Saturday night just after 8pm marked the tenth anniversary of Aya's accident. It is human nature to regard the number ten as having some significance, and indeed it almost feels like a signpost or an official stamp. It's as though our inner experience has come into line with an external one, as though a notification came from some obscure government office saying now that this much time has passed, we are free to wrap up the experience in a box and move it to another section of our mental storage facilities, somewhere in the back, preferably under a leaky pipe that will rot the cardboard.There have been countless times in the past ten years when Aya and I were discussing some issue of our lives and we came to the realization that the accident changed everything forever for us. There is no way around it. At the instant the car struck her our lives veered onto a course we could not imagine. We still went through our expected developments as people and as a couple, but every tiny detail was always coloured or stressed or affected in some way by the accident or its complex results. Aya's injuries obviously had clear effects. Her recovery from them, with its lasting limitations, were revealed slowly over time. The stress of the four and a half years of the settlement case with the insurance company certainly influenced things, often in very surprising ways. Even now there isn't a day that isn't influenced in some way by either the physical or mental results of the accident.
However, it has been ten years and Aya has shown all the determination and strength that makes her who she is. Here she is last September, doing half squats with 67.5kg.
A lot of good people extended themselves to support and encourage Aya when she was in the hospital and during the many difficult times afterward. We know that things would have been much more difficult without those people and their efforts. We thank you deeply and hope you know how much your generosity has meant to us.Some more images from the past ten years.
Warning: they are sad.
Two CT scan animations of her leg (January 2002, three years after). The post that was inserted is clearly visible in both, providing support for all the bits.
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