22nd Feb 2008 is the day that will live in infamy...
This is the bit I least want to write but is probably what you most want to read... at least after this I can stop telling the story and just say 'read my blog'.
We all left the wedding venue separately and rendezvoused in a place called Warkworth some hours later.
Phil, Ruth and I arrived a couple of hours before everyone else so lazed about. I had a very contemplative walk along the river looking at alien wildlife. We went to the supermarket and stocked up on beer and other necessities.
When all four cars were assembled we set off in convoy to a place called Langs' Beach about an hour and a half North of Auckland... but I was some time before Ruth, Phil and I made it there...
The weather closed in...
The shitty old rental went out of control....
The way Ruth tells it: as we were spinning towards a ditch and beyond the ditch was a lake... she saw a power pole and thought 'if we hit that dead on we'll stop'... we did... And better that than flipping upside down into a lake I say!
My life did not flash before my eyes... instead all I thought over and over was 'we will stop and I will get out'... that aside it was every other car crash cliche'... I watched from the back seat in slow motion as we hit the pole, the bonnet of the car seemed to disappear and the contents of the boot flew past me and hit the windscreen [and Phil]...
We stopped; I got out immediately and collapsed, winded [and blind as my glasses had disappeared] on the bank by the road. I assumed the others did the same... then I heard Ruth screaming Phil's name.... "shit".... I got up and ran to Phil's door, it was jammed, Phil was silent with blood on his face.... I ran round to Ruth at which moment [or was it before] the power pole collapsed on the car crushing the roof down the middle. I got Ruth out and started to remove the stuff blocking Phil in... Phil had now woken and was insisting he was OK.... I became aware that other people were arriving... at which point the adrenaline wore off and I crumpled to the ground where I lay till the helicopter took me away.
A GP was passing and took control of the scene. Because I was complaining of severe stomach pain he was fearful I'd ruptured my spleen. Being a GP he struggled to get a line into me... in fact my hand looked like a pin cushion and three weeks later I still have a bruise from where he finally got into my arm. And he'd lost count of how many needles he'd tried so that when they moved me to the stretcher he knelt on one.... hmmm
I should add the power cables were of course live so the firemen were a bit worried about how they were lying across the road and near us.
I was taken by helicopter to a hospital in a place called Whangarie which isn't pronounced how it's spelt. It was an hour and a half north of the crash and therefore 3 hours north of Auckland. They gave me the once over; just like I've read it in a thousand Casualty scripts. A fast ultra sound of my belly revealed my spleen was intact and the medics stopped worrying. In fact when Ruth and Phil arrived some two hours later by ambulance I was chastised that they were worse than me. Phil had a dislocated shoulder and a manly cut to the forehead. Ruth was also battered and bruised with loads of broken ribs and what became a corker of a black eye [I'm sure they'll now tell me a catalogue of other injuries I've forgotten].
After a few hours I was told I could go. When I did get up to go I fainted.... ten minutes later I was off again though with nothing but a prescription for pain killers.
Ruth was admitted for the night so Phil stayed with her. Sandy and Sarah had arrived and Sandy's Dad, Gordon, and Giles were there too. Sandy and Sarah checked into a local motel so they could drive Phil and Ruth back in the morning...
I however got in the car with Gordon and Giles for the hour and a half drive back to where we were staying...
This was with out doubt the scariest experience of my entire life [and I've jumped glacial crevasses in remote Greenland]... The weather was now extreme; horizontal rain. It was pitch black and the roads were very winding a couple of times Gordon exclaimed and the car swerved... I really thought it was all going to happen again.
But I made it to the resting place in one piece... or so I thought...
There's two more hospitals to come...
The meal was stunning, steak with Yorkshire puddings stuffed with pate... yum.
