People often ask me of what I endured after\nthe hiway incident and offered their sympathy for me. I tell them that actually the experience was easy for me. I was given an expensive helicopter ride of\nsome fifty-eight miles. I had a\nmultitude of people gathered all around me to care for my every need. Truthfully I have no accessible recorded\nmemory from a few moments before the incident until several weeks\nafterward. It\u2019s been easy for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand the journey through the\nexperience has been a heavy weight on Lor Beth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lori was on her way to a young girl\u2019s birthday\nparty when she got the call. The male\nvoice on the other end asked if she were Lori Beth. That was not a good sign; something was\nwrong. Only her husband referred to her\nby that name and that was not his voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHave you been told that your husband was in\nan accident?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe was in an accident and was taken to\nStormont Vail Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere is that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in Topeka.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you that over the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIs he hurt badly?\u00a0 Is he alive?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can\u2019t\ntell you that. He\u2019s at Stormont Vail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was much confusion and many questions\nthat went through Lori\u2019s mind. Within a\nshort time she was on the road from Olathe to Topeka, Kansas; sixty miles or about\none and half hours. During the long\ndrive she was on the phone with many persons. \nShe talked to my coworker who was at the time in Colorado; our friend,\nJoe, in Topeka; and again with Kansas State Patrol and the desk at Stormont\nVail. It was an arduous trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When she arrived at the hospital she was met\nby a friend and my boss from work. They\ntook her through a passageway that was labeled for hospital employees only to\nwhere she could at least get a look at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She would later say that if they hadn\u2019t told her who it was she wouldn\u2019t have recognized me.\u00a0 The face was swollen and severely bruised, scraped and torn.\u00a0 The lower lip was partially attached and one eye was completely closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sixty miles in over an hour Lori had driven. In the back of her mind was repeatedly the\npossibility that now might be the time that she was in for multiple hundreds of\nthousands of insurance dollars. Here she\nwas and dealing with the fact that she was likely now not to collect anything at\nall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Time and expectations are sometimes cruel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People often ask me of what I endured after the hiway incident and offered their sympathy for me. I tell them that actually the experience was easy for me. I was given an expensive helicopter ride of some fifty-eight miles. …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}