Tattoo Forum with Gallery: ask your tattoo questions, upload your own tattoo pictures or rate and comment other member’s tattoos!

Red9535 · Tattoo lover Joined: 01 Apr 2008 Posts: 1

Long story extremely short, events on the day of 3/28/08 have changed my life forever. My friend and I were in a bad accident.

Drunk sledding up north on spring break, down a 1/2 mile hill of ice. Went down together, spun backwards and just started spinning. We were going about 40 mph (I race cars, so I am confident in judging the speed), and headed straight towards trees with no hope of turning (ice). We were going completely backwards, I turned around and saw the trees and yelled BAIL, and jumped off. I flipped down the hill and smashed my head a few times and hurt my wrist. Got up dazed, looked up the hill to see my best friend tangled in the trees. I ran up to him and started yelling his name and tapping him, and he was completely unresponsive.

I thought he was dead - I'm also a Red Cross lifeguard, and I'm trained to recognize and handle situations like this - for all intents and purposes, he was dead. He wasn't breathing and he had no pulse. He had smashed his head BAD, and I was sure his neck was broken, so I didn't move him - I did my best to start rescue breaths and begin CPR without moving him. Other people we were with ran down the hill to us. After about 45 seconds to a minute, he started coughing and throwing up blood, still unresponsive. After a few minutes of that, he just sounded like he was sleeping. I took care of him until the ambulance arrived. We stood by as the paramedics did their jobs, got him down the hill.

They almost called in a helicopter to get him out because the hill we were on was so icy and steep they couldn't get up or down safely (yeah, it was a REALLY bad hill). He was rushed to the closest hospital which was an hour away.

The police came and breathalized all of us - I thought for SURE I was fucked, because I had been steadily drinking all day. I woke up and had a boilermaker for breakfast, and drank beer for the rest of the day. I POUNDED a beer about 30 minutes before we left, and about an hour and 15 minutes before I got breathalized. Miraculously I blew a 0.000% - the test must have been fucked up, because I was PISS drunk. 2 people failed the tests and got MIP's. They police designated me as the driver because I was "sober", and made me drive all 6 of us to the hospital.

We got there, waited, waited, and waited. Finally we got to see him.

He lived. He has a 2 inch gash on his forehead, a skull fracture underneath it, and internal bleeding on the surface of his brain. He broke almost every bone in his face, including his sinuses, shattered the "floor" of his skull (beneath the brain, inside the head), his cheek bone, fractured his jaw, broke his wrist, etc. He will live, but he will probably have permanent damage, and will need extreme plastic surgery to look normal again.

So, that was Friday the 28th. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before - but it has REALLY made me think a lot. It made me realize that things like this can happen to YOU. Terrible accidents can happen to ANYONE at ANY time. Right up until the second we started going down that hill, we were care free and invincible Seniors on spring break. The next thing I know, I am giving my friend rescue breaths because his heart stopped beating, he isn't breathing, and he is as good as dead.

That day has changed my life forever. It has brought me to the realization that life is too potentially short to NOT do things that you enjoy. Live every day as though it is your last day, because it very well could be. Be nice to everyone you encounter. Do things that you want to do, and don't do things that you don't want to do. The chance for disaster is there, and that chance is not one that you should ignore. Treat every day as though you could not live to see tomorrow. Do things that are important to you, live life day by day to the fullest potential you can. Live for YOU, enjoy yourself, be careful, make good decisions in YOUR personal best interests, and always, ALWAYS keep that philosophy in your head.

It really hits home. It could have very, VERY easily been me. I could extremely easily be dead right now. If I hadn't turned around and saw the tree, or if I had sat in front instead of in the back, or if we'd have started going down a LITTLE farther over to the left. Slightly changing the circumstances could have found me or both of us dead right now. It was very possible, I got VERY lucky, and my friend is lucky to be alive.

So, anyway, I got a tattoo. I got it because I want to look at it every day and remember what happened to me on Friday. I want to remember that things like that can happen (and HAVE happened), and that I want to live every day as though something like that could happen again. I want to be myself 100% of the time, and whether others like it or not, make decisions based on what I want and what I think I will need and/or enjoy.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read my story and checking out my tat that I can have on my skin for the rest of my life to remind me of the lessons I learned this weekend about how I want to live my life.

Please, PLEASE learn something from this as I did. I pray to God that nothing like this ever happens to any of you, but I am trying to relay the fact that it CAN happen. It is extremely important to live for yourself, to be yourself all the time, keep those you love close to you, and be true to your feelings all the time. Life is too short to spend portions of it upset or fake. Make your own decisions, don't ever let anyone get you down.

img20.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tat016td3.jpg

Just put an h T T p : / / infront of it. Idk why it's not working.