful and annoyed at the same time. Seeing the blessings and the curses at the same time. Upon reflection, I’m thinking I want a car that is a little more crash worthy. A little less fragile, but good on gas. Not that I want to do another car crash again, ever.