Don't have any pictures yet and yes, we do and a lawyer... Wife was taking me to my initial visit with the Cataract Surgeon Tuesday around ~1PM EST. We were stopped on the two-lane US17 with almost no one (only us and 2 others on the long straightway) waiting for the utility truck in the oncoming lane to pass by to make our left turn when WHAM! I woke up about 300' later after a full-size Chrysler Sedan rearended us @ ~70mph without ever touching its brakes. Our seat belts were on (malfunctioned) but our air bags didn't deploy. Wife hit the steering wheel and her seat after rebound after seatbelt failing to detain her, our son was sitting behind my wife with his seatbelt on but it malfunctioned, and I hit the dash, rebounded and was back in my seat when I awoke soon later. Sent to the local ER 40 miles away and won't bore you with all the foibles encountered there. All we got from the State Trooper was that "he was impaired" and through the local grapevine that he "was booked for the night at the Jesup Hotel" so named after our local constabulary chief Sheriff Jesup and "not sure about his passenger (female)". I'm currently further visually impaired (not supposed to be on the computer and "resting" my injured brain) and my spine and spinal cord took quite a beating along with my brain and blood in my urine from my remaining kidney. But I am home at last.... Ignoring advice as usual... My wife and son were released yesterday, around 1AM on Wednesday from the ER. Wife with whiplash injuries and son with pelvic bruising. All with various amounts of seatbelt and armrest injuries. I'm having visual (vision has grayed out, further color blindness (already somewhat colorblind to pastel and hues before), visual distortion (halos, blurred vision, and seeing things not there), and auditory (hearing things not there) plus the wife says "I'm raving like a lunatic" more than I usually do.

 

Don't have any pictures yet and yes, we do and a lawyer... Wife was taking me to my initial visit with the Cataract Surgeon Tuesday around ~1PM EST. We were stopped on the two-lane US17 with almost no one (only us and 2 others on the long straightway) waiting for the utility truck in the oncoming lane to pass by to make our left turn when WHAM! I woke up about 300' later after a full-size Chrysler Sedan rearended us @ ~70mph without ever touching its brakes. Our seat belts were on (malfunctioned) but our air bags didn't deploy. Wife hit the steering wheel and her seat after rebound after seatbelt failing to detain her, our son was sitting behind my wife with his sea was on but it malfunctioned, and I hit the dash, rebounded and was back in my seat when I awoke soon later. Sent to the local ER 40 miles away and won't bore you with all the foibles encountered there. All we got from the State Trooper was that "he was impaired" and through the local grapevine that he "was booked for the night at the Jesup Hotel" so named after our local constabulary chief Sheriff Jesup. I'm currently further visually impaired (not supposed to be on the computer and "resting" my injured brain) and my spine and spinal cord took quite a beating along with my brain and blood in my urine from my remaining kidney. But I am home at last.... Ignoring advice as usual... My wife and son were released yesterday, around 1AM on Wednesday from the ER. Wife with whiplash injuries and son with pelvic bruising. All with various amounts of seatbelt and armrest injuries. I'm having visual (vision has grayed out, further color blindness (already somewhet colorblind to pastel and hues before), visual distortion (halos, blurred vision, and seeing things not there), and auditory (hearing things not there) plus the wife says "I'm raving like a lunatic" more than I usually do.

Good Lord ... what a nightmare... I am really, really grateful that you're still with us telling your story. And sorry about your wife and kid, but then again, it's great news to hear that there were no fatalities.

Here's wishing you and your loved ones a speedy recovery. And let us know how things progress from this point forward if you're up to it. God bless...

