Jen

Today is July 9^th, 2016 and in less than 2 hours it will be the exact day and time when my life permanently an irrevocably changed. Who knows what or where I would be today if God hadn’t chosen this path for me, maybe I would be a professional in the animal world or lobbing for change for our pets; whatever I would be doing, I don’t know if I could have affected the lives that I have if I weren’t in this position. I probably would not have met most of the people I have had the opportunity to meet and my families lives may not have went in the direction that they did.

I posted a Bible verse today on my Facebook wall that is often misconstrued into something else with a totally different meaning. We often hear people say to someone who is going through a very difficult time or has been injured like me or, is forced into caring for a sick relative; God will never give you more than you can handle. Nowhere does it say that in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says,

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

People are going through trials everyday but that may just be God refining you in fire so you will come out on the other side polished and perfect for His purpose. Have heart and know that though you may be hurting and feel beaten, He who loves you will give you strength for He holds YOU in the palm of his hand.

 

Ronna Lee Kadow

A presence and a gift.

I first met Ronna when she became my boss in 1996, I didn’t know then just how important she would become in my life and, eventually my parents lives.

I worked with Ronna when she came to be the Executive director at the Riverside Humane Society. I had been working there for a couple months already but due a mass lay-off, the reason I went there, the Animal shelter had been closed to the public and, it was time to reopen.

We needed more employees to help out in caring for the animals, at the time it was only me and one other person. Ronna gave me many titles but she always wanted me to be in charge, even though I was so young she must have believed I handled myself in a professional way, as a leader Ronna and I interviewed potential employees and we decided together the new staff. It wasn’t always easy for me because every person we hired save one was older than me.One thing I don’t think I’ll ever forget is when Ronna first came to the shelter, her new job, she was disgusted by the condition of

the over one hundred year old building and for a long time wouldn’t eat her lunch in the office. She would leave for lunch and when she would bring it back to eat, she would finish her lunch in her car. Ronna, who was like High Society, always dressed professional and was always immaculately groomed, was stuck working in an old, rundown building, she didn’t fit but she came in everyday and handled things with grace and poise.

The Riverside humane society was a no-kill animal shelter so Ronna set it up where I could visit all of the local Animal control facilities and take out and rescue the dogs and cats that were adoptable

The President on The Board of Directors for The Riverside Humane Society owned property in the Gavilan Hills part of Lake Mathews it had two houses, well maybe more like one and a half houses. The back house had several bedrooms with a swimming pool in the backyard and a small basketball court next to it. The half a house was in front of that house, the house had one large bedroom, a small bathroom, laundry room and a kitchen but what this house had attached to it were twenty three indoor, outdoor kennels. So now we had a safer place to take the rescued animals too. Rescued animals needed to be quarantined for at least four weeks and often longer and, now there would be a place that they could go that wouldn’t put the healthy animals at risk had the Humane Society. We decided that in this situation it would be necessary to hire someone to spend days with the animals, Ronna and I both thought that would work.   I would drive out there a couple times a week to deliver new animals and oversee the happenings out there. It sounded good but it never really did, work out well. Every time I went out there something was wrong. On one day Ronna and I were out trying to think up a good solution and I said “I’d move out here. If you fence off that land for my horses”. Ronna couldn’t believe it and within the month I moved out to Lake Mathews.

Ronna included me in many things, she invited me to special events, the kind that seemed too fancy for me to be included in. I went because Ronna asked and I enjoyed watching how people would almost transform in her presence. Ronna made everyone feel like they were important and I just felt important being around her.

On July 9^th I would be terribly and catastrophically injured. The only phone numbers that the emergency persons could find in my wallet was a small list I had of emergency numbers for the Humane Society and Ronna was at the top of that list. Ronna gave them my parent’s number and in the worse circumstance a friendship began.

In the small hours of July 10^th Ronna arrived at the hospital where she sat with my parents thru the morning.

I don’t know how often Ronna came to visit me during my time in a coma but I would guess it to be more than any non-family member, she truly cared.

Ronna was a key player in the game after I got hurt. While I was lying helpless still in my coma she stepped in and allowed me to go somewhere safe. I was in my third month of being in a coma and at my second hospital when that hospital had a huge financial crisis. They were going into Bankruptcy and were bouncing paychecks. Many nurses just quit coming to work. I still wasn’t stable and in need of constant monitoring so my parents would have to go to the hospital just to make sure I was being cared for properly because some nurses weren’t showing up for work because their paychecks were bouncing.

It was down to just a few days from the hospital closing their doors forever and while most of the other patients in that hospital had already been relocated, the Insurance still didn’t have a place for me. My case worker told my parents where she was going to have me sent “whether you like it or not”, It was a hospital that was far away from where we live and that was unacceptable.    Ronna heard and with one phone call my parents could now send me to the hospital that they chose.

As I slowly came out of the coma there were a lot of people that would come to visit me but by the time I was released to go home there was only a small handful of people left that still came to see me and Ronna was a constant but, during the eight months I was in the hospital Ronna invited me to every event that the Riverside Humane Society put on. Comedy night with Kevin Fitzgerald DVM and the Raccoon ball which was a pretty fancy event where I was honored  for the things I did for the animals by receiving the Mutts award.

Ronna came to visit me often in the hospital, more than any other “friend”. My parents twentieth wedding Anniversary was in November of 2001 and because I was in the hospital their plans had to change; I had only been awake for a little over a month and I couldn’t talk yet but somehow I told Ronna that it was their wedding Anniversary and she set it up so they could have dinner at Dwayne’s steak house and gave them a night in the honeymoon suite at the beautiful Mission Inn.

When I came home, back to my parents’ house Ronna was there. She always made sure to invite me to a lot of the events that she would do. Ronna would come and take me out often, she always took me out to lunch and she would always ask if I wanted to go to a movie.

Ronna was a true friend, she was a great role model; she was the kind of person that you aspire to be more like. Every Christmas she invited an entire elementary school to a movie. Every single kid got popcorn, candy and a small drink and they watched the popular G or PG movie for that year.

Ronna wasn’t loud or obnoxious, she wasn’t a showoff or a name dropper and she knew a lot of people but she carried herself with dignity and grace thru everything. Ronna was a gift to me, I didn’t deserve her love or her friendship but, somehow I got it and I was honored and Blessed to know Ronna Lee Kadow  for a too short eighteen years. I love you Ronna! Until we meet again you will remain in my heart and always on my mind. Happy Birthday!!! I love you!

Breathing Easier!

My surgery was scheduled for Tuesday morning, February 17^th at 10:15 am. But the hospital wanted me there by 7:45 am. Which made for an early morning, so like we’ve done for years we drove into Los Angeles the night before and just spent the night close to the hospital.

We get to the hospital on time, fill out the paperwork, get my bracelets and they prepare me a bed. Time passes, it’s now approaching 9:00 am and no one has been by. They still need to place my I.v and that is not easy, at least on me.  There’s been a delay, the person having surgery before me had a difficult time recovering so they gave them more time. At around 10 am. Someone comes to put in my I.V, or so she thinks. We tell her that it’s hard to get an I.V in me so she goes and gets “The vein finder”. We laugh, wondering what it is, we guess that’s probably just a really powerful light or some kind of infrared thing. We were right but even with the extra help she failed to get the I.V placed so, maybe a little deflated she said I would need to wait for the anesthesiologist. I think maybe her confidence was shaken but the anesthesiologist got it in my hand with no problem. By this time it was almost noon but they gave me some sedation and then rolled me into surgery

Surgery went well, well as well as it could have I guess. My Trachea had gotten so small they said any kind of cold or upper respiratory infection and my airway would have just shut down.  A normal, adult trachea is between 6.5 mm and 7 mm for a woman and about 7 to 7.5 mm for an adult man but mine wasn’t even 4 mm.

