11 years ago...

11 years ago today my life was forever changed. 11 years ago today, I went sledding with my family. Instead of going feet first down a hill that had a chain-link fence and a barbed wire fence, I went headfirst. I figured I could just look up half way down the hill and watch when I needed to jump off the tube. I never got a chance to look up. I don't even remember going down the hill, let alone hitting the metal post. I landed face down in the snow, and I lifted my head up and saw blood. I tried to scream Daddy, but I couldn't. The wind had been knocked out of me. So I tried to stand up, but my legs were weak and wobbly. When my Dad saw how much blood was coming out of me he ran down the hill to help me and yelled at my sister to go to the car and call 911. Luckily we had a toboggan with us, so my Dad put me in it and started pulling me the 300-400 yards back to the parking lot. I screamed I'm gonna Die, I'm gonna Die! over and over. Because when you're only 8 years old, you knew when a lot of blood came out of people they die. I had to shut my eyes because blood was flowing down into them, I didn't open them again until we were in the ambulance. According to my family, we were about 100 feet from the parking lot when the ambulance came. The EMT's put me on a backboard, and they were worried I had broken my neck so I also had a neck brace on. They didn't believe my Dad I was moving my head and neck, because in all medical common sense, my neck should have been broken. My Mom pulled into the parking lot behind the ambulance, so she hopped in the front seat of the ambulance while my Dad took my brother and sisters to my Grandma's.

When we got to the ER the Doctor wasn't able to tell just how extensive my damage was because of all the blood. A nurse came in to wash it off,  and doing that we discovered a lot of bruising and even more tiny cuts caused by my glasses. We had to wait what seemed like forever to an 8 year old for the doctor to come in since the hospital had to find a Plastic Surgeon to come put me back together. You think I would be in a lot of pain the entire time, but I wasn't. You can't feel pain when all your nerve endings were killed on impact. It was a good thing my nerves had been killed because:

You see...the fence Scalped me. My Mom thought it was strange when the plastic surgeon started stitching me back up without ordering a x-ray to see if my skull had any fractures. To which he replied "Oh, I don't have to have an x-ray" and proceeded to pull my skin down to show my parents my skull and that it was in fact very much in one piece. I'm really glad I didn't feel that part because I'm sure that should have been pretty dang painful. That surgeon was pretty awesome, he informed my parents that the way the post had cut me, was along the same cut line surgeons use to do face lifts. This made my Mom a little jealous :) haha.

A couple hours and 27 stitches later, the surgeon realized the big purple spot on my forehead wasn't a bruise, instead it was dead skin tissue. Meaning I had to have surgery to remove it to avoid infection. Meaning Shannon will be getting face lift number 2, 3 weeks after face lift number 1. After he told us this I was discharged from the hospital with instructions if I had any severe head pain to get back to the ER ASAP.

11 years ago from right now, (9:25 pm) my parents were rushing me BACK to the ER because I was in so much pain and the pain killers weren't working. My parents were worried because my brain could have been swelling from the possible trauma it had received that morning. I was wheeled in for a CAT scan and thanks to nothing less than a miracle, there was no brain swelling. Instead the changed up the painkillers they gave me, and everything was ok in my world again. Except for the fact that Ruby Red Squirt will never again be my favorite pop after puking it up.

Since I had to make a lot (it was either weekly, or every other week) of follow up visits to my plastic surgeon, we got pretty tight with his whole office crew and him. He would bring in resident plastic surgeons and have them try to figure out why I was still alive, he would get a kick out of those residents being stumped. Because really, according to the laws of physics I should be dead. I traveled down that hill going around 20 mph, the hill was about a 50 degree slope with the fence being at the bottom with no time to slow down. My skull should have been SHATTERED, but it wasn't, didn't even have a fracture. I should have been knocked out, but I was conscious the entire time (Me not being able to remember going down the hill or hitting the fence is a type of amnesia. I couldn't have told you what happened to me even if you asked before i lifted my head out of the snow which was seconds after it happened). They did finally figure out though that had I lifted up my head to look, like I had planned too, I would have snapped my neck. Meaning either 1. I would have been killed instantly. or 2. I would have been a quadriplegic from the neck down. I'll take dead skin tissue, dead nerves, and a wicked awesome scar over those two things.

Now you're probably wondering what exactly I did look like 11 years ago today... I don't have picture of me the day it actually happened. Because well, when you get a call saying Shannon is hurt bad, an ambulance is on its way, get here now, your first thought isn't going to be "Oh! I need to grab the camera!". So I only have a picture taken 2 days after it happened. But its better anyways since I had an ace wrap on my head the first 24 hours.

It sounds weird, but I really am grateful for my scar. It's taught me to always be grateful for the life I have, and that we do have guardian angels, and that miracles really do happen.