 

https://apnews.com/article/poland-bus-hel-666-e4443f1b245b4486b9180849f1317fc1

 

We have a copy of the State Patrol accident report and the only thing the guy who hit us was charged with was "Following Too Close" although we had been sitting there waiting for a while to turn (he couldn't have been close for that time span) before he hit us. Our lawyer will be subpoenaing his cell phone records and his passengers. Seems that is what they charge every rear-ender with. Turns out that he also has insurance with our State Farm agent so the insurance company is trying to lowball us already as it has gone to their corporate office now. Follow up "after ER" appointments Monday for our GP MD and hopefully an emergency appointment with the Cataract Surgeon to check my vision. Vision is improving and no longer hearing voices that aren't there but all still quite sore and wobbly for now. Turns out I have an "After Concussion" brain injury they failed to tell us of in the ER but shows up on my "Release Report", go figure. GP is also scheduling me in to see the Urology Specialist to find out why I'm still peeing blood clots although, so far, that stopped around midnight last nite. My wife has also had her cervical spine fused and is having severe whiplash problems and nerve damage as well but far more coherent than I am for now so I'm shutting up and letting her take the lead with the docs and lawyer. All is not well but is improving slowly. We still have to deal with replacing our Honda Odessey.

 

Dude, where's my car?

 

We have a copy of the State Patrol accident report and the only thing the guy who hit us was charged with was "Following Too Close" although we had been sitting there waiting for a while to turn (he couldn't have been close for that time span) before he hit us. Our lawyer will be subpoenaing his cell phone records and his passengers. Seems that is what they charge every rear-ender with. Turns out that he also has insurance with our State Farm agent so the insurance company is trying to lowball us already as it has gone to their corporate office now. Follow up "after ER" appointments Monday for our GP MD and hopefully an emergency appointment with the Cataract Surgeon to check my vision. Vision is improving and no longer hearing voices that aren't there but all still quite sore and wobbly for now. Turns out I have an "After Concussion" brain injury they failed to tell us of in the ER but shows up on my "Release Report", go figure. GP is also scheduling me in to see the Urology Specialist to find out why I'm still peeing blood clots although, so far, that stopped around midnight last nite. My wife has also had her cervical spine fused and is having severe whiplash problems and nerve damage as well but far more coherent than I am for now so I'm shutting up and letting her take the lead with the docs and lawyer. All is not well but is improving slowly. We still have to deal with replacing our Honda Odessey.

Man ... this is going to be a long and winding legal road for you, from what you're saying. I just hope it's not that long for you and your wife's physical recovery. All insurance companies are crap. Some are less crappy than others, but all of them have the same essential foundation of crap in their protocols and inner workings.

How's your son? I'm hoping he's better than ok since you didn't mention him in this post.

 

He is improving and no follow-ups are needed at this time. He's not able to return to work at his part time job at a local golf course as yet. Insurance company is playing games which is about normal and why our younger son in Savanah put his lawyer buddy in touch with us to represent us (and make 1/3 of the take-home if any but I'm sure he doesn't plan to work for free). All we want is not to lose money and be back to the way we were pre-accident. It's just a real pain to have to deal with it all but things will get better.

 

things will get better

that's the spirit ... thanks for the update. Stay safe.

 

I forgot to mention, the guy's excuse for hitting us was "I don't remember". Which is cop-speak for "I refuse to incriminate myself". Claims he has no memory of the accident until afterwards. Which our lawyer tells us actually means "I was on my cell phone" which is why he is subpoenaing his cell phone records. The State Trooper did tell us "He was distracted".

 

I forgot to mention, the guy's excuse for hitting us was "I don't remember". Which is cop-speak for "I refuse to incriminate myself". Claims he has no memory of the accident until afterwards. Which our lawyer tells us actually means "I was on my cell phone" which is why he is subpoenaing his cell phone records. The State Trooper did tell us "He was distracted".

I doubt the poor devil is going to get away with the amnesia argument after his phone records are disclosed ... so many, many years that people have been warned about smartphone distractions and still the lesson hasn't been learned...

 

NSFW arrest images

Spoiler

Chaotic Scene Unfolds After Car Collision in San Diego | Intoxicated Women Arrested

 

Ran long at the Ophthalmologist's but got a clean bill from him other than my cataracts still. Says eyes and optic nerve are fine and visual distortions are from concussive brain injury which are improving. I was to see the urologist after but ran late and quit having blood in my urine over the weekend so postponed/rescheduled for Friday. I no longer hear and see things not there but my vision is still a bit dim so I am improving but still hurt and taking pain meds. My wife is going to her ophthalmologist in the morning. And our son still hurting but also improving. I'm also still scheduled to see the neurosurgeon and orthopedic guys and eventually get back to the cataract surgeon... They had me use a walker to leave the ER so they could say that I was fine and "Walked" out of the ER unassisted!

