Okay, before you think this is some kind of dark humour wishing good riddance to someone that died, you're only half right. Bucky was my first car that I bought all by myself, at 21, when I moved from my family in Toronto to Orlando, Florida for work.
I was psyched to get a professional job as a Residential Director for a university in Florida before I even finished my undergrad degree. Instead of turning the job down, since I clearly was still a child with no proper direction in life, I accepted the position, both working and studying full time. In hindsight, I regret nothing, but it was a tad stressful.
The entire situation in Florida became a fever dream of sorts. I most definitely went places and did things I would never have done had I stayed home. In one instance, I met some random guy on Tinder for a date and he picked me up in a white pedophile van, with no proper seat, a couch to sit on, and he forgot his wallet, so I had to pay. What I was thinking when I got in the van, I am not 100% sure. We ended up driving to a trailer park, where he lived (not bashing trailer parks here, it was just a little sketchy since I had no phone service) to get his wallet. Safe to say there was no second date, but I did get to ride on a motorcycle. Another time, I was all booked in to go skydiving (on my 22nd birthday, nonetheless), and the outfitter called me to say that its a tad windy out, so I can still jump if I want or I can reschedule. Luckily, I rescheduled, because the next morning my mom called me freaking out to check the news. Turns out the guy that took my place died that day. Life works in mysterious ways, I must say.
But now I'm getting really off topic. But you needed to understand the sort of weird stuff going on in Florida to truly accept the miracle that is the death of Bucky. Bucky took me from Orlando to Savannah to Charleston in three days for a mini weekend retreat. He was my ride or die (ironically enough). Anyways, one day I was taking Bucky for a drive to a waterpark out in Tampa and on the way back, only half an hour from my place, an old lady rear-ended me on the highway and Bucky was totaled.
People aren't joking when they say you black out during an accident. All I remember is hearing a smash and then seeing that I'm forty metres ahead of where my car was. At that point, I had Bucky for all of three weeks, if that. The ambulance came and took me to the hospital, despite me feeling fine in that moment. I was pretty adamant that I didn't need medical attention, but thank goodness my parents are smarter than me and suggested I get a CT scan and x-ray of my head to be on the safe side.
No concussion. No whiplash. No problems for me, other than the fact that they found some nodules in my neck. They said to get them checked out when I got home. I'm here thinking, no, I don't have neck pain, trouble swallowing, no symptoms, so I'll just push it off a little. I ended up travelling around the United States for another two months after that, but thanks to the accident, I had the opportunity to leave my job and start with a travel company. I no longer had to worry how I was going to send my car to Toronto or figure out how to sell it. Another blessing in disguise for me.
When I came home later in the year, it took me a good few weeks before telling my parents about the nodules the hospital found during the CT Scan, but they seemed to think it was harmless as well. I went to the doctor later that month to have a biopsy and really confirm that there's nothing to be worried about. Well...boy were we wrong. Pretty quickly, I got a call from the specialist saying that I have a malignancy in my thyroid. In other words, that was the day Michelle found out she had Thyroid cancer. Two weeks later I had my first of two surgeries to have my thyroid removed. For those of you that don't know, thyroids are glands that secrete hormones into the body, specifically those that have to do with metabolism. So, now I got to work extra hard in the gym.
There you have it. My choice to leave home and work abroad wasn't stupid. Really, it saved my life in the long run. I would've never known I had cancer otherwise. So, general takeaway: life works the way it works for a reason we may never know. Trust the process and be grateful for everything that happens.
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