My Last Few Weeks

My new teeth... For now.

We have survived the first week of school! (Though if you’ve seen me recently, you know I’ve been surviving just to make it here! Thanks for the concern from everyone who saw me and stared wide-eyed at the story of my last week and a bit!)

As you may have heard, I was involved in an accident while hiking on the West Coast Trail last weekend. While cooking dinner with my sisters and father, one of our propane tanks exploded, the top half of which caught me across the right shoulder before riccocheting into my chin, cracking my jaw, chipping, breaking and knocking out eight teeth. In the process I also cut my palm, and sliced my chin clean through in an inch long gash below my lower lip. In the following hour, a helicopter arrived to evacuate me and my younger sister (leaving my father & sister to Bog walkin'continue the trek north, which developed into a first aid saga of its own the next morning), and we rode in two ambulances between Port Renfrew and Victoria.

At the ER, I recieved “too many stitches to count” in my chin, another five in my hand, and emerged at 3am bearing the welt of the propane valve on my shoulder (hidden behind the scorched nylon of my sweater). Lindsay and I waited in the downtown parking lot, blood still wet in my clothes, all of our camping gear across our backs, and caught a cab to the Holiday Inn near the ferry terminal. It had been almost eight hours and finally it was quiet, and we were alone, looking up at the same stars shining down on our father and sister, who couldn’t seem further away.

We all did make it back, though. But as you imagine it has been a trying My ambulance portrait; an accurate depiction of my frame of mind at the time.recovery, and continues to be, as I am still waiting many visits to the dentist and other healthcare professionals in the coming weeks. They say I’ll be good as new (better, actually: new pearly whites and a story about cheating death) inside of eight weeks, which, given the countless alternatives, is good enough for me.