 

I'm happy that everyone is getting better.

My wife just had cataracts removed and replaced with LAL lenses. She's still in the healing phase before lens adjustments. So far so good, as she already has 20/20 far vision again after failing the DMV visual test before the procedures.
https://eyewiki.aao.org/Light_Adjustable_Intraocular_Lenses

 

My wife had hers done a few years back. She opted for one near and one far glassless option and has not been that happy with them. Haven't gotten into all the details as yet but planning on both far and glasses near approach. Lots of details to be ironed out once I get to meet with the surgeon and discuss my options. Only problem is once I missed my appointment I'll have to wait 3 months to get another one... He is that busy... Did they do your wife's both at the same time? Here they want to do one and let it heal before doing the second.

 

My wife had hers done a few years back. She opted for one near and one far glassless option and has not been that happy with them. Haven't gotten into all the details as yet but planning on both far and glasses near approach. Lots of details to be ironed out once I get to meet with the surgeon and discuss my options. Only problem is once I missed my appointment I'll have to wait 3 months to get another one... He is that busy...

Her surgeon didn't like the one near and one far glassless option and she hates wearing glasses, so the LAL or the multi-focal were the choices. We decided to spend, extra out of pocket, for LAL even with the hassle of wearing UV glasses 24/7 for a month for healing before adjustments. For me, I've been near-sighted since birth, so far and glasses is fine and completely covered under our medical policy.

 

Here's my experience and my $0.02 for your consideration:

I had cataract surgery about a decade ago. I opted to have both eyes set at 18" given how much computer work I do. So I have to wear glasses for distance and reading glasses for close up. I am still able to work on the computer very comfortably without glasses. I used to wear progressive lenses, but last time I got glasses I opted for single vision, which are much lower cost, figuring that I would just use reading glasses when I needed to since I had been doing that for years instead of always trying to find the sweet spot on the progressives. But I didn't realize how much I actually was using the progressives to read close up things, and so next time I get glasses, I'm going to pay for the progressives again. I don't know whether I am really happy with my decision to go for the 18" focal distance -- if I had to do it over, I think I would go for both eyes set to far and just use a lower-powered set of reading glasses for computer work and then just keep a couple pairs near the computer so that they are handy. But I can't say that I really regret the choice I made.

For me, they did one eye at a time, but only separated by about a week. The healing was very fast with very little discomfort. The difference was night and day -- but I had very aggressively growing cataracts in both eyes that went from barely noticeable to effectively blind in just a month or so.

 

The first guy told me both far is what ~80% opt for. I have progressives and hate them because the sweet spot is not in the same place for each eye even though they very carefully measured my interocular pupil distance at the Mayo Clinic and their Optometrists did my lenses. I went there to get my cataracts done after my Optometrists told me they couldn't do anything until after I had cataract surgery. Mayo said not yet several years ago and just a few months ago said it was time. BUT! Our insurance through wife's Georgia Teacher Retirement system suddenly decided that Mayo is "Out of Network" pissing off a whole bunch of retired teachers and their families so I can't go there for treatment now unless I pay for it. I can see my monitor without my glasses and do a lot of close up work especially reading part numbers and sketching circuits so I have to use glasses for most of that anyway. My vision has changed a lot since I retired and even getting to the point that I quit wearing glasses except for close up work and passing the DMV eye exam without them so my driver's license says I don't need glasses now except for the quick darkening sunglasses outdoors use when I want to. So, need to get rid of the cataracts and left eye needs some lens adjustment and both astigmatism correction and I should be good to go!

 

Debris field discovered in search area of missing submersible

 

Debris field discovered in search area of missing submersible

Very, very tragic. I've been following the story closely. And it's ironic how these unfortunate people have become part of the Titanic's sad stroy.