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On the anniversary of nearly dying

How it started, a beautiful day of skiing

I've been unpacking some significant trauma or maybe it is post-trauma response, whatever. Suffice to say 3 years ago this week I came within centimeters of deadly injury. Since then it's been pain, questioning of my willingness to survive, fears of living in constant debt and pain, and instead of a "new lease on life" which many assume that surviving accidents should have brought me, I have a healthy fear of "surviving" in today's fraught world. Don't panic, it's not a cry for help or indication of a crisis, but certainly a recognition that there are many ways we can go and long suffering ends will not be my favored way. 

That's us at the top

After a full day without incident on the skis
 

I am fortunate to have friends who cared enough to visit me

Luckily travel insurance paid everything, so survival wasn't a curse. If it had not? 
Better that we don't dwell on that.
Hospital Coffee and Yogurt
Austrian Hospital food was surprisingly OK
Recooperating in Landeck-Zams Austria was beautiful

Among the generous folks as I recovered, one family took me to the mountain as they skied

The view from behind the Hotel I stayed at as my pneumothorax cleared

Non-alcoholic German Beer is pretty good




What sticks with me, and many folks can't understand if they are not neurodivergent, is just how awful it was being stuck in my head as the thoughts raced around about how I would pay for a 20 minute helicopter ambulance ride, 19 days in hospital osteopathic trauma and surgerical recovery ward, and 2 weeks in hotel waiting for lungs to not be a collapse risk to fly home. Sure, I can look back a feel OK with surviving and not having the bills. But I spent almost a week in hospital wishing I had died on the mountain because I only forsaw bankruptcy and pain in my future. Those thoughts never really go away and are a frequent Autistic-ADHD rumination topic.
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