As I was sitting at a red light on 101st Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan when suddenly, I felt a bang. Was I hit? I was hit! A taxi driver plowed into the back of my car.
I got out and walked over to the rear of my car and noticed that my back bumper and my bike rack were one. The bike rack was melded into the rear of my car.
After collecting all the necessary information and taking photos of the other vehicle, I called the police. They informed me that they no longer dispatch. “You’re on your own,” the woman who answered the phone said. “Fill out a DMV form when you get home.”
As I Was Driving…
I felt fine right after the accident. It wasn’t until about a half hour or so later, as I was driving in traffic, that I felt the pain in my neck and my back. My head was throbbing. All I wanted to do was to get home and lie down in bed but instead, I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
After trying to make some calls and feeling worse when I spoke, I decided to just try to stay calm until I got to the house, which was 2.5 hours later.
Getting Home
When I got home, I told my husband what happened and he suggested going to the hospital. I told him that we should go to Winthrop. “We can’t go to South Nassau, it’s awful there,” I said. “And Nassau County Medical Center is even worse. I heard that Winthrop was good.”
And, we ventured over to the Emergency Room at Winthrop.
The hospital was a disaster! I don’t know if it was worse or better than the other two, but it was definitely not good.
We were told to sit in the waiting room. I felt terrible. When they finally saw me, which was a good hour or so later, they told me that I should get a cat scan, which I did. I was never put in a room or even a bed. I sat in an uncomfortable chair in the waiting room after every inquiry with either a nurse or a doctor. They only had three exam rooms.
We sat in the waiting room for nine and a half hours.
At 2 am, I said, “I have had enough, I’m leaving!” And with that, the nurses tried to expedite my stay.
Not feeling well, being extremely tired, and sitting in an uncomfortable chair, I was unhappy.
After that…
I went home with a script for muscle relaxers and naproxen 500 and fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke, I had to deal with the car. I called the insurance company. Pure Insurance reps were very nice. They helped me navigate what I needed to do.
I drove the car to the collision place, had the car examined quickly, drove it home, and waited until the parts came in before dropping it off again. When Tom from the collision shop told me that my hitch was damaged, that’s when all the fun began (not really).
The Hitch
I ordered a new hitch from Amazon. The price was right and the delivery date was a couple of days later on Monday. That Monday, I get a note from Amazon that the hitch was canceled for no reason.
That’s when I started to scramble. It was the week of Thanksgiving and the following week I was leaving for Austin. It was a tight timeline.
I looked online and found different companies that sold the same hitch, but they weren’t going to come in before Friday after Thanksgiving.
I called Trailer City in Freeport. They told me that the hitch was almost $100 more than online but they said they would get it in on Wednesday. I told them to place the order and gave them my credit card.
Wednesday Came…
On Wednesday morning, I had my whole family in town. I called Trailer City and spoke with Bryan. He told me that Louis, the guy I placed the order with, charged my card but forgot to place the order. “WHAT????” I was furious.
“So sorry, I’ll place the order for you and it will come in on Friday, don’t worry,” he said.
I could get the same hitch online for cheaper. But, I wanted the hitch quickly and wanted to support a local small business. I told him to order it. “But, you should give me something for my trouble,” I said. “Your guy never placed the order and it’s on me?”
Bryan said that he would refund me $40.
Friday Came…
On Friday, with a house full of people, I called Bryan at 10 am. “Oh, I was going to call you, Mrs. Topper,” he said. “It turns out the warehouse guys didn’t want to work today so we didn’t get the order. It will come on Monday.”
Now I was furious. REALLY??? How can I believe Trailer City in Hempstead?
I was aggravated all weekend. And, to boot, since I hadn’t felt well from the accident, I was having trouble concentrating. I couldn’t write and I had a hard time doing anything. When I started to feel a little better, I went to my Thinkpad and opened it up. It didn’t turn on. I tried to plug it in on different outlets, I tried troubleshooting with the company, but nothing. Now, I had no computer! I keep all of my company’s bookkeeping on that computer, using Quickbooks.
I was told to send it back to the company and that it needed a motherboard.
Talk about Frustration!
Quickbooks was no help. I thought by moving it to the cloud, that I would be able to retrieve my data. Turned out, an old employee put Quickbooks in her name with her password and personal information which I had no access to. I was screwed!
And what happened next?
I was having a bad week, but I knew in my heart that things would turn around. For example, the box came for my Thinkpad on Saturday and I ran it over to UPS. I’m hoping I get it back soon, but as my accountant said, “I have a backup from June and we can always recreate it with bank statements and credit card statements.”
So, I wasn’t that worried.
And as for my car, the piece finally came on Monday. Thankfully, my husband saved my day by picking it up and dropping it off at the collision place. And, thankfully, around 4:30 pm on Monday, the day before I left for Austin, I got a call that my car was ready. I dropped off my rental at the shop, got my car, and the next morning at 5 am, was in a Uber to the airport.
