The List

I was talking to Dawna this morning, and I don’t remember how the fuck it came up, but at some point I mentioned that I had broken ribs and a punctured lung in the motorcycle accident last October.

And for some reason, I decided to show her the list.

The fucking list.

After the accident, I fed all of my medical records from the three institutions that helped put me back together into ChatGPT and had it consolidate everything into a single list. I needed to understand what the fuck had actually happened to me. There were too many hospitals, too many doctors, too many scans, too many procedures, too many injuries for me to keep straight.

So I made a list.

And this morning, almost a year later, I pulled that list back up because I wanted Dawna to see it.

I wanted her to understand the extent of it. To understand just how much damage my body sustained in that crash.

And fuck.

I wasn't prepared for what seeing that goddamned list again would do to me.

I found myself getting emotional as I read through it. My throat tightened. I could feel myself riding the edge of a fucking tear.

Because every sterile little bullet point represented something I had lived through.

Something that hurt.

Something that had to heal.

Something that could have fucking killed me.

I don't remember the accident itself. That part is still gone. There is a hole in my memory where those moments are supposed to be, and maybe that's my brain protecting me from something it decided I didn't need to fucking see.

But I remember waking up.

I remember the pain.

And somehow, my body remembers everything my mind has buried.

I tried to play it off as best I could. Tried not to let Dawna know how deeply seeing that list affected me, even now, almost a full year later.

But I think she knew.

Fuck that.

I know she knew.

We've joked about both of us having TBIs and how, between the two of us, we still can't remember fuck. Humor is useful that way. Sometimes laughing at the fucked-up shit is easier than staring directly at it.

But she understood that morning that it mattered to me that she read the whole fucking list.

Not part of it.

Not the highlights.

All of it.

And look, Dawna understands trauma. She's lived through her own. I've written about that before. This isn't some new revelation about the woman I love.

But there was something about that moment.

Me sitting there, riding the edge of a tear, watching the woman I love read the inventory of everything that happened to my body.

I needed her to understand.

And she did.

Maybe I needed someone else to understand because I'm still trying to understand it myself.

And fuck, maybe it's important that I share the list here again too.

Because apparently this is how I deal with shit.

I drag it out into the fucking light.

I write about it. I put it into words. I throw it out into the universe and stare at it until maybe, eventually, it loses some of its power over me.

And maybe someone else reads it and realizes that whatever they're still carrying doesn't have an expiration date.

I don't fucking know.

But I do know that I have an amazing woman in my life who understands so much more than I sometimes give her credit for.

So here it is.

The fucking list.

CONSOLIDATED INJURY LIST — OCTOBER 27, 2025 MOTORCYCLE CRASH

Head / Face / Neck

·       Small subarachnoid brain bleed (right sylvian fissure)

·       Complex facial fractures:

o   Bilateral Le Fort I

o   Left Le Fort II

o   Bilateral pterygoid plate fractures

o   Bilateral maxillary sinus wall fractures, worse on the left

o   Left orbital floor fracture

o   Bilateral nasal bone fractures and nasal septum fracture

o   Alveolar ridge fracture

·       Dental trauma:

o   Avulsed/sheared tooth requiring bone graft before implant

o   Another tooth damaged but salvageable with a crown

·       Lower lip avulsion with missing tissue, plus chin laceration requiring surgical repair

·       Facial nerve sensory injury resulting in persistent numbness in the left cheek and chin

·       Thyroid cartilage fractures of the bilateral superior cornu, resulting in voice-box injury and hoarseness

Chest / Lungs / Heart

·       Right apical pneumothorax, approximately 10%

·       Bilateral pulmonary contusions/hemorrhage

·       Subcutaneous emphysema

·       Cardiac arrhythmias following the trauma

·       Required intubation and ICU care

Upper Extremities

·       Left distal radius fracture, comminuted and intra-articular

o   Treated with plate and screws

o   Ongoing stiffness requiring physical therapy

·       Right shoulder injury

o   AC joint separation — Grade III, possibly Grade V

o   Distal clavicle elevation

o   Managed non-operatively with physical therapy

Lower Extremities

·       Left foot fracture

o   Surgical fixation

o   Persistent swelling following splint removal

·       Left knee injury

o   Hemorrhagic prepatellar bursitis

o   Small knee joint effusion

·       Large Morel-Lavallée lesion

o   Left medial distal thigh through knee and proximal leg

o   Approximately 26 × 11 × 3 cm

o   Approximately 400 mL of serous fluid aspirated

o   Ongoing knee, thigh, lower-leg, and calf swelling

·       Left tibia/fibula

o   No fracture

o   Significant circumferential soft-tissue edema

Skin / Soft Tissue

·       Large open abrasion on the medial left knee, initially approximately four inches square and deep

o   Slow but ongoing healing

·       Extensive bruising and soft-tissue trauma throughout

Neurologic / Cognitive

·       Post-traumatic brain injury associated with the subarachnoid hemorrhage

o   Cognitive slowing

o   Difficulty keeping up at work

o   Emotional reactivity

I don't share that list for pity.

I don't fucking want pity.

I share it because sometimes a list like that is the only way to comprehend the magnitude of what happened to my body.

Brain bleed.

Punctured lung.

Both lungs bruised and bleeding.

Heart doing weird shit.

Bones broken up and down my body.

Wrist rebuilt with fucking metal.

Foot surgically repaired.

Shoulder torn apart.

Most of the bones in my fucking face broken.

My voice box fractured.

My lip torn open.

A piece of my face literally fucking missing.

Soft-tissue damage everywhere.

Four hundred fucking milliliters of fluid eventually pulled out of one massive injury in my leg.

And somehow...

I fucking lived.

That's the part I'm still trying to understand.

Because when you're living through recovery, you don't experience it as a list. You experience whatever is directly in front of you.

Get through this surgery.

Get through tonight.

Get out of this bed.

Take another fucking step.

Eat something.

Try to talk.

Go to physical therapy.

Move the wrist another fucking degree.

Get back to work.

Get back on the motorcycle.

Keep fucking moving.

You don't stand back and admire the enormity of the mountain because you're too fucking busy climbing it.

Maybe that's why seeing the list this morning hit me so hard.

For a few minutes, I wasn't climbing anymore.

I was standing somewhere near the top, looking back down.

And holy fucking shit.

That's a long fucking way down.

I'm extraordinarily lucky to have survived that crash. I'm lucky that three different institutions had people capable of putting all the broken pieces back together. I'm lucky my body knew how to heal even when my mind couldn't fully understand what had happened to it.

But luck didn't do all of it.

At some point, I still had to get the fuck up.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I had to find the tenacity necessary to drag myself across a finish line I couldn't even fucking see yet.

And now I have Dawna.

This incredible woman who sat there this morning and read the whole fucking list because somehow she understood that I needed her to.

Maybe that's another part of healing that I haven't completely figured out yet.

Surviving taught me how to get myself through damn near anything.

But loving someone, and allowing myself to actually be loved by her, is teaching me that maybe I don't have to get through every fucking thing alone.

And apparently that's another lesson I'm still learning.