It’s funny when you wake from surgery and as you drift in and out of awareness you see and hear things that you’re not quite sure about, kind of like that scene in Dumbo. As I drifted in and out seeing my parents cartoon faces and hearing the woman on the other side of the Curtin ask for ice chips, I heard them say they had no room to put me in, so I would have to spend the night in a hallway cubical.  I had been going to this hospital for years having the same surgery done, so I have spent a night in a cubical before, so I thought, “no problem” and just went back to sleep. When I woke again, they said that they found me my own Private room and it truly was a nice room, complete with its own giant window overlooking the city and the new helicopter pad. My parents sat in my room watching the comings and goings and a near miss of the helicopters. It wasn’t late but considering the day, they said goodnight and went back to their hotel room and, shortly after they left my room the fog began to role in and the helicopters had to stop flying.

All these years we thought the scarring in my Trachea was caused by the Tracheal stent they put in my neck during the time I spent in a coma but we were told differently. We were informed that my tracheal tube must have been smaller than an average adult women’s and therefore when the paramedics put the trachea tube down my tracheal opening, in order to save my life; they had no way of knowing that a standard tube might be too big and cause its own damage. It was an extra tight squeeze so it probably stretched and stretched until they finally removed the tube and put the hole in my neck and, thus, my Trachea needs to be re-stretched because of the trauma originally caused from the original tube they put down my throat. Now I will need to have this surgery done more often, at least for, perhaps the next few years.

Life and death

Have a safe 4th and please don’t drink and drive!I should of posted this earlier. This is a repost.

It is a fact, in this country a drunk driver kills or mames a person every 15 minutes; I am one of those people.
The crash happened on a dark, isolated road that was out in the country. I think it was no coincidence that there were so many people there at that time of night. It was no coincidence that Russell and his family happened upon the accident scene right after it happened and were able to call for help. No coincidence that he would hold me and pray with me before I slipped into unconsciousness. God sent Russell and his family my way because He knew that this wonderful man would come to my aid despite the risk to himself. He was the first to arrive upon this horrific scene, he called 911, and without hesitation he came to my side. You can imagine, I’m covered in blood, literally from head to toe, and he didn’t know me, yet he was willing to leave his own family in the car as he ran over to hold me up. He held me in a way to comfort me, all the while thinLif and Deathking I was dying. I looked up at him and said, “It hurts”, and he said “I’m with you” and then I said “I’m scared” and he responded by saying “ I’m going to pray with you”, and as he did I slipped into unconsciousness. God was definitely with him on that night. Russell was the last person to hear me speak in my original voice; no one has heard it since. Without Russell I probably wouldn’t be here, I thank God for him.
It just so happened that there was a Fire station right around the corner from the crash site. So when the paramedics arrived several minutes later, they triaged the crash scene and quickly determined that I was the only one with life threatening injuries and began working to get me stable for the ride to the hospital. It took a team of firefighters and the Jaws of Life almost an hour to free my broken body from the twisted metal. I was struggling to breathe and semi-conscious for most of that time, the paramedics tried their best to keep me breathing while the firemen worked. When the paramedics were freeing me from my vehicle I became combative, which is the normal reaction. When someone or something is trying to kill you, it’s either flight or fight and my injured brain started to fight.
I believe that the first paramedic to arrive, seeing that I was having difficulty breathing, began to give me artificial respiration with a bag and mask since I was still trapped in my vehicle. I am guessing my heart didn’t stop until the paramedics laid me down on the gurney. I don’t know for how long, I think only God, the paramedic’s and the doctors know that. My entire head and face were covered in blood from the lacerations and broken bones, but he got me breathing again, but only briefly.
When a paramedic arrives on a crash scene, they are faced with a terrible decision. They have to assess the crash site and determine who to save first. It’s not easy; if there is more than one critical person, they will help them both but, they have to consider that persons odds for survival, and then treat accordingly. At my crash scene I was the only one that was physically injured, the drunk driver that hit me was DOA, and the family that hit me from behind was shaken up but otherwise unhurt. My prognosis was not good, to say the least. A paramedic told me, if there had been anybody else who was less critical we would have saved them first, they didn’t think my condition was survivable. He told me that he has never, in twenty years, seen anyone that was as critically injured as I was, let alone survive. All of the medics and police who were at the scene thought I wasn’t going to make it, so much so that they actually called out two coroner vans, one for the drunk driver and one for me, but the van for me never made it. It just so happened that while in route to the scene of my crash it was hit by another drunk driver, and that gave the paramedics time to save my life.

I was semi-conscious through the entire event, except when I wasn’t, the times I went into cardiac arrest. They gave me something at the scene to stop me from fighting so they could stabilize me, treat me, start IV’s, open up my airway, the side effect of that was amnesia of the incident. They would tell me later its better you don’t remember this! They got me loaded into the ambulance for a short drive to the awaiting flight for life helicopter, and that is when, I’m told, I went into my second cardiac arrest. The paramedics in the ambulance got me resuscitated before they did the transfer; they then loaded me into the awaiting Helicopter. The police, in an effort to identify me, grabbed what they thought was my purse and gave it to one of the paramedics on the helicopter. I think almost immediately after the transfer I went into my third cardiac arrest, and I believe this was the longest one, according to the records, eight and a half minutes.

A year later I asked Frank, one of the paramedic’s, why he decided to save me since my prognoses was so bad, and he said, “You were trying to talk to me through the whole thing; you were fighting, so I fought too”. He was my Angel; God sent Frank and his team to save my life on that fateful night. God knew what my future would be.

Not all in the eyes:

Towards the end of my eight month stent in the hospital my parents had an optometrist come look at my eyes to see if he could answer the question of why my vision was so bad.   He found nothing wrong with my eyes and he said that in time he thought my vision would return come back to normal; 20/20 vision. Of course we were ecstatic at that great news but still cautious. So after I got home from the hospital my mom found a Nero ophthalmologist and in October of 2001 we drove out to the Doheny eye institute at USC in hopes of a more thorough explanation as to why I could barely see anymore.

 

                                I was so scared; I knew in my heart that the news would be grim so I sobbed on the long drive; like I was awaiting my own execution. The drive was long so I was able to get myself together before we saw to doctor.

The doctor was great even though the news was very bad; he explained my vision to us and why I will never again see with 20/20 eyes again.  He explained it like this: your brain is the VCR and your eyes are the television, they both work fine but the cable that connects them is damaged and cannot be fixed 100 percent.

                My heart stopped three different times at the crash scene, the longest single time was for eight and a half minutes and the way it works is that when your body’s dying but fighting to hang on your brain chooses to supply oxygen to the vital organs that you need for basic life and, both fortunately and unfortunately it selects the ones to stop sending oxygen to and one of the places that my brain forgone was my optic nerve

                At that appointment the doctor evaluated my vision to be 20/8000 in my left eye and 20/ 9000 in my right eye and started me on a medication that I will have to take indefinitely.  

He asked me to return the next year and I did and my vision improved to 20/7000 in my left eye and 20/8000 in my right. We went back a few more times annually and each time there was an improvement in my vision and then we skipped a couple years and went back in 2010 at which time my vision was greatly improved. It was no longer 20/ thousands but it was in the hundreds it was 20/900 in my right and 20/800 in my left eye. He thought that was great and told me that he didn’t expect that my vision would improve more than that but he made sure to remind me that I could never stop taking the medicine, of course.

My vision had improved so much since my waking up that him saying that didn’t bother me because I knew better. My vision has slowly but steadily continued to get better and though I may never have 20/20 eye sight again, my vision continues in the right direction; my last visit was at the end of 2012 and at that time my vision was 20/200 in my right eye and 20/100 in my left eye.  Needless to say the doctor was flabbergasted, he said that the medicine alone that I was taking couldn’t make that kind of improvement and a higher power is the only explanation for it.  Both my optic nerves had been gray from them being starved of oxygen for so long but at that visit he saw a little pink in my left optic nerve. A BIG PRAISE GOD!

