We shouldn't be here...

We should be in the hospital or dead.

I was driving 75 mph, westbound I-80, about 40 miles outside of Omaha in the left lane, when I decided to look down at my iPod to adjust the receiving station.

Beth and Stephen both screamed "Watch out! Watch out!"

I looked up, and all I see is the rear left corner of a semi quickly approaching. It was inevitable that we would collide.

Should I even try to avoid it, and risk collision with the cars behind us? Should I just let us hit and hope to God we live?

In the next split second, I chose to avoid, and slammed on the breaks.

Our back end fishtailed, we were turning counterclockwise because of the force of the stop at 75 mph. In a matter of moments we would be facing oncoming traffic.

I turned the wheel right to keep the car facing west, but overcompensated; we were veering into the right lane, cars oncoming at 75 mph.

I veered left, tires squeeling, aiming us head-first into the ditch.

The car stood still, the smell of burnt rubber heavy, and we were alive.

All I could say was "I am so sorry", my head buried in my arms on the steering wheel, trembling, crying. Someone was rubbing my back. I didn't want to look up. Stephen was coaxing me out of the car to have a look, but I didn't want to see. All I could think about was that I almost killed my husband and our cousin because I was messing with the stupid iPod.

Eventually I did get out. All we had was a small, 1 foot long dent in the body above the front right tire.

We had no idea we even made contact with semi; we felt nothing at all.

All the while, Beth and Stephen were exclaiming, "You did so well!" and that I controlled the car beautifully through it all. II felt like I didn't do anything well at all; I felt completely out of control. The accident was my fault, and my reaction was sheer gut. Any slight deviation, and we would be dead. I could've easily caused us to collide with semi thinking that is better than a six car pile up or head-on collision.

From Beth and Stephen, I found out it wasn't completely my fault, or even mostly my fault. The semi was actually trying to get into the left lane while we were occupying it. He didn't see us.

The semi continued to drive on after all of this happened. We don't even know that he knew anything happened, considering the massive size and noise of a semi. You'd think he'd at least see lights going crazy in his side mirror as we were fishtailing all over the place, but I guess not.

It was a hit and run.

Stephen is on the phone with the insurance company, trying to figure out what we need to do about the car. Because the body above the tired is pushed in, the tire rubs against it when we go over bumps.

I just can't believe we are alive. If it went any other way, we would certainly be seriously injured at the least.