Kyle Hepp

June 14, 2009

A lot of people have been asking if my accident was going to affect our trip plans in any way. I couldn’t answer because I wasn’t totally sure up until now.

We had originally decided to fly out of Santiago to Lima, Peru and spend the month of July in the country there, including trying to do Machu Picchu at some point or another during the trip. As you all know, we’ve been saving for our big trip for about two years now and I’m more than anxious to get it underway.

However, clearly, that is not going to happen. I am rapidly improving and can walk better every day. On Monday I get my stitches out and the bandages come off my knees, which should definitely help me be able to bend. I even booked a wedding for the end of the months and I’m confident that barring no major disasters, I shouldn’t have a problem shooting it, which entails a lot of running around. I may bring an extra assistant just in case, but either way, I’ll have it covered. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m ready to hike up a mountain or walk all over a foreign city with a giant, heavy backpack.

Plus, yesterday I had to go to the emergency room. AGAIN. I had a severe allergic reaction to the bandages on the wounds on my knees. I got a horrendous rash, my legs were all swollen up with bumps and welts and my eyes started swelling closed! It was really scary and S. rushed me to the hospital where they gave me some anti-allergic reaction medicine I guess, and something else that calmed me down and made me sleep FOR EIGHT HOURS during the day, then get up for two hours and then go back to sleep for the night. Kind of ridiculous. I sent my mom an email to tell her what was up and then she responded to ask, “Did you fall asleep while writing this?” Sure enough, I had written half the senten

And then it just ended.

Tomorrow I have a neurologist appointment to find out if my memory loss will be long term. Because I may have just fallen asleep writing the email to my mom or I may have just forgotten to finish it before I hit send. But things like that are happening with frightening frequency. I’m to the point where I have to write every little thing down because otherwise I know I’ll forget it.

Anyway, getting back to the reason we’re not going back to Peru, we want to be in Chile where we have insurance, know my doctors and have a car to rush me to the hospital in case there are any more complications from the accident. I’m not anticipating having anything else come up, fingers crossed nothing does but you never know.

Of course, I’m a little upset. But, I was being overly ambitious in still thinking we would be able to take off and travel the world just a month after getting run over. This wasn’t a little love tap or something. As much as I think that I’m some kind of Superwoman and am totally able to just shake it off, this was a pretty big deal and while I was SO lucky to walk away with minor injuries, they’re still not quite so minor that I can just pretend they never happened…then let’s not even talk about the stupid head trauma.

So, we will be staying in Chile one more month, but we had actually already put in our 30 days notice on our lease before the accident since we were planning on leaving on July 1st. So we’re going to go to Algarrobo to stay at S.’s family’s beach house with Papito until we leave to go photograph a couple weddings and a bunch of sessions in the U.S. on July 21st! I’m very excited to spend a little more time with our dog and although Algarrobo may not be an exotic destination, it will still be a nice vacation, plus we won’t have to spend much of our savings since once we’re there, life is pretty cheap. Plus, I’ve been meeting with a lot of potential clients for this summer (November-February in Chile) so that way I’ll be able to continue to do so, and take good care of the clients we have right now before we go. This enables us to fit in a few more shoots before we leave too, YAY!!!! There’s always a bright side to everything.