                                                                                     

I have not been back in a few years but I’m no longer overly concerned because even if my vision hasn’t improved at all, I have good friends, a great family and an Awesome God!

Gone forever

It was probably the combination of the brain injury, ruptured and collapsed lungs, and the tracheotomy tubes and then just the trauma of everything that happened but whatever the reason is, I lost it. My voice was a big part of who I was and now it was gone..

 

Adam, my speech therapist did one good thing before I quit seeing him, he gave my mom the number to a doctor that he thought might be able to help me. My mom called and set up an appointment to meet with him. He is at UCLA but I was excited so we made the three hour drive to the hospital.

In order for him to see my vocal cords he had to get a small camera down my throat and the best way to do that was via my nose. They sprayed a very bitter numbing solution in my mouth to numb the back of my throat and then sprayed some up both nostrils; we weren’t sure which one would be best. In the video he could see that the right vocal folds were not really moving and he said that we could put an implant in and that will possibly make my voice stronger so we scheduled surgery.

On the day of surgery they wanted to put in an Intravenous catheter so they could give me antibiotics and other medications, hmm. But it was like my veins had a mind of their own. Every time they stuck me my vein would either roll, collapse, blow or just disappear; Ya, I was stuck by a lot of different highly qualified people. I suggested they try my foot but they didn’t want to so after trying both elbow creases, both forearms, both hands, a couple fingers and my wrist there was not a phlebotomist I didn’t challenge, we jokingly said that I would be a good final exam . Almost every different location was with a new person after what seemed like half the day they called in a pediatric doctor and he got a line started, of all places, in my foot. By that time I was pretty black and blue in my arms. I suggested my foot because when I was a toddler I got really sick and that was the only place those doctors could get an IV started; I used to look at that scar all the time.

On January third, 2002 I had a vocal cord implant put in. It wasn’t a long surgery and he just put me into a twilight sleep because he had to wake me up so he could find the best position for the implant to be inserted. He had me say some things and during that brief time I was sure I heard MY voice, the one I was so desperate to get back but as quickly as it was there it was gone again. I knew when I awoke from that surgery I wouldn’t hear my voice like I remembered it ever again but I, at least had some voice to speak with. I will never have a strong speaking voice but I don’t let that stop me from talking to people and speaking at high schools about what the consequences of drinking and driving can be and what someone else’s poor choice cost me.

A big thank you to all my supporters!

A great Walk!!

The dog walk went well; there were no dog fights besides the small little disagreements between a couple dogs.   We saw so many different types of dogs in all sizes, shapes and colors.

I saw a big, beautiful black Great Dane, an Akita, some Basset hounds and there was even a cat in a cat stroller on the walk with us.

There were lots of venders that participated; there were homemade dog biscuits and samples of dog food and professional strength cleaners along with local pet stores. The Riverside Police department was there with their dogs; they did a bite simulation and showed how they use their dogs in different fields. They talked about how their dogs are trained in many disciplines but they don’t cross disciplines. For instance, a dog that is trained in scent work is only asked to do scent work and a dog trained to apprehend a person only apprehends people. I think it is always so cool to watch a dog at work and even better because you know those dogs love it.

There is always at least one dog specific breed rescue and many barnyard animals and this year didn’t disappoint. I saw two breed rescues at this year’s walk; Golden Retriever and the Leonberger, I love this breed!

http://www.leonbergerclubofamerica.info/is-this-breed-for-you/

There were goats, potbelly pigs and one very proud Tom Turkey acting tough strutting his stuff.

This is one of their fundraisers that the entire community can participate in and it truly is fun for the whole family!

They gave out prizes to the top donors and I was one of the winners! I want to  GIVE A BIG THANK YOU!!! To everyone that helped me raise money! I won a new iPad..!!!

Next year I want to do it again!

Walk with the animals

I always knew that my future would be in animals; I didn’t know what it would be but I knew in my heart it would have something to do with animals.

At sixteen I got my first job in a pet store, my next job was in a salt water fish store, next was at an animal hospital and from there I went directly to working at the animal shelter where I quickly became manager and that would come to be the last job I would have.

In the beginning we only could except owner surrendered animals but I wanted to start taking animals from the animal control facilities so, me and one of my coworkers went to an animal shelter, we saw a dog that just looked so sad and shy that we decided we would bail her out and get her out of that situation. Not the best move on our part but we took her and we split the cost of the adoption fee and took her back to the animal shelter were we worked. We named her Destiney, she was an Old English sheepdog mix and it turned out that her “shyness” was fear. She hadn’t been well socialized and she was afraid of people but we worked with her and she found a great home. I was metaphorically bitten by the rescue bug and I would go out a couple times a week looking at the surrounding animal control’s looking for both dogs and cats to rescue.

There are a lot of animal shelters to go around looking at so every so often an animal shelter would call me and tell me that they had an animal to be euthanized and ask me if I could come to look at it before they did anything. Of course, I did but usually it didn’t get that far.

Since there were so many “pounds” to visit and I still needed to work, I would have to go to them after work or before often I would come into work late because I was looking or rescuing dogs or cats, or sometimes both.

More often than not I would be at an animal control facility and I saw an animal or animals I wanted but they were still in holding, animals that were waiting for their owners to come claim them. In that case I would write the animals impound number down on a card along with the date that they would come available and if the animal was still there, which they usually were I would get them and take them back with me.

Because I would make a list of all the animals I wanted to save some people called me Shindler

The owner of the animal shelter also owned five acres in Lake Mathews that had a small house with kennels attached, so in the summer of 1998 I moved out there. I brought my two horses and that’s where I lived rescuing dogs and cats, getting them well and ready for adoption, until July 9^{th 2000}.

Every year I participated in the Walk with the animals, I usually would work a booth but I have never missed a single Walk, even after I was injured I kept going to the dog walks and this year I am trying to help them get to their financial goal so they can continue to save the lives of unwanted dogs and cats. Could you please help me? Here is a link to go to my donation page: https://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/jennifer-gardner-habicht/walk-with-the-animals

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Fundraiser

To all my friends who are supporting me in reading my blog, you know that animals are one of my great loves. The animal shelter that I used to manage has a dog walk every year and I still love to participate whenever I can and The walk with the animals has always been my favorite event to go to. This year I am trying to raise a lot of money so they can continue in the mission in saving the lives of dogs and cats.   In Riverside and San Bernardino counties over 60,000 animals are needlessly destroyed, will you help me, help them by giving to this great, and tax deductible cause.

Paralyzed

 

 

I Spent around four and a half months in a coma but, after just a couple weeks of me being in the coma they realized that they had no way of knowing how long I would be Unconscious so they decided to take the tubes that were going down my throat into my lungs to give me oxygen out, and they performed a tracheostomy on me.

Your vocal cords are located at the top of your Trachea and I don’t really know if the tubes that were going down my throat did any damage, I suspect it was all or mostly brain injury but the right side of my vocal cords became paralyzed, which made talking almost impossible and then with the damage that my lungs sustained I had very little breath support to force the air out.   

I felt that my voice was my strength, of everything I lost my vision, my leg, the use of my right hand and my right leg along with that the ability to write or draw and I will probably never walk independently again but if I had my voice I could still… something.

                On January 3^rd 2002 I went in to have an implant put in my right vocal cord. The problem was that the right side of my vocal cords weren’t closing; they just let the air pass over them without moving which made my speech even more incoherent.

