Let me preface this by saying that I do not know how to ski. However, I’m a decent snowboarder, and I (mistakenly) thought that the two skills were relatively similar. Apparently I’m quite incorrect. The result is that this entire blog post is hearsay. I have absolutely no memory from Saturday, January 17 until Monday, January 19. According to my friends, on Sunday morning, we all got up early to drive up to Sugarloaf mountain to enjoy Colby Ski Weekend, with discounted lift tickets. The morning skiing was decent, but crowded. I was slowly (but surely) figuring out how to ski, and when we stopped for lunch I was feeling pretty confident. After a few successful runs in the afternoon, it was starting to rain, and the slopes had become slick and icy. We decided to do one last run and then head home. Our group got split up on one of the turns, and I ended up going ahead. When I hit a particularly icy patch, my right ski slipped out from under me and I rolled down a hill. I ended up at a fork in the trail and I went right, following a skier in black who I assumed was my friend. At the next fork in the trail, the only options were two different black diamonds, and the woman I had been following was clearly not a fellow novice skier! I reluctantly chose the path to the right and crossed my fingers. Initially, I was doing fine, slaloming side to side and avoiding the smooth icy patches in the center. Then I came on a steep slope and started to lose control. I tried to slow down, but the rain and melting ice didn’t offer any traction for my rental skis. I careened off the trail and down a hill into the woods, banging my skin on a branch and knocking the base of my head against a tree stump. I blacked out.
I woke to an old man in a green jacket poking me with his ski pole, “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, just give me a second.”
I crawled out of the woods and adjusted my goggles on my too-big rental helmet. I clamped my skis back on and gingerly slid the rest of the way down the mountain to the lodge. I mechanically returned my skis, boots, and helmet, and returned to our picnic table to change into dry clothes. I felt fine — a little drained, but that’s understandable after a long day at the mountain. As we waited for the shuttle to take us back to the parking lot, sleet and rain pelted down. The shuttle finally showed up, but on the way to the parking lot, my head started to pound. I blinked the snow out of my eyes, but my vision stayed blurry.
“Hey Chris — I think I’m seeing double.”
My boyfriend’s face swam in front of me, his mouth splitting into two identical sets of lips and then merging back into one.
“Do you feel okay?” Michaela’s voice piped up from my periphery, her head smearing into an unidentifiable mass.
“Um… I don’t know. I think I hit my head pretty hard when I fell.”
“We’ll get you to the health center when we get back to campus.”
“Ok.”
The shuttle pulled up to the parking lot, and I slouched into the backseat of Tenzin’s car. The sleet kept pouring down as we inched down the steep road. I slumped over on Chris’ shoulder, but he kept shaking me awake.
“Rachel, I really don’t think you should go to sleep yet, you might have a concussion.”
Then the car swerved and Tenzon overcorrected and the wheels slid and the road curved and we were in a snow bank. My head whipped forward and hit the seat in front of me with a resounding thump. Tenzin and Katie climbed out the front doors to survey the damage. The car was fine, but we were clearly stuck in the snow on the side of the road. Luckily, an ambulance happened to be passing by and the EMTs pulled over to see how we were doing.
“We’re all fine, but our friend is in the back seat, and we think she’s got a concussion.”
I crawled out of the back window, and stumbled over the the ambulance. The EMTs chattered between themselves, and apparently reached some consensus, because I was loaded into the back of the ambulance and barraged with questions.
“What year is it? What’s your name? Who is the president? Where do you live? Do you know your address? Are you taking any medicines?”
“Um. I don’t remember… I’m really sorry. I don’t know… uh… I don’t remember.”
Everything was fuzzy as the EMTs started an IV, and I dry-heaved into a plastic bucket.
“Zofran for the nausea and fluids for dehydration.”
I slumped onto the stretcher and blinked in time with my head’s pounding. Somehow I made it to Farmington Hospital and into a hospital bed, but I was too busy focusing on the peculiar way my forehead was pulsing. More nurses with more questions that I couldn’t quite conjure the answers to, more bright lights and beeping noises that made my head pound, more medical terminology that I was sure I had heard before, but I couldn’t quite place. The tall doctor called for a CAT scan, but I needed to give a urine sample first to prove I wasn’t pregnant, and my head hurt too much to get up and use the bathroom. But I gave the sample, and got the scan, and went back into my hospital bed, and tried not to fall asleep with my eyes open, because I was so damn tired. Hours or maybe seconds passed and the tall doctor sauntered back into the room. My boyfriend jumped up and began badgering him with questions. I took the opportunity to promptly fall asleep while sitting up.
“No internal hemorrhaging, which is good, but she’s got a pretty severe concussion…”
The doctor’s voice trailed off into technicalities, but I was already fast asleep.