A moment that changed me: I was hit by an SUV – and it made me reconsider my drinking and screen time | Health & wellbeing
TThe SUV hit me at a pedestrian crossing, where I had the right of way. It was 2024 and I was on the first night of a work trip to New Orleans. Time slowed down as I flew 2 meters through the air and crashed into the road in what felt like slow motion. When I managed to stand up, waves of adrenaline washed over me. My friend Brandy and a group of strangers helped me to the side of the road, and that’s when I remembered that my annual travel insurance had expired the week before. In a prim and defensive tone, like a dowager who had just passed out and didn’t like all the commotion, I insisted that I was perfectly fine and didn’t need an ambulance. Then I lost consciousness.
The paramedics arrived and, despite my protests, they wouldn’t take no for an answer. On the gurney, I began calculating how much money I had in my checking account, how much I could put on a credit card, and how much I could likely ask my parents to borrow. My lack of confidence was entirely due to my own unconsciousness, but being forced to manage these sums with a head injury, after begging not to receive the help I obviously needed, was an almost comically dark experience.
By the time we arrived at the hospital, I was euphoric: laughing madly, chatting with the nurses, and forcing Brandy to take pictures of me posing with a tangle of wires hanging from my veins and the satisfied smile of someone who had just cheated death. To my friends I texted, “Oh my God, I just got run over by a huge truck! I’m in intensive care LOL” and to my mom, “Please don’t worry, but I was in a very minor car accident.” My right leg was so swollen that I couldn’t bend my knee and almost every part of my body was covered in bruises and scratches, but nothing was broken or bleeding. After having a Cat scan, a doctor told me my brain was in “exceptionally healthy” – a pleasant surprise after a decade of heavy drinking and a weekly report of screen time too shameful to mention.
I spent the next few days recuperating at Brandy’s house, lying on her sofa bed, listening to the mournful whistle of passing freight trains. I had a bad limp and was a little spaced out, but I was well enough to travel. Watching movies on the flight home, I was moved to tears by Wonka’s climactic scene, when Timothée Chalamet realizes that what The important thing is not the chocolate but the person you share it with. Other than that, I had few symptoms of brain damage.
But on my first night back in London, I woke up with a splitting headache, like my brain was pressing against my skull. I went to the emergency room the next morning and had another round of neurological tests. They sent me away with a pamphlet and a tentative diagnosis of post-concussion syndrome – an illness that can last for months or even years. I felt weird: slow, shifted, distant and dizzying.
I couldn’t work for over a month. I didn’t like meeting up with friends because it seemed so obvious to me that I couldn’t think or talk like I used to. I avoided leaving the house because I often felt on the verge of passing out. I accept that some, if not most, of these symptoms were psychosomatic, an expression of anxiety more than a physical injury, but it was extremely difficult to tell the difference. I had a sentence in mind, the kind of thing you hear in a soap opera: “After the accident, he was never the same.” »
It wasn’t a linear process, but over time I started to feel better. I went back to work and the more effort I made to meet people, the easier it was. I was finally able to pay the hospital bill thanks to my work insurance, so I no longer had to worry about being saddled with $30,000 (£22,000) in medical debt. However, the accident changed me in many ways. I still feel tense if a car passes too close, and I no longer have the cavalier, carefree approach to the Green Cross Code that I had in my youth. My sense of empathy has also become sharper: I better understand the truth that anyone can become disabled at any time.
Most of my post-accident resolutions disappeared over the course of the year: after surviving what felt like a near-death experience, I decided to only read classic literature and watch only canon films – why would I waste my precious time on season 4 of The Boys? when I could be crushed by an anvil at any moment? But it was only a few months before I gave in to the siren song of airport thrillers and trashy TV shows. Other changes proved more lasting. I drink a lot less and try to spend less time looking at screens; I no longer take my brain for granted and I want to take better care of it. If it’s true that I’ll never be the same, that might turn out to be a good thing.