Before surgery they wanted to put in an Intravenous catheter so they could give me antibiotics and other medications, hmm. But it was like my veins had a mind of their own. Every time they stuck me my vein would either roll, collapse, blow or just disappear; Ya, I was stuck by a lot  of  different highly qualified people. I suggested they try my foot but they didn’t want to so after trying both elbow creases, both forearms, both hands, a couple fingers and my wrist there was not a phlebotomist  I didn’t challenge, we jokingly said that I would be a good final exam . Almost every different location was with a new person after what seemed like half the day they called in a pediatric doctor and he got a line started, of all places, in my foot. By that time I was pretty black and blue in my arms. I suggested my foot because when I was a toddler I got really sick and that was the only place those doctors could get an IV started; I used to look at that scar all the time.

Once they got me fully under sedation they put a central line in me and took the IV out of my foot.

. During the surgery the doctors had to wake me up so I could say something; they needed to hear me speak so they could try to position the implant in a way that would give me some kind of voice. Those doctors however had never heard me talk before and during that brief time I was sure I heard MY voice, the one I was so desperate to get back but as quickly as it was there it was gone again. they kept moving the implant around until they were satisfied with the placement of it and then woke me up. I was a little more than disappointed but my family and the friends I still talked to were not, I could talk better and that was all that mattered to them.

I still hate my voice and I don’t imagine that ever changing but I can talk and I suppose that’s what matters. In crowds and wherever it gets too noisy I don’t talk much if I talk at all.  It is hard for me to talk loudly, it makes me cough and it will make me gag the longer I have to do it.  

                It seems so small, that losing my voice would be so big for me and, now, my voice doesn’t bother or embarrass me so much; I just want to have the volume that most people have.

A break for Christmas. .

 

Isaiah 9:6
For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

I thought I would share some of my favorite Christmas’s with you. I am blessed to still have memories of them!
Our grandpa was great, he was actually our step-grandpa but he embraced the role wholeheartedly. There were many Christmases when he would always arrive on Christmas day with no less than 5, 32 gallon trash bags full of presents and he would put scratcher lotto tickets in our stockings, we never won big but it was still very exciting, at least for me.

When I was small our grandpa came over in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning dressed up as Santa Claus, my parents woke us all up and snuck us down the hall and as we looked around the corner low and behold there was Santa Claus. He was filling our stockings but as we were peeking around the corner our miniature Poodle Peter ran out barking and nipping at poor Old Saint Nick and I heard “Santa” say “shoo” as Peter grabbed onto his pants and “Santa” tried to shake him off. That is a great memory, God bless my grandpa!

There were a few Christmas’s when my brother would come and wake me up in the middle of the night, with flashlight in hand and we would sneak out to see if there was anything we got that couldn’t be wrapped for whatever reason. One Christmas it was a bike for, I think my little sister and there was a skateboard, the skateboard might have been wrapped but it was pretty obvious what it was.
I was never a girly girl I always liked to play with toys that were considered “boy toys” like He-man and his pet tiger, Sheara and her Pegasus, dinosaur transformers, (some of which I still have). This one year there was a movie out called The Ewok adventure, and the stores had the Ewok treehouse village. I think that was all I wanted that Christmas, or at least the thing I wanted the most that year. When I saw that village with all the trees and the bridges and tunnels connecting the trees together, I was so excited. I loved that toy. I would not only put the Ewoks in the treehouse but He-man’s tiger and my dinosaurs.
One Christmas I was continually being woken up by a noise I didn’t recognize, it was like a very high squeaking like metal on metal but then it would stop and I would go back to sleep. My brother knew what it was and he was excited to show it to me, so he comes and wakes me up, flashlight in hand we go out to the den and right next to the Christmas tree was a cute, fluffy hamster. I have always loved animals and I loved that little ball of fluff.
t tolerate my parents and she had a huge problem with the farrier.t have a horse of my own I could ride for at least a year or two. My mom took me out looking for another horse and I would ride those horses and that was fun but I wanted a horse of my own. t think there were a lot of presents under the tree for me but we always got great stockings and that year was no different. After everyone had finished opening the gifts in our stockings then it was time to go over to the Christmas tree and begin opening up those presents but I only had a few to open so I sat and watched and would get excited for them when they would open at yet opened all their gifts when our parents tell me that one of my gifts was outside. Huh? So we all walked outside and there he was, because it was winter his coat was extra fluffy so he looked super cute. His name was Spirit; he had a long white mane and tail that I enjoyed brushing and braiding.

Our parents didn’t always have a lot of money and there were a few years when they would tell us that they weren’t going to be able to give us a big Christmas but I don’t remember a single Christmas that we felt shorted. For me, I couldn’t have ask for better parents

! I HOPE EVERYBODY HAS A JOYOUS CHRISTMAS!

Happy Thanksgiving

Psalm 95:1-6
“O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.”

^{I am thankful, though some days are hard filled with sadness and pain, I must praise Him always!}

 ^{I Wish everyone a Very Happy Thanksgiving! God Bless}

 

           

 

Wound care.

                The surgery on my nose was healing great but because I now had bone instead of Cartilage it was stiff and would hurt every time I touched it especially if I tried to itch it and forget trying to blow it. It took probably a full year for my nose to not be so sensitive, it still hurts occasionally but my nose wasn’t the problem.               

The bottom of my foot had become extremely sensitive after that surgery. I had that surgery so I could start trying to stand and eventually take some steps but the nerve damage from him cutting me and splitting and moving the tendons around in my foot and ankle was almost unbearable. The doctor had to prescribe me a nerve medication so that people could touch my foot without getting a huge reaction from me. When someone would touch the bottom of my foot I would spasm and they might have gotten kicked. The skin on my foot had become so tender; it was like new baby skin and because of the wound on my heel I wasn’t even able to wear a shoe.

Until the wound was better. after my surgery my mom and I would have to drive almost forty minutes, one way to see the doctor so he could dress the wound. We did that for I think almost a year but the doctor preforming the wound care on me was not a wound care doctor and he was using a method that seemed archaic and wasn’t working all that well, so my mom found a doctor that specialized in severe wounds and we started going to him.

The drive was just as long but we had become hopeful, except now my parents job would intensify.   

Instead of the old fashion wet/dry method that the surgeon had been doing now they would have to dress the wound twice a day and apply medication each time.

We had to drive out to Redlands twice a week for more than six months before seeing a change at all but I only had one foot and we had to get it better. . We saw only slight improvements in the beginning but the whole atmosphere was great. We enjoyed the people and really liked the doctor.  . I still had a good pulse in my foot but the circulation was now compromised due to the scarring so healing was very slow.  

Eventually we were going once a week but the wound just wasn’t getting better, they had hyperbaric oxygen chambers there that they used to help with wound care but somehow I didn’t qualify for that but thank God for technology.  A medical manufacture had a new invention and they brought it to the hospital and they wanted the doctor to pick three of his hardest cases, wounds that wouldn’t heal and I definitely qualified for that. 

They used a centrifuge to spin down my blood and separate the red blood cells from the white, which are the blood cells that heal and then they put the white blood cells directly on the wound. .   It was only supposed to take three applications and mine took twice as many but hey it worked.

So after taking antibiotics that made my stomach bleed and countless injuries to my exposed toes and foot and only twenty-seven months my foot was finally wound free and now I could finally do some standing which would turn out to be harder than I thought.

After care

The sore that had developed from my foot spasming in to the back of that cast was huge. It had become a fairly large wound, it was black, almost to the bone and it was now weeping onto my hospital bed but the pain continued and thus, so did my spasms, only increasing the size of the wound

The hospital couldn’t get my pain under control so they weren’t able to release me. They struggled with finding a pain reliever that would just make me comfortable and not sick.

My birthday was quickly approaching and I was stuck in the hospital, again but this time I was awake. Melissa, my younger sister didn’t want me to have to spend another birthday alone so the hospital brought her in a make-shift bed so she could be with me for my birthday.

However I wasn’t alone in the hospital room; there was an older woman in the bed next to me that just had back surgery and she was in a lot of pain. She continually moaned and would call the nurse for more pain medicine. My sister was so empathetic that the woman’s moans made her physically ill so in the wee hours of the morning she finally couldn’t take it anymore and she had to go home.

