[Overpaid Slacker]

Guys -
I still don't know who called the EMTs -- I was up in the Cuse when it happened, staying at my mom's place (who was out of town). Nobody has approached her to tell her they were the ones who called. She's lived in that house for 26 years...

The really spooky thing is that I had no idea I had a broken neck and the EMTs didn't immobilize me. Had I sneezed, coughed or turned my head too fast ... lights out. When I got to the hospital and they xrayed me (every inch of me) the tech comes out of the booth with a very grave look on her face. She said "I'm not a doctor and I cannot give you medical advice, but if you turn your head you may seriously regret it."

I get back to the ER Bay and I get three different diagnoses in two hours. Then a CAT scan. Two more (and differing) diagnoses. (Upstate Medical Center is a teaching hospital at SU -- and where my bro went to med school). Finally, after the MRI I get a tall, thin Indian doctor (Ghandhi Indian, not Sitting Bull Indian) who comes in, stands behind me and grabs my head -- hard. He says, "I want to ask you a series of questions and you are to answer ONLY by speaking the words 'yes' or 'no'. Do not nod your head, do not shake your head - Yes or No only." He runs through the neuro deficit check and everything seems OK. Then he steps over to the side of the table and says:

Doc: "Let me get this straight. You turn a Porsche into modern art"
Me: "Uh ... yeah"
Doc: "The medics tell me you totalled the car; gruesome."
Me: "Uh ... yeah, pretty much."
Doc: "You then get OUT of the car, God knows how."
Me: "Yeah....?"
Doc: "And you're just blithely walking around your yard when the EMTs show up."
Me: (not liking where this is going) "Yeah."
Doc: You DIDn't want to come to the hospital.
Me: No. I felt OK, really.
Doc: (now featuring a skeptical, "you were so close to Darwin you could smell his aftershave, couldn't you" look) "When they convinced you to come to the hospital you refused to allow them to immobilize your neck.
Me: Waitaminute. I didn't refuse... when I got into the ambulance they asked me if I wanted my neck immobilized and I said it felt fine. They didn't insist. (incidentally, when I responded to the EMT's question, I turned my head about 90 degrees to the left to do so...)
Doc: (more deeply skeptical) Uh Huh... You refused.
Me: OK, doc, whatever.
Doc: I don't want to get too technical on you here, but the medical term for your condition is "moron."

To say I got lucky is an effort in extreme understatement. The eeriest thing of it all is May 15 fifteen years earlier my dad died w/in 50 feet of the tree I hit -- and w/in 20 feet of where my windshield wound up after it flew through the living room bay window.

JP