It’s not likely news to you that I got hit by a car in 2008. If it is, please refer to this link.
Fast-forward to today, when the quirky Philly news can be summarized by the headline of a story I wrote: Man struck by car on Boulevard near Germantown attacks medics in ambulance, tries to steal fire truck.
Obviously, this resonated with me, and for more reasons than the fact that I cover Germantown for NewsWorks.
While I don’t remember the immediate aftermath of my hit-and-run, when I recovered, I did some reporting on what happened that night. Here’s an excerpt from a story I’d written for Men’s Health (it never ran since the Philly Mag story had already come out) that I think offers some insight so you won’t — like many have — write this guy off as a drug-addled lunatic:
Still, I was bleeding from a contusion on my head and my nose with a blood pressure of 168 over 90 and pulse of 112, as profanities spewed from my mouth. I wasn’t moving much, though.
The five medics who responded agreed that I was coherent enough to tell them I didn’t want to go to the hospital and would find them for retribution if they took me. Wisely, they knew to not to listen and, following their “06 protocol,” logrolled me onto a stretcher, and took me to the nearest trauma center, Cooper Medical Center.
After the seven-minute, 4.5-mile drive past another hospital, the triage nurses didn’t think I met trauma status so they put me in the hallway, tied to the stretcher since I was swinging, kicking and yanking at the IV lines. My blood pressure was 129 over 107, pulse 112 and respirations.
Even at the hospital, I was as uncooperative as it gets, denying any pain, itching to get home to my wife, throwing up on an unfortunate nurse (Sorry about that).
“It wasn’t until two days later, when we read the paper, that we found out just how bad off you were,” medic Matt Skowronek told me. “We all thought your recovery was going to take a lot longer than it did. We were amazed that when you came in for the interview (in February), you seemed almost as if the accident never happened.”
My point: When you suffer a traumatic brain injury, you are not yourself. I don’t know whether that’s the case here in Philly today, but it very well may be.
Updated: The man is still hospitalized in pretty bad shape, according to police. His identity is still being withheld as he hasn’t been charged with anything in connection with the case.