After twenty-one days they managed to control my pain so they were able to release me but they wouldn’t let me go home, because it was just my mom and I for most of the day alone in our house, if there were an emergency my mom would have no way to get me out of the house, because of the full leg cast so they would only release me to some kind of extended care facility and so the search began.

My parents didn’t have a lot of time to look for such a place but besides the obvious one, they must have kind staff,  there were only two criteria, #1 it must be clean and #2 it had to be close to home. They found the perfect place… or was it?

The place they found looked great, the caregivers seemed nice; they had a doctor that would come in about once a week and I had my own room with a bed close to the window. I had to take a medical transport van since I couldn’t bend my leg but I arrived safely in the early evening. All the paperwork for my admittance was being completed and I met a couple of my caregivers, they seemed nice enough. My older sister, Kim was hanging out with me while my parents finished tying up some last minute loose ends. At about 7:30 that night my parents came in and asked me what I had for dinner… Nothing. They went to ask why I wasn’t brought a meal. The reason was I was checking in during dinner time but they said that they would bring me a sandwich but after an hour and nothing, my dad just went and got me something to eat, so that was not a good start and this place was supposed to be the 5 star resort of care facilities. But we just figured it was just because of the circumstances and let it go. The next morning they brought me breakfast, which I think was cold so I barely ate it and but I just watched TV and napped for most of that day. My parents liked that there was going to be a doctor there in a few days because they didn’t like the way my heal was looking.  The next day they didn’t bring me lunch and same with the day after that. Later that day I took a nap and when I woke I had an  itchy arm and I mindlessly scratched it without looking but I noticed movement on my chest and looked down to see dozens of those little black Formica ants crawling on me. I was shocked, the ants were coming from the wall, they walked across the phone cord onto my bedrail and then onto me, fitting don’t you think.

The next morning the doctor was going to be there and my parents wanted him to look at my wound and maybe put me on antibiotics. The “doctor” comes in my room in the late morning, my parents tell him what happened and asked him to look at the wound, he looks at it looks at them and they say “what do you think”? Then he proceeds to tell them, “O I’m not a wound care doctor”.  Then he said that that facility doesn’t have a wound care doctor, my

Mom told them to cut off the cast then but of course they didn’t have a cast saw so my Parents with a lot of frustration said basically, “give me our meds and send Jennifer back to the hospital”. They said that they would need a doctor to sign for my meds because I had such powerful pain narcotics so my parents said fine, just send her back to the hospital and we will come back for them, hmm. When I got back to the hospital my parents made them cut off the leg cast and pull out all the other tubes. My mom questioned if that was the right thing to do; I wasn’t making her feel better about that decision because I threw up the entire way home

When I went into the hospital I was perfectly healthy and it was only supposed to be a three day ordeal but, while I was under the care of “health professionals”   I got a painful U.T.I , an infection not to mention the oozing ulcer on my heal.  But when they got every foreign tube out, it was like a miracle; everything cleared up and we quickly realized that it was the best decision for us; I had to go home to get back my health.

Later that same day my mom called up the facility to say she’d come pick up my pain meds now, they asked her to hang on when they came back to the phone they said, at first that they couldn’t find them, not acceptable! Then they said that they threw them in the trash, “to keep them safe and had forgotten and “accidently put them in the trash compactor and now they were gone”. again not acceptable, these were heavy narcotics that three different doctors had to sign off on. We were forced to file with the state board of drugs and the FDA but nothing really happened to them.

I was home and I was back to good health all we had to deal with now is

The wound on the back of my heal; we couldn’t imagine what a challenge that would become…

Surgery day(s)

17 Surgeries

In order for me to progress in my recovery I would need more surgery. My foot needed to be put back in a walking position and tendons needed to be split and moved around in my foot and ankle also my stump would need revising along with my face. Although I had many bones broken in my face the only thing that they felt comfortable about fixing was my nose. Somehow we got in touch with an orthopedic surgeon, that specialized in feet and he is also one of the top back surgeons, he was so sought after that he stopped seeing new clients but he decided to see me.

The plastic surgeon that actually did all of my emergency repairs came in to revise all the scars on my face, he took away the scar that was on my neck and he fixed my nose.

My mom again had to fight; they wanted to perform the two surgeries at different times but that would have been way too risky for me.  I spent a while in a coma and I have a pretty serious brain injury and with those two factors, putting my brain to sleep would be a setback in my recovery. I wasn’t afraid to get the surgeries though; it was just the month and the day that were unfortunate.

Surgery day was set, in preparation for surgery the doctor wanted me to go to unit-lab and bank a unit of my blood just in case. So my mom and I went to the blood bank, the hospital had set up the appointment and the lab would make the transfer to the hospital for us and them. When we got there and they couldn’t take my blood because my heart rate was too high, over 100 beats per minute but after a couple hours my heart rate was just below 100 bpm and they got it, I think they might have took extra as a precaution. I was feeling fine afterwards, I ate a bag of cookies or chips that they always offer after someone gives blood and we went home. Later that afternoon my dad stopped by Subway to pick us up sandwiches for dinner, chips and a drink. I got diet Coke and he transferred it into an empty water bottle so I could hold on to it easier, I took a big swig a ended up getting a very large, very painful air bubble stuck in my esophagus, I was trying to swallow it but I forgot to breath and the next thing I remember is my dad saying my name with a bit of panic in his voice. He quickly realized what happened then he yelled for my mom to call 911. I tried to tell them what happened and that I was fine but they knew better, I guess.  Maybe they were right because I got very light headed and sick. I threw up the whole way to the hospital. I didn’t spend long in the hospital though, after a few tests I was released later that night. For me now, the simplest things become huge ordeals.

Surgery was scheduled for July third, my nephew’s birthday again. The doctor said that I would be in the hospital for about three days but how could he know that really. So the two doctors were all lined up to do surgery at the same time; one on my face and one on my legs.  The surgery lasted around eight hours; the doctor that did surgery on my leg had to split tendons and move them around on my foot and he had to shave the bone and revise the scarring on my stump.

The plastic surgeon reduced the visibility of all the scars on my face and neck along with repairing my nose.  We had to give him a few pictures of me before my nose got smashed so he could try to make my nose look somewhat like my old nose. I don’t know if that worked but since he and the orthopedic surgeon were doing surgery on me at the same time, the plastic surgeon got a piece of my tibia that the other doctor had to shave off and used that to create my new nose. How many people do you know that can say “my leg bone is connected to my nose bone?”

After the surgeries were done I woke up with a bandage on my nose and a cast that went up to my knee. The morning after my surgeries my older sister called me on my bed side phone but I couldn’t reach it so the nurse handed it to me. As she was giving me the handset she dropped it square on my nose, ouch.

They propped my casted foot up on a pillow but still The pain was intense and my foot continually spasmed into the cast not knowing what else to do they took me back into surgery  and cut the tendons in all five toes, if I could hardly move them before now I would never be able to again. He also cut the tendons on the back of both knees and the tendons in both groins, which did not do any good in my opinion.

This time when I came out of surgery I had on a full leg cast; they cut those tendons to stop the spasms but when your mind is damaged you need to calm the mind down and the best way to do that is anti-spastic medication. This time the pain in my leg was nearly unbearable, my leg was forced to stay straight and my muscles didn’t like that one bit. My thigh would cramp so bad my dad would try to get his hand under the cast and try to rub out the knot so my muscle could relax. They finally called in a neurologist and he told them to increase my baclofen Meanwhile my leg continued to spasm driving my heal into the back of the cast and although we couldn’t see with our eyes what was happening my mom knew.  She had to fight for them to listen, she repeatedly said “cut off the back of the cast”.  It was now day five and they cut a small window into my cast, that’s when they saw it,   it was too late, the damage had already been done.

