Things You Learn When You Get Hit By a Truck
Short Story of my Accident, And What I Learned After I Was Hit By a Truck
I have wanted to write about this for, at this point, almost close to two years, but it was always too painful to revisit. But, here I go. I have been loathe to start any story about myself by going back to October 27, 2023, but I have come to the conclusion that I must let people know what happened to me and how it altered my life forever.
On October 27, 2023, while walking in my residential neighborhood, I was hit by a Ford F-150 truck.
All in all, I am very lucky to be alive. The driver claimed they did not see me. They had been stopped at a stop sign before hitting me while I crossed a street. My right kneecap was broken and my knee was separated from the tibial plateau, the top of the tibia, commonly known as the shin bone. As my leg broke, the truck forced the inside of my thigh against the asphalt, causing a large open wound.
I would be hospitalized, and in acute rehabilitation for the next 83 days.
My leg was stabilized at first with rods, and on November 2, 2023, a metal plate was put in to reconnect the leg and the knee cap had screws put in it to mend it. I would have an open wound, with debris being sucked out of it by a wound vacuum device at the tune of liters a day. My open wound was closed on December 5, 2023 when a skin graft was placed over it. I was cleared to start putting pressure on the leg on December 27, 2023, a full two months after the accident. I was released from rehab and “walking” with a walker on January 18, 2024.
Subsequent to my release, I learned to walk with the walker, and then with a cane. I had two setback in the form of an infection to my knee that necessitated two surgeries. The first removed the metal work, from the knee, as this is a place infectious bacteria likes to rest and form a film that makes it impervious to immune cells and antibiotics. The infection was debrided or cleaned out and the metal removed. I had a subsequent infection that was the dread MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), an antibiotic resistant infection. Each setback required me to start all over in walking, first with the walker, then with the cane. I never got clearance to move from a walker to a cane, I think that doctors are so afraid of legal action that they tend to be over-cautious. I bought my own cane on Amazon.com and asked my visiting physical therapist how I should use it.
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Now that you know a small part of the background, here are some things I learned after getting hit by a truck.
- You Must Be Your Own Advocate — Medical Professionals, or at least most of them, are hard-working dedicated people who want to care for you. But you ultimately must be your own advocate when it comes to your own care, and the direction of that care. Follow the learned guidance you get, but ultimately decide for yourself, weighing that guidance very carefully, what is best for you. Fortunately for me, I did not suffer any head injuries, so my head and brain were fully intact, save for the mental trauma, of course. As such, with my faculties present, I was able to ask questions along my whole recovery process and continue to do so now.
- Healthcare is Messed Up In the United States — This partially dovetails with my comment about some professionals being over-cautions. Well, they have to be due to the way our healthcare, and judicial systems are set up. Getting my surgery, when my infection was discovered, approved was a ridiculously long process and possibly caused me more damage than was necessary. The second infection surgery was accelerated by the suggestion that I check myself into the hospital prior to approval. Add to this, having to switch from the doctor who originally did my emergency surgery, and with whom I had a rapport, to another, who, while competent, seemed to treat taking me on as an inconvenience since he knew none of my history. Changing other specialists due to changes in insurance, has left me more than convinced that we need universal healthcare or some sort of transportability of care that doesn’t currently exist in this broken healthcare system.
- When You Are Disabled You Are Invisible — This might tend to be indicative of the less-empathetic society in which we now find ourselves in 2025. I have been in public, and have been struggling mightily, due to the fact that I can’t walk well, and have been largely ignored when I may have even been close to injuring myself. This was at a number of places, from in front of my abode, trying to take out my trash containers to the curb to trying to complete what are simple tasks in and out of the supermarket. Sometimes it’s as simple as being unaware of those around you and standing behind someone who is in pain walking and worse when having to stop abruptly and stand in place.
- There Are Not Enough Handicapped Parking Spots or Accommodations — when you have trouble walking and all of the handicapped spots are taken, that sometimes makes you want to go home and give up. When you have trouble stepping off of curbs, when there are not curb cutouts that’s hard. Imagine if you were in a wheelchair. When people working at stores totally block aisles instead of leaving at least some space open it forces the disabled to walk around needlessly, causing harm, mental and physical. When you are abled, you don’t notice these things.
If you made it this far, thank you for joining me for a partial exploration of my most recent journey in life. I intend to write more about my experiences with this accident, and other things in life. I just two weeks ago, under my own advice, stopped using a cane outside after having tried that at home for two weeks. I take every step very slowly and carefully.
Every day is a new adventure. I am happy to be alive.
Originally published at https://johnnypappas.substack.com.
