At around midnight on February 6th. 2014 I woke up on the bus taking me from Stansted Airport to Liverpool St. Station in central London as it arrived and the passengers were getting off. I have no memory from this moment until I woke up lying on the road by the bus and being attended to by ambulance crew. Either my memory was erased by the impact or I walked in my sleep, I have no idea which.
According to CCTV cameras I walked out into the road at the front of the bus I had been on and into the path of a taxi driving at 30mph.
When I woke up I could quickly work out that I had been in a collision and that I had injuries to my chest because I could hear the ambulance crew discussing cutting off my jacket and jersey and wiping the blood from my eyes. As soon as I realised my brain was working and that I was being taken care of I imagined myself happy and in full health sitting with my friends in a circle and singing. I found myself starting to sing in reality as well. I sang the Gayatri Mantra and Hare Krishna. I felt it was good insurance in case I was about to leave my body.
A policeman asked me for my name and address, if anyone was at home and the telephone number which I gave him. When I was lifted onto the stretcher I passed out. I was in and out of consciousness for some time. I do not remember the scans and X-rays but I do remember being stitched up in my forehead and ear. I understood I had broken some ribs.
By about 6 in the morning I was comfortably in a bed in the trauma ward with a self-service morphine drip and extra oxygen. I was able to reach my computer and catch up with work matters by the afternoon of the first day, by the evening of the second day I could walk to the bathroom and shower myself. When I got a visit from a couple of doctors on the third day and asked if I could go home they informed me that I was badly injured and should stay longer. I was informed that I had had internal bleeding, had cut off a piece of the liver and the top of my right kidney and broken many ribs in multiple places causing "flail rib" where some pieces are unattached. There were other fractures as well and head injuries.
As I had my family to care for me at home I left on the fourth day. For the next five weeks I took tramadol for pain relief as well as paracetamol and ibuprofin. My recovery program was to walk at least five miles every day, however painful it was, eat mostly raw food, masses of vitamins, omega 3 oil and particularly vitamin D3. I rubbed comfrey oil into the ribs. I was able to continue working from the computer from the first day, to give seminars from the eighth week and to give sessions of my, fairly strenuous, bodywork from the eleventh week.
By June, after four months, I was able to walk on my hands again and do somersaults. By July I was teaching advanced yoga classes and learning new acrobatic tricks. I am 61 years old. I cannot say that I experienced any emotional trauma as I was unaware of the actual impact and from the time of first waking, continuously imagined myself completely recovered even though my body was clearly suffering from reduced function and in serious pain. The most difficult part of the recovery were managing the right dose of tramadol to be comfortable and stopping the tramadol at five weeks. The withdrawal was most unpleasant with sweating, shaking, diarrhea, headaches and mood swings.
I feel for me the most important factors in my recovery were meditation, exercise and nutrition. Now, at nine months after the accident I can say that although I feel at about 90% recovered, I still have a way to go to be back at high level health. This nine months have been one of the busiest ever with little time to relax but it appears to have not impeded my recovery.
I am a therapist and my main therapeutic work is emotional trauma release, depression, back and neck problems, hormonal dysfunction etc. You can see from my site I also give seminars on holistic science and the difference between the current, school medicine Epistemological approach to reality and the Holistic, Ontological and Epistemological approach. I feel I am now even more qualified as I have successfully recovered from a major trauma!