 

Please understand.

Please understand.

                I am in a wheelchair, I cannot get out of bed at six in the morning when I first wake up and hop on my computer and write a quick blog like other bloggers can. When I do get up I need to eat something because of a medication I take three times a day tares my stomach up when I try to take it without food. I almost always have something happening, doctors, therapy, school, doctors and other miscellaneous distractions throughout the day but I am trying to write all the time. Please forgive me and bear with me.

A place that fits

A place that fits

Philippians 2:14-15

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.

Before we knew it my in-home therapy came to an end and I finally qualified to go were my mom had been wanting me to go for months and since I no longer had insurance  through my past job, I was free to go were ever I chose and that place was Casa Colina in Pomona.

We didn’t have any kind of handicap vehicle and my dad had a full time job and my younger sister was a full time college student and was only able to go with us to help a few times, so my mom had to figure out how to get me in and out of her car on her own.  My previous insurance carrier, that denied my mom the most basic items she would need to care for me had finally come out to the house, at my mom’s request so they could see and understand what they had been denying us, after that we got the things my mom needed and  one of those things was a Slide board. People use a slide board when they need to move a person that cannot move themselves from one place to another like the bed to a chair; in this case it was from my wheelchair to the front seat of the car.

I was still really weak from all those months of lying in bed in a coma.                  When you lie in bed for almost five months while never moving a muscle your body begins to change, your muscles weaken from the lack of use, your tendons weaken and shorten and your joints lose flexibility. My family knew that was happening to me but every time they would try to move or stretch me my heart rate would sky rocket and my blood pressure would enter the danger zone so all anybody could do is give me sponge baths.

It had only been about ten months since my coma, I barely had the strength to keep myself in a sitting position so I was unable to help with the car transfers at all; my foot was curled in and under. They called it drop foot and even though I could no longer use it,   I still had feeling in it and it had become extremely  sensitive, so even if it wasn’t deformed I still wouldn’t have been able to put it down on the ground to help out in any way.  If it was just my mom taking me, she had to use the slide board to get me into car. ; And so, in August of 2001 I began therapy. I had entered into a new world this hospital would, in a way become like a second home to me. I came from a place of comfort and a community that accepted and embraced my position as an active participant to, not knowing where I fit in and who would notice me now. Not that I wanted to be noticed but I would have liked to have been acknowledged.

Casa Colina was great they treated me like I was a person from the start; no one talked down to me or treated me like I wasn’t cognitive or like I had become hard of hearing. We met all kinds of people from   all different walks of life from a high-schooler who got a brain injury when he hit a tree while snowboarding without a helmet to a young paralegal that was severely injured as her friend was attempting to pull into a parking lot.

I had therapy three hours a day, three days a week; physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. When I was released to go home from the last hospital I was in, the doctor had me on a high dose of Baclofen, an anti-spastic medication that relaxes your muscles; I was also taking blood pressure medicine and the combination made me sleepy so I didn’t have a lot of stamina but they made it easier for me to receive therapy.

I don’t think my pt. sessions were all that  exciting, I mean, I  don’t think I was strong enough to do much of anything but that is the point of rehabilitation, to give you strength were you’re lack it. My therapist, Dianne and Lisa definitely had their work cut out for them. Over the months I would struggle with myself and my mind that left me with a body that didn’t work. My body had betrayed me and the fight to reclaim it was daunting.  But they were great and kept working with me until, one therapy session, after what seemed like forty-five minutes I was finally able to role onto my side without help.  That accomplishment took me almost a year to do.

Sheila was my Occupational Therapist. I was now left handed so she helped me learn how to do things as a lefty. There are a lot of things people do with their hands but I only had one and I had to make that hand do things it wasn’t used to doing like button and unbutton a shirt. She also told me what would be a good way to do everyday task like brushing my teeth, to putting on my shirt. She gave me some great tips on how and what to do, for instance, put the toothpaste on your teeth first; my vision was so bad that I would end up smearing toothpaste on my hand instead of the brush.

Then I had speech. The thing I cared most about, my voice. Adam was my first speech therapist at Casa Colina.  He was right around my age. He was an okay speech therapist but he kept pressing me to hear myself and come to terms with my voice, I said “no, I’ve heard myself and I don’t need or want to hear myself again, so he dropped it, or so I thought. He asked me if he could start recording our sessions I said “as long as I don’t have to hear it”; he agreed and began recording our time together. Can you guess where this is going? One therapy session, part way through he said he was going to turn off the recorder and we continued to talk. Then he wanted to rewind the recording to the beginning when he was taping it because he said he wanted to change something that he had said, I said okay, thinking I would just hear him but he didn’t rewind it far enough and I heard a bit of the conversation that we were just having, the conversation that he said he wasn’t recording.  I felt tricked; he had been recording me the entire time. I was angry and upset at being forced to hear myself. I was trying not to cry and he just said “you have to deal with it, it’s like you lost your best friend” and, in a way that was true for me. My voice wasn’t great by any means, I couldn’t sing or even hum well but it was my connection to people and animals which was so important to me. I felt like it was my super power and I lost it. I mean, I could no longer walk or run, I couldn’t see and just to make sure my life wasn’t too easy I lost my way to connect with both people and animals. At the end of that session with Adam my mom could tell that I was upset and that made her upset, I told her what he did and she spoke to the therapy coordinator and that was the end of Adam. The speech Therapist I got next would turn out to be the best for me. Chip was great, we would talk like we were friends, and I think I was with him until he retired. Both I and my mom were sad to see him go but I didn’t dread going to speech after that. Therapy was, now going well, I was getting some strength back but in order for me to keep moving forward in my recovery I would need surgery… again.

A place that fits

Philippians 2:14-15

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.

Before we knew it my in-home therapy came to an end and I finally qualified to go were my mom had been wanting me to go for months and since I no longer had insurance  through my past job, I was free to go were ever I chose and that place was Casa Colina in Pomona.

We didn’t have any kind of handicap vehicle and my dad had a full time job and my younger sister was a full time college student and was only able to go with us to help a few times, so my mom had to figure out how to get me in and out of her car on her own.  My previous insurance carrier, that denied my mom the most basic items she would need to care for me had finally come out to the house, at my mom’s request so they could see and understand what they had been denying us, after that we got the things my mom needed and  one of those things was a Slide board. People use a slide board when they need to move a person that cannot move themselves from one place to another like the bed to a chair; in this case it was from my wheelchair to the front seat of the car.

I was still really weak from all those months of lying in bed in a coma.                  When you lie in bed for almost five months while never moving a muscle your body begins to change, your muscles weaken from the lack of use, your tendons weaken and shorten and your joints lose flexibility. My family knew that was happening to me but every time they would try to move or stretch me my heart rate would sky rocket and my blood pressure would enter the danger zone so all anybody could do is give me sponge baths.

It had only been about ten months since my coma, I barely had the strength to keep myself in a sitting position so I was unable to help with the car transfers at all; my foot was curled in and under. They called it drop foot and even though I could no longer use it,   I still had feeling in it and it had become extremely  sensitive, so even if it wasn’t deformed I still wouldn’t have been able to put it down on the ground to help out in any way.  If it was just my mom taking me, she had to use the slide board to get me into car. ; And so, in August of 2001 I began therapy. I had entered into a new world this hospital would, in a way become like a second home to me. I came from a place of comfort and a community that accepted and embraced my position as an active participant to, not knowing where I fit in and who would notice me now. Not that I wanted to be noticed but I would have liked to have been acknowledged in some way.

Casa Colina was great they treated me like I was a person from the start; no one talked down to me or treated me like I wasn’t cognitive or like I had become hard of hearing. We met all kinds of people from   all different walks of life from a highschooler who got a brain injury when he hit a tree while snowboarding without a helmet to a young paralegal that was severely injured as her friend was attempting to pull into a parking lot.

