An accident in ice fog at 40 below

After last week in Yellowknife I am lucky to be alive. Car accidents can kill as well as cancer. I was the only occupant and driving our old 1986 Toyota Tercel in Yellowknife at -39C (we used to call it the YK Limo!). I was driving slowly near the hospital on Old Airport Road. There was a lot of ice fog but all northerners are used to that. 

Anyway, I was rear-ended by a full-sized car at high speed. That was the loudest bang that I have ever heard. It pushed the back of my car forward a couple of feet, spun my vehicle around nearly 180 degrees, and mangled the front end of the larger car that hit me. I suffered severe whip-lash, and both the right side of my nose and my breast bone collided with the steering wheel on the rebound. My glasses flew off (I found them) and my right hearing aid launched forward and bounced somewhere off the windshield. The hearing aid is lost.

Lots of blood everywhere because of the impact on my nose. I am lucky it was not broken. I was taken to Emergency at the nearby Stanton Territorial Hospital by ambulance. I suffered some concussion, as evidenced by dizziness and vertigo that lasted about 42 hours. I was released about 6 1/2 hours later after X-rays and CT scans that revealed no fractures, just stretched muscles and ligaments. My nose is still very tender on the right side.

As I got out of my vehicle (I was able to stand, but barely) the other driver began shouting at me about why was I driving so slow, and all I could say over and over in response was "I am injured." At nearly 40 below everything freezes quickly. I phoned Sandra who was back at our quite nearby hotel to say I had an accident but was sitting in an ambulance so was OK. Then the battery in my phone went dead in the cold temperatures and I was unaware when she tried to phone me back. Momentarily two ambulances and an RCMP officer arrived on the scene and the interrogation began. The concussion really slowed my thinking and talking down and I could hardly answer their questions. But by that time Sandra had arrived, running down the road from our nearby Stanton Suites Hotel. She helped make my responses intelligible to the ambulance personnel and to the RCMP Constable.

Later on at the receiving station at the Emergency entrance of the hospital the police officer took my statement of the accident. He was very kind and considerate. I will be talking to him later this evening to find out where the old car was towed after the accident so that our Yellowknife friends can take everything out of what's left of the car that's of value before it is taken to the dump. That's where the YK Limo will end up after the insurance folks have done their investigation.

On the positive side, my immunotherapy session went well. A CT scan was scheduled for Thursday at 1:00PM to check on my very painful sacrum tumor. Then on Friday morning I found out that the CT scan showed that the tumor had grown about 1 cm in only one direction, and that the measurement was within the margin of measurement error. So they did not think the tumor was growing significantly, although it may now with a small enlargement be pressing on nerves causing pain.

I will be back to Yellowknife for the next oncology consult and immunotherapy shot February 6 - 7. So that's all for now.