The Bean & Seed

Back in 2019, Mary and I were involved in a head on collision where our car was totaled. Mary was mostly unscathed, but I suffered an injury to my left arm and have never fully recovered. Over the next 30 days, I am challenging myself to remedy this the best that I can before seeking additional professional help. At the time of the injury, I went through 6 months of physical therapy. My intention is to pull out all of my old equipment from therapy and to recreate the regimen I was on at the time of the injury. Now, all of that said, there were a few life lessons that came from this experience that I’d like to share.

The first lesson is that you should never trust someone else’s judgement when you are operating a vehicle. You see, the new driver that hit us was waved on by an individual in another vehicle. The new driver was at a stop sign. The road we were going down had two eastbound lanes. The right eastbound lane was stopped, but the left eastbound lane was not. A driver in the right eastbound lane left space for the new driver to pull away from the stop sign and waved for them to go. We were in the left eastbound lane and still moving. I saw what was happening and began slamming on the brakes. It was snowing, the ground was wet, we were going downhill… I could not stop our vehicle.

The next insight is that bracing for impact by tightening your grip on the steering wheel is a bad idea. Our airbags went off, but I was so stiff that mine didn’t even touch me. My thumb was dislocated by the steering wheel and the tendons from my thumb, through the carpal tunnel, and into my forearm were hyperextended.

The third lesson is that you must be careful with your recovery from an injury such as mine. Looking back, I believe I babied my injury too much and worsened the effects of the initial impact with atrophy; which is the wasting away or degeneration of body cells. Prior to the start of physical therapy, my arm was braced and in a sling for quite some time. While I recognize that the injury itself reduced the strength in my arm, I also believe that too much time went by with too little use. By the time I reached physical therapy, my left hand could only manage a measurement of around 70 lbs. on a handheld dynamometer; the male average is around 100 lbs. At the conclusion of physical therapy, this was built back up to 95 lbs., but my arm shook and quivered to record this number; a number that was still 10 lbs. below what I registered with ease using my healthy hand. To this day, my arm seems to want to fall back into the sling position, but doing so causes tightness to set in quickly.

The next piece of advice I’d like to offer is one I don’t want to dive too deep into other than to simply present it and let you think about it. I knew what our car was and what it was worth. It was a sports car with a lot going on under the hood and a lot of technology in the impacted areas. The insurance company calculated an estimate of $5,000 of damage to our vehicle. When going over their estimate, it was clear to me that their numbers were for standard issue parts rather than what was actually equipped on our vehicle. For example, they listed replacement headlights at a value of around $350 each. Our car had curve adaptive headlights that turned with the steering wheel. The actual replacement cost of these headlights was $1,660 each. You have the right to have damage appraised by the body shop of your choosing after an accident. I had our car towed to a body shop that specialized in our make and model and they estimated damage of $22,000. This resulted in our car being totaled rather than having to be repaired.

The final lesson, and the reason for this post, is don’t let an injury linger. I’m 6 years removed from this car accident and my arm still isn’t where it should be. Again, I recognize that I may have suffered some permanent loss of functionality and strength, but I also know that I’ve been sitting on therapy equipment that could be helping me. So, over the next 30 days, I’m going to pull out my old equipment and see if I can make a marked difference before it’s too late. I’ll follow up. In the meantime, do you have a lingering issue that you know you could be addressing? Life happens and even 6 years can go by in sudden fashion. But I want to encourage you to do what you can with the tools you have to better your current and future situation.

Thanks for reading, Matt

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