Captain’s Log: Reckless Choices and the Injuries That Followed

Captain’s Log, Stardate 2601.200825

This log reaches further back than the others. Originally recorded as a reflection on how one reckless night can alter the course of a life, it’s being reissued now as part of a broader record—one that traces how a single moment can echo through decades of physical pain, medical trauma, and hard-earned perspective.

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I’ve shared pieces of my medical journey before—nausea, stomach surgery, the false hope of recovery—but the truth is, the real story started long before that. It started in 2007, the year everything changed.

I was 20, reckless, and wild. One bad decision—a car accident—knocked out my three front teeth, tore out bone, and left me with a lifelong reminder of what a single night can do. That crash didn’t just cost teeth; it kicked off a long, painful road of surgeries, failed procedures, and mental scars I still carry today.

Even though I managed to move forward after the accident, 2013 became the year I stopped living without pain. I injured my back, and from that point on, pain became a daily part of my life. No procedure, injection, or medication ever gave me true relief.

But let me go back to 2007—because that’s when the avalanche of medical struggles really began.

Back then, I was a young girl who liked to party. I drank, I went to bars underage, and I threw house parties that got me in trouble with the city of Davison. I wasn’t an alcoholic; I just loved the scene. By 2021, when I quit drinking to help with my nausea, it barely phased me. I had already lived that lifestyle out. People change, and I’m proof of that.

It’s funny the weird things we can remember. I know we had cell phones already because I specifically remember the first time I saw a touchscreen phone—it was shown to me at a bar I frequented underage in Flint, Michigan. I didn’t like it at all. I had a Sidekick at the time and was perfectly happy with that. Now look where we are. I’m just grateful that during that chaotic time in my life, going viral wasn’t a thing.

That night—the night of the crash—I made the worst choice of my life. I had been drinking, and for the first time, I let myself be talked into snorting Xanax. I felt invincible. I thought I could drive home.

I didn’t make it.

My Neon Espresso hit a cement culvert, and I woke up in the hospital missing teeth, bone, and dignity. I don’t know exactly how it happened—whether the airbags knocked my teeth out or deployed late and my face hit the steering wheel. My teeth were never found, so I probably swallowed them. I was lucky the accident wasn’t more serious—and even luckier that I didn’t hurt anyone else. If Uber had existed back then, I would have taken it. There is absolutely no excuse for drunk driving anymore, and I can say that with total clarity now.

What followed was humiliating. A police officer went through my purse while I was intoxicated, obtained my “consent” for a blood test I was in no condition to give, and stacked those charges on top of the ones I already had from my house parties. Judge Conover threw the book at me. I went from reckless young adult to inmate—sentenced to 28 days in jail while juggling dental surgeries to rebuild my mouth.

The dental journey was brutal. The accident had ripped out bone along with my teeth, and the dentists gave me three options:

• A hip graft

• Bone from a cadaver

• Or a device designed to slowly encourage new bone growth

Both grafting options would have taken me out of work for too long, and I couldn’t afford that. I was living on my own, paying my bills, and working jobs I couldn’t risk losing. So I chose the device.

It was awful. Two metal plates were screwed into my gums, connected by a pole in the gap where my teeth had been. I had to turn a tiny key several times a day to try to grow bone back. The pain was unreal. Worse, I had to go without teeth for weeks during recovery. Imagine being a 20-year-old girl trying to date or work like that. It was humiliating, and it took a serious toll on my mental health.

And in the end, it didn’t even work.

After months of turning that damn key, there was no bone growth. All that pain—for nothing. Smoking definitely didn’t help, but I still question whether it would have worked regardless. It’s always easier for doctors to blame the patient.

So we settled on a bridge. To make it fit, they shaved down three of my natural teeth. My front six are now fake. That process stretched over more than a year and overlapped with my jail sentence.

This is where things could have gone very wrong.

In the middle of the bridge process, my temporary came loose after biting into a sandwich. Without work release, I would have been stuck in jail, toothless, with no way to fix it. A young girl already broken down, walking around jail without her front teeth—I would have been eaten alive.

Because I was granted work release, I kept my Beer Cart job—and honestly, it was the best job I ever had. Great hourly pay, raises, easy work, and incredible tips. In the winter, I worked seasonal jobs serving or bartending, but nothing compared to driving that cart. More importantly, it allowed me to sneak away to get my temporary fixed whenever it came loose. That small stroke of luck saved me from an experience that would have destroyed what little confidence I had left.

Somewhere in that time, there’s also a strange, funny memory. Semi-Pro was filmed around Flint, and one of the alleyways used in the movie happened to be the same alley behind that underage bar. My friends and I went hoping to see someone famous, but it was freezing, we forgot jackets, and we bailed before Will Ferrell and Woody Harrelson showed up. A few braver friends stayed and actually met them. It didn’t change my life—but it’s one of those odd memories that sticks.

That bridge lasted ten years before I had to go through the process again—and then again after that. The second one, which lasted only a year, was my favorite. It fit perfectly, looked natural, and I felt confident wearing it. The third one, placed just a year later, was a disappointment. Wrong color. Thicker. Not mine. Each replacement brought more pain, more stress, and more mental toll. To this day, I’m still dealing with the aftermath of that one night in 2007.

Somehow, I escaped that entire dental saga with only severe tooth pain—until I injured my back in 2013. That injury marked the beginning of my endless struggle with daily suffering.

Even though I survived all of this, I miss being able to live in the moment. Anxiety follows me everywhere now. That’s part of my mental health journey—healing from medical trauma layered on top of everything else.

But this journey isn’t just about teeth, back pain, or mental health. It’s about the systems we live under. A broken healthcare system. A government that fails to protect its people. A food system that poisons while pretending otherwise. Every struggle I’ve faced has been amplified by those failures.

Scars don’t just tell stories of pain.
They tell stories of survival.

And this story—messy, painful, and infuriating as it is—is mine.