I had therapy three hours a day, three days a week; physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. When I was released to go home from the last hospital I was in, the doctor had me on a high dose of Baclofen, an anti-spastic medication that relaxes your muscles; I was also taking blood pressure medicine and the combination made me sleepy so I didn’t have a lot of stamina but they made it easier for me to receive therapy.

I don’t think my Pt sessions were all that  exciting, I mean, I  don’t think I was strong enough to do much of anything but that is the point of rehabilitation, to give you strength were you’re lack it. My therapist, Dianne and Lisa definitely had their work cut out for them. Over the months I would struggle with myself and my mind that left me with a body that didn’t work. My body had betrayed me and the fight to reclaim it was daunting.  But they were great and kept working with me until, one therapy session, after what seemed like forty-five minutes I was finally able to role onto my side without help.  That accomplishment took me almost a year to do.

Sheila was my Occupational Therapist. I was now left handed so she helped me learn how to do things as a lefty. There are a lot of things people do with their hands but I only had one and I had to make that hand do things it wasn’t used to doing like button and unbutton a shirt. She also told me what would be a good way to do everyday task like brushing my teeth, to putting on my shirt. She gave me some great tips on how and what to do, for instance, put the toothpaste on your teeth first; my vision was so bad that I would end up smearing toothpaste on my hand instead of the brush.

Then I had speech. The thing I cared most about, my voice. Adam was my first speech therapist at Casa Colina.  He was right around my age. He was an okay speech therapist but he kept pressing me to hear myself and come to terms with my voice, I said “no, I’ve heard myself and I don’t need or want to hear myself again, so he dropped it, or so I thought. He asked me if he could start recording our sessions I said “as long as I don’t have to hear it”; he agreed and began recording our time together. Can you guess where this is going? One therapy session, part way through he said he was going to turn off the recorder and we continued to talk. Then he wanted to rewind the recording to the beginning when he was taping it because he said he wanted to change something that he had said, I said okay, thinking I would just hear him but he didn’t rewind it far enough and I heard a bit of the conversation that we were just having, the conversation that he said he wasn’t recording.  I felt tricked; he had been recording me the entire time. I was angry and upset at being forced to hear myself. I was trying not to cry and he just said “you have to deal with it, it’s like you lost your best friend” and, in a way that was true for me. My voice wasn’t great by any means, I couldn’t sing or even hum well but it was my connection to people and animals which was so important to me. I felt like it was my super power and I lost it. I mean, I could no longer walk or run, I couldn’t see and just to make sure my life wasn’t too easy I lost my way to connect with both people and animals. At the end of that session with Adam my mom could tell that I was upset and that made her upset, I told her what he did and she spoke to the therapy coordinator and that was the end of Adam. The speech Therapist I got next would turn out to be the best for me. Chip was great, we would talk like we were friends, and I think I was with him until he retired. Both I and my mom were sad to see him go but I didn’t dread going to speech after that. Therapy was, now going well, I was getting some strength back but in order for me to keep moving forward in my recovery I would need surgery… again.

A fathers legacy

 

Luke 21:34 (NIV) ” Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap

                My birthday went smoothly; we had a jumper for the small kids while the adults talked among themselves. My biological father came; even though there were people that didn’t necessarily want to see him.  When we, my older sister Kimberly and brother Michael were    younger he would take us for the weekend or a week or so and we almost always would have a fun time. Then we grew up and realized just how irresponsible and immature he was, God definitely went with us on those days. He would do some pretty crazy things but the worst thing is how often he would drive drunk.   I really don’t know how often he would drive drunk with us but I am sure it happened and I, for a fact know it happened with me once. We were in Glamis, a place he loved to take us, now I know why and his drink of choice was diet Rite and Rum; one night someone a few camps over from us decided that they wanted the biggest campfire so they lit an entire bush on fire; a lot of the bushes in Glamis are large to huge so it lit up the whole area. I think I was around ten or so and I wanted to get a closer look so my dad hops on an A.T.C and tells me to get on the back so I did.  He then says something like “wanna see something cool?” umm…okay; then he start popping wheelies.    That scared me to death, I was yelling for him to stop while pinching his stomach as hard as I could and all he did was laugh. He did about three wheelies and drove with the front end of the bike off the ground for several seconds at a time but when you are scared out of your mind it seem like a long time.  I talked him into letting me get off and I just walked back to camp. The excitement of seeing that stupid bush on fire had gone away.  That was just one of the many foolish things he did but most of them didn’t involve me.

All my life alcohol has played some kind of role. James, my biological father drank every day, I used to think it was funny when I was young I would just laugh at what an idiot he would become. Alcohol takes control of your mind and makes you do things you would never do if you were of sound mind, like pick up a burning log, with bare hands in order to reposition it in the campfire.

The hardest thing for me is, I still have people in my life that drink and drive.  It really hurts, these people see me, not every day but they know how hard my life has become and yet they still choose to drink and drive. If you don’t have the integrity or the strength of mind to not drink without getting drunk then you shouldn’t be drinking at all and please, please, please whatever you do don’t get behind the wheel or on anything that requires a lucid person to operate!  Too many people are seriously injured or killed by this foolish, senseless, irresponsible act; it changes most of the lives around you and it’s not the legacy anyone should want to leave behind or be remembered by.

When my dad, James, would come to see me at the hospital when I was in my coma,  my parents said he would always come smelling of alcohol. It was so hard for the family knowing that their daughter, sister, niece, aunt and granddaughter was put in this position because someone was driving drunk and here this man, her father, had the gall to show up intoxicated.  Before I was injured he didn’t really want to see  me; I don’t know how many times he stood me up, in fact I had a Christmas and a birthday present in my car for him when I was hit. I kept them with me just in case. Of course my mom and dad never knew about these antics James would pull while we were with him.

James left my mom when I was just three years old and my mom remarried a man who’s my real dad, we may not share genetics but he raised me and my siblings without hesitation; he stood up and became the dad James wasn’t willing to be at first and then couldn’t be as we grew and the addiction took over and controlled his life. Sometime, shortly after my party he left California and moved to Colorado, leaving all his kids behind including a young son and we didn’t hear from him again until the summer of 2009.  It was June 16^th when we got a phone call telling us James is dyeing and they don’t expect him to make it through the night. So we scrambled to make flight arrangements and hotel accommodations. We took a redeye flight, there was   a layover in Las Vegas When we got to Denver one of our aunts picked us up from the airport, we couldn’t catch a cab because of my wheelchair and we got to the hospital. When he heard that we were coming that lifted his spirits and his vital signs showed a slight improvement.

When they found him, he was unconscious in his car in a parking lot of a local liquor store. When the paramedics checked his alcohol levels he had no alcohol in his system, the doctors said he hadn’t been drinking in days. No one knows why, maybe he couldn’t afford it any more or he just wasn’t feeling good. His kidneys and liver had shut down from the years of drinking, when we saw him his legs were swollen from all of the fluid that his kidneys and liver could no longer process and he looked jaundice.

He really missed out by not being involved in his kids’ lives. My sister has three wonderful children including twin girls with so much personality and her son is super smart and my brother’s kids are kind, polite and respectful and are becoming wonderful young adults

We had never been to Colorado, so we took advantage of the short time we had and saw family that we hadn’t seen since we were kids and met cousins we had never met. It was good to visit with our family even though the circumstances were terrible. We could only stay for a couple days but in that short amount of time I saw just how much his lies and empty promises affected his brothers and sisters, he had isolated himself from everyone who loved him and hurt the people who still cared the most. After we went home the hospital moved him to a hospice facility, he had no insurance and his debt continued to climb. James died on June 20^th, two weeks before his fifty fifth birthday.  They classify alcoholism as a disease, I don’t know if I fully buy into that I just know, alcohol can injure and destroy people’s lives and always affects those around you and devastates the ones you love.

