My mom died in a car accident when I was 13, so my family lied to me about a lot of the details. Mainly the fact that she died instantly.

Years later, my dad had been borrowing my ipod for a while. When I got it back, his account was still linked to it, and for some reason, the only pictures on my ipod were of my moms car after the wreck.

You could barely even tell it was a car; I’ve never seen anything more horrific. It was obvious from the pictures that she couldn’t have died quickly, so I couldn’t stop myself from trying to find her accident report online. Sure enough, I found it, and read every detail.

She hit a truck head on going 70 miles an hour, and because of her position in the car, they think she’d reached down into the passenger floor, causing her to swerve and cross the center line. She was probably reaching for her phone, as she’d been on the phone with me minutes earlier when she got pulled over by a cop and told me she’d call me right back.

She survived the crash. It took them around 30 minutes to cut her out of the car, and she was conscious and talking the entire time. They took so long getting her out because they were trying to be as careful as possible to prevent further injury. They didn’t think they needed to hurry. They didn’t expect her to bleed out in that time, because she didn’t tell them she was on a high dose of blood thinners. She passed as they were finally pulling her out. She should have survived.

I guess this doesn’t completely apply to the question as I didn’t personally witness it, but after seeing those pictures and reading the report, I can picture it all so vividly I might as well have been.

A little PSA; If you or any of your loved ones are on blood thinners or have any other ailments that might change the way an emergency responder works on them, encourage them to wear a medical ID bracelet. It very well could be the thing that saves their life.