People who have surprisingly woken up admitted into hospital.

What happened?

I hopped into the back of a mate's pickup after a rugby game, went to sleep and woke up in ICU

in traction with no feeling from my waist down.

Turns out we had a head-on collision with a drunk driver and I went through the back of the

cab picking up a host of broken body parts including four compressed vertebrae.

A year and a number of surgeries

later I walked out of hospital an inch shorter and with enough metal in me to set off metal

detectors at airports. I was the lucky one. The other three guys in the truck never woke up

afterwards. 20 years and it still gets me. The accident happened in Zimbabwe where I grew up.

I've traveled a fair bit since then,

but I'm now a bona fide kiwi. I didn't find out about the others for a while. Aside from being

zonked on pain meds, I don't think I was capable of understanding what had happened. Visitation

was restricted in the ICU to my folks, but the day after I was moved out, most of the two

senior teens and some of the

staff pitched up to tell me the nasty truth. The tiny ward was crammed with big, burly, ugly guys

crying their hearts out and I loved every one of them for it. Not sure where I was going with

this, but I've ended up here. Here's a thought from an old guy with a messed up body who walks

with a constant limp body who walks with a

constant limp, has tried every legal and many non-legal relief options for the daily throm of pain,

who has had two decades of survivors' guilt, and who knows firsthand the debris that is left behind

when someone is tragically and unceremoniously yanked from life, their family and their friends.

...