I Got Hit in the Kidney by a Four Wheel Drive when I was Eighteen

When I was eighteen I spent most weekends on a beautiful Island in Queensland, Australia. The only way to get there was by water taxi and barge so it was relatively unaffected by tourism. This island was still quite wild in the eighties, and so were its free-spirited people.

Life was not easy for me and I was looking for an escape, and this was it. My father had died when I was twelve and my brother got into drugs. My mother didn't cope well at the time and was often absent. I was very lost and lacking direction. On the Island I found community. I drank and smoked too much and didn’t eat well. I didn’t understand self-care.

There were few street lights at night and the bush encroached on back streets. It was magical. I used to walk in the dark, look at the stars, and listen to the sea. The smell of weed and the sound of ‘Dire Straits’ would permeate out of little timber houses.

This particular weekend I had been drinking at the hotel, as I always did, and was walking along the dark windy road with a friend, back to where I had a bed for the night. It was the main road but still sparsely lit.

Two young men were following us and flirting. It was funny. We were laughing at them. 

Then one said ‘Get off the road, there’s a car coming’.

So here’s the bit that feels fated…

I got off the road. I was just about in the bush. I moved right over and onto the inside of my friend who was closer to the road than I was. The driver veered around her and hit me.

I knew none of this at the time. The last thing I remember is getting off the road.

I woke up on the bitumen on my back screaming. 

My arm hurt beyond comprehension. I saw people walking away from me. I remember swearing at them. I told them to fxxk off and leave me then! I was in shock. Many people were helping me. Those young men behind us sought help quickly. 

Everyone was trying to calm me. But all I saw was them leaving me.

I wonder if in that time between consciousness and unconsciousness, I defaulted to the feeling that haunted me throughout my life…the fear of being left. I felt left after my father died. I felt abandoned by both parents.

I have no idea how long I lay on the bitumen. Later I learned I had flown about ten feet in the air after being collected by the bullbar. I took off the side mirror of the four-wheel drive with my arm.

One shoe and a red cardigan I was wearing were never found again.

The fact I was very drunk saved my life most likely. When drunk the body can relax more and not suffer impact as significantly. That's the only good that ever came about from my drinking…

That night I was taken to the clinic in the township. I was stable enough to catch the barge with my flatmate Nick in the morning. There was one nurse. She asked if I had my period. I didn’t. She told me there was some blood coming from inside me. There was no alarm. I can’t recall that there was much blood. It must have only been a small amount, but I remember her saying this. It stayed with me.

At that age, I don’t think I believed anything serious could happen to me.

Nick looked after me when we got back to our shared house. He made sure I got to the city hospital for a scan of my kidneys. It was my birthday. I turned nineteen. Nothing was found except bruising but I was told I may have trouble later in life.

It took me some time to be able to stand upright.

I couldn’t dress myself either because I had a nerve issue in my arm. I was told I may never recover the use of it. Forever the party girl I remember going to nightclubs and holding my arm up with my other hand. I couldn’t let it go down on the side or it would hurt unbearably. 

I remember all the attention I received.

That year my friendship with Nick changed because of all the care I needed. We got closer after the accident and became lovers. It was to end badly. Very badly. I broke into pieces and responded in ways I am not proud of. In the two years following the accident, I was very unhinged and self-destructive. 

My arm recovered after one year, although I still can’t do certain yoga moves. A proper footpath was laid down which my friends jokingly named after me.

The man who had hit me was found. He said he thought he had hit a kangaroo. I also later found out he was so drunk he hit two cars in the hotel car park before hitting me.

At twenty-two I spent a year in England after my payout from the accident came through and new chapters began. Although things improved my life continued to follow a chaotic course. 

I could not manage healthy relationships with men. 

I kept choosing unavailable men and often felt resentful, discarded and anxious. I was unable to make decisions that were in my best interest. I felt blown about by the wind and didn’t understand that I was the captain of my ship.

At thirty-eight I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. When I was twenty-six weeks pregnant with my first child I suffered immense pain in the kidney. A slow-growing tumor that had been there for at least fifteen years was discovered and removed. It was a rare type usually only old men who smoke. I was lucky as although it was large it wasn’t aggressive. 

I was diagnosed twenty years after the accident and it was the same kidney that was hit.

My decades of strange health issues finally made sense. For years I suffered bladder infections and bleeding. I went to a specialist who told me to urinate after sex. Blood tests showed abnormalities but this was never followed up. No one thought to look at my kidneys. 

I have experienced the link between our body, mind and spirit and have used that understanding to heal all the illnesses that marred my life. Recently it has been medically proven that physical trauma can begin the process of cellular change. 

My first son had to be born early and lived for two days. My second son is now nearly seventeen.

The real wound was never my kidney. 

I am now gathering pieces of myself that never fully formed. That lost teenage girl emerges and I take her in my arms and hear her, rather than push her away…

An abandonment wound starts with feeling abandoned in childhood. But it was I who abandoned myself many times over. The accident may have begun the cancer, but it was the way I felt about myself and my lifestyle that fueled the fire.

Believing myself worthy of stable, consistent, and mutual love has been a work in progress. And the hardest of all lessons. I had to pick myself off that bitumen and dust off the dirt again recently. But I know I am getting there. I feel hope for the future.

Healing is never a straight road…more a windy road in the darkness. My wound is far less virulent but I still need to keep a close eye on it. 

The car accident was a pivotal moment in my life that had a ricochet effect.