See, I grew up in the world of motorized transport. I learned how to drive a motorcycle before I could ride a bike. I grew up with the damn things, from a 50cc baby Honda with balloon tires to my fave, the Honda 200X three-wheeled All Terrain Vehicle. This thing kicks all ass (I still own it, as if I could actually get rid of it). So we all know where this is going, right? A thirteen-year-old on a high powered three-wheeler. High powered? I was once clocked at 55mph on the damn thing. Anyway one day I was riding with a bunch of friends up on a fire access road at the top of the Taylorsville Mountain. There were three ATV's in all. We lost track of time for a few hours, and when we finally checked our watches, we saw that we were late for dinner (a MAJOR no-no since my Grandmother could kill a man by looking at him). We hightail it home. We get off the main road onto a dirt road, which was a big shortcut. I was second in line, and when the kid in front of me hit the dirt, he kicked up a huge cloud of dust. I remember hitting the dust cloud and completely losing all sense of direction. Apparently, the people in front of me had pulled to the right side of the road and stopped to regroup with those of us that were behind. Of course, I didn't see this, nor did I see the fact that I was drifting to the same side of the road at about 40-45 mph. Stick your head out of the car window at 45 and see what its like. Needless to say, I slam into the first three-wheeler, slamming driver and passenger into a tree and slicing through their vehicle with my foot peg like a Ginsu on a coke can. I'm told I flew about 10 - 20 feet. My machine was mangled, impossible to drive. I too was mangled, lying in the middle of the bull road bleeding. My helmet broke, I lost both size 8 Chucks, and my T-shirt was confetti (it said "Farming is Everyone's Bread and Butter"). The kids that were behind me raced off to find help and ten minutes later an army of ATV's and trucks arrive. There's no hospital nearby, and only in life threatening situations do they go anyway. I was broken and bleeding, not dying, so I went back to the farm. The funny part is, that's not my story of realizing my own mortality. I REALLY learned about mortality when my grandfather introduced my wounds to rubbing alcohol. Oh yes. I never wrecked that ATV again.

When I about six, I took baton twirling lessons... When I first started my baton was too small for me and I was really bad, so the baton would whack me in the arm a lot. After a year or so of this, I developed a huge blood clot and a bunch of lesser blood clots on my arm, right below my elbow. One got to the size of a Gobstopper before my parents yanked me out of my baton classes and sent me to the doctor. I ended up having surgery to get the large clot removed, but there are still quite a few left in my arm. SO I have my small, but neat surgery scar, AND when I work a lot and use my arm too much, the rest of the clots get irritated and I'll have four or so blue lumps to show to all my friends.

When I was a child, I rarely acknowledged doors. I would always squeak by partially open wooden doors, and I'd always bump some part of my body in my haste to get wherever I wanted to go. When I was six, my dad closed in the patio so we could have a utility room. The door that separated the house from the new utility room was the same wooden door that I always bumped, but the door that led outside was aluminum on the bottom and glass on the top. For about two months after the utility room was finished, my parents kept having to replace the glass and aluminum door because I never bothered to stop to open it. The first time I went through it, my parents were appropriately horrified. Their little girl plunged through a glass door, down three brick stairs, and onto the concrete patio. The blood and broken glass caused much alarm, and I got all the attention (and ice cream) that I wanted. After the third time, my mom just brushed the dust off, showered me with Bactine (they must've bought this stuff by the gallon), and sent me on my way. When my father got home from work, he threatened to spank me if I broke that door again. Somehow that did the trick, my door busting days were over.

While living in London one summer night, after the normal routine of farting around at local pubs, I casually awoke, looked around and booted on the floor. Odd, I'm puking, something must be wrong_initiate body search. Whilst trying to figure out what da gadda da vida was going on I puked a few more times, no not on the floor, in the toilet. Then I found my hot spot_the family jewels. I wretched again and figured that if I'm puking coz my nuts hurt, I'm gonna need some Pro assistance. I hobbled over, holding the boys, woke my roommate up and booted on the floor beside his bed. He turned white, grabbed his coat and shoes and was out the door pulling me along, hailing a cab. We got to the hospital, Queen's something or other, my roommate opened the door to the cab, I fainted, fell out the door, woke up and puked. Eventually, I was standing in an emergency room, naked, with five doctors sitting in chairs staring at my gents. Every once and awhile one of `em would reach a hand out and feel me, finger me_nudge one the boys in a direction. I was screaming like a hi-jacked sheep's butt every time they touched `em. They gave me a shot and said we gotta open you up and straighten things out. My nuts were twisted and my virility was on the line. An operation and ninety or so pain killers later, I didn't owe the hospital a dime. Cheers, damn things still work too.

This didn't happen to me, but in 1994, when I was working in a personal injury mill in eastern NC, I visited an old gentleman who has since deceased. This man had bone cancer which had metastasized, but that wasn't his most immediate problem. His family had checked him into a rural hospital for evaluation, chemotherapy and pain relief. His doctors gave up on the chemotherapy when their evaluation showed the cancer had spread too far to give them any chance of saving him. So they attached an IV morphine drip to him and waited for him to die. The problem was that he wouldn't die quietly. He got up and wandered the hospital in agonizing pain or a morphine fog. He was scaring the other patients and their families, so the nurses tied him down to his bed… You're supposed to turn a restrained patient every two hours to prevent bedsores. The hospital was too understaffed for that. Somehow, they didn't turn him over for over a week. He was allowed to lie in his own wastes for considerable periods as well. Then his family visited the hospital. When I visited him at his daughter's house, he had bedsores that had eaten to the bone, a quaint condition referred to by doctors as "skin breakdown." You could see the bones and ligaments in his elbows and heels. You could see the rear third of his pelvis. You could see a blackened stump that was once the business end of his intestines. The bed was stained with yellow fluids that weren't urine. The smell was awful. You could also see a Christian fish tattooed above his penis. I spent five minutes in the room with him. He just writhed and moaned although whatever I said wasn't much more intelligent. Human communication breaks down when you're dealing with that much suffering. He died that night, of course.

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