It is so sad that throughout my life I have seen the affects that alcohol has had in people’s lives and though, I may not have always understood it, I never chose it to be a part of my life. Ironically, it has become the story of my life but it will not be the legacy I leave.

Birthday celebration

 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble. Psalms 46:1

Turning 25 is a pretty big deal for some people, some people make a list of all the things that they would like to have done by that time, I never did but I did figure on being married with a house and yard for all my animals. I was just cruising through life living day to day and happy about it. I had responsibilities like most people but I was content and happy with my life all the same.
I spent most of my 24th year in the hospital so I wanted to have a really big party when I got back home; I remember talking about it when I was in the last hospital. I was telling my family and the few friends that still would come to see me about all of the people I wanted to invite and there was one particular person that I just had to make sure was there. I can’t explain why but she was very special to me. She was a volunteer; she would do absolutely anything that we asked her to from organizing the front desk and taking out the trashes to the occasional odd job like helping someone at the front window but the thing she was best at were call backs. At the beginning when an employee would adopt an animal out I liked for that person to do the call back but we were doing a lot of adoptions and it got to the point that they would take up too much time; we had a system set up and several call backs needed to be done every day and Pat was one of our best people for that job. She was a wonderful person to work with; we had gotten so close that sometimes I would call her grandma playfully, so of course she had to be there. As my party was drawing near my old boss came over and I was getting more and more excited about my party so I wanted to make sure that she invited Pat to my big event. I went over to where her and my mom were talking and said, “make sure you invite Pat”, she looked down at me and said, “I’m sorry Jen, Pat passed away while you were in the hospital”. I was crushed and hurt, crushed because I lost someone who meant a lot to me and hurt for not being told sooner they just let me be excited and talk for all those months when they should have just told me. When I started to cry upon finding that out all I remember my friend saying to my mom is, “at least she still can do that”. Meaning, I still had the awareness and ability to be sad in that situation because some people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury have lost that ability and have to be retaught or they don’t get it back at all.

The day of the party was finally here, we sent out invitations to everyone we could think of, I am a fan of the television show Survivor and despite the odds I survived so that became the theme.
Russell and his family came, the first time Russell saw me I was hanging out of my car covered in blood but he still held me, the next time Russell saw me I was awake and talking but, you know, I don’t know if I ever thanked him. How would you thank someone for saving your life somehow “thank you” just doesn’t seem like enough.

Jimmy, the guy I met in the hospital also came. My grandma and uncle flew down from Northern California and my family that I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years came down from Colorado. Lots of family friends, church friends, fellow employees all of whom had been there to support me during my long hospital stay. I even saw one of my favorite teachers from high school and some of my best friends.
The party started in the early afternoon and around 150 people came it was good to feel a tiny bit of normalcy even if it was just a facade.

Delay

 

For those of you who are following, or are trying to follow me; my computer crashed. We are trying to get it fixed but it is slow going. I posted to Facebook however I know not everyone reads it from that media so, if you could please bear with me I will post as soon as I get my computer back. Thank you all so much, Jennifer

In-home therapy begins.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding

Of life’s secrets and hidden things.

A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind…

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;

A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

Khalil Gibran

This is only a small part of this poem but I thought it fitting to me.

Once I got home most of the people who used to visit me in the hospital stopped coming to visit.  I had quickly become a nonmember of society and now I isolated my mom, who quit a job that she was very happy at to become a full time care giver for me.  She is also an artist and she would fly around the country painting murals on walls in homes and in the bedrooms of model homes. She had to give that up too because I needed care 100 percent of the time.

Both my mom and I were scared at my return home. My mom had no idea how she was going to care for me The insurance company hadn’t approved the things required to care safely for me and I was leaving a place that had all the right equipment and would give me 24 hour attention if I needed it. I actually wanted my favorite nurse, Kathrin to come and care for me at home, she knew me and knew what to do already.

My work hadn’t officially fired me; nobody knew what my outcome would be but after eight months and only small improvements they finally had no choice but to terminate my employment with them. I still had insurance that would pay for my care for another eighteen months until I qualified for Medi-cal. I was in-between being well enough to go to a hospital that centered in rehabilitation and one designed for convalescing so my mom fought to get me in-home therapy, thank God she fought for that… I think?

So I began   in-home therapy.

The first physical therapist I had was young and during one of his therapy sessions with me decided to wrapped my ankle with some kind of tape, I think it was probably athletic tape but he then couldn’t get it unwrapped so, he then, in his infinite wisdom  proceeded to try to cut it off with straight kitchen scissors. Ya, that didn’t work, instead he cut a perfect diamond shape into the top of my foot. It didn’t really hurt because the tape was so tight it kind of left my foot numb.  He panic and looked up at me, his face had turned white and he asked me “what should I do?” I felt something running down my foot as the blood began to run  down my foot towards the white cable loop carpet and quickly said “get me off the carpet”.  He called my mom to help him and long story short he didn’t come back. The next physical therapist I got my mom and I both liked a lot; he was the guy that said, “I liked working with brain injured people the most, cause they only get better”. He got me to move my twisted foot a little and even got a half of a wiggle from my big toe.

I also received occupational therapy and, again the first therapist I had was just strange, she asked to give me a shower because she wanted to show me how to bathe again. That was to bizarre, I wasn’t even able to use my arms and I could barely use one of my hands very well yet and one I couldn’t use at all. I couldn’t brush my hair or my teeth how did she expect me to wash myself. So, NEXT!…

The therapist I had next I loved, she was super aggressive and there were so days she made me cry from the pain she caused me while attempting to get my right wrist and arm stretched out but I thank God for her.  She work with me and tried to get more functionality out of the one hand I was still able to use. She was easy to talk to and one day as she was stretching me, my mom was talking with her and we found out that her husband was one of the paramedics that saved my life on the helicopter He was the actual man that brought me back, he was the man that said, “you were trying to talk to me threw all your pain, you were fighting, so I fought too.” He came to our house to meet me and he told me that I was the most severely injured person he has ever seen in his twenty years working as a paramedic.  Our local newspaper came out and did a write up; it was so neat for me to meet the man who thought me important enough to fight for even though my prognosis was so grave. Praise God for Frank and people like him!

The next fund raiser I went to, that the humane society put on was called “The Raccoon Ball”.  It was held in the summer of 2001. I was a little healthier my parents had taken me to the dentist to have my teeth fixed and to the hair salon to have my hair highlighted. The animal shelter where I had been working wanted to show their appreciation for all the work I had done while I worked there so they gave me an award. The award they gave me was called the Mutts award.   That award was created in honor to commend Patrick McDonald for his bringing to light the plight of shelter animals with his Mutts comic strip.

Of course Patrick McDonald received the first Mutts award I got to meet both him and his wife, they are wonderful people.  When he heard that I was injured in a car crash he wrote me into one of his comic strips, he then had the original framed and sent to me. I am the only real human to be depicted in one of his published comic strips. Talk about an honor!

The Animal Shelter I worked at was a no-kill shelter, our shelter worked it out so we didn’t have to pay any adoption fees when we wanted to take an animal out of other “kill” shelters and bring it to ours to be adopted out, it was an awesome arrangement. Once or twice a week I would go to Animal control facilities and select adoptable animals to take back to prepare them for adoption. More often than not I would have to write down the animal’s intake number because their waiting time wasn’t up yet and this prompted the name Shindler, because of the list I made. I had a way with animals, it was instinctual, and it was like I could calm them without having to say a word and when I would talk it seemed to calm them even more, that is why losing my voice is so devastating to me .

I was now back in my old house but not back in my old room, my younger sister took that room because it was larger and I then had to move into her old room.

I came home with a manual wheelchair but the hospital fitted me for a power chair so not long after I got home they delivered it to my house, Even though I was legally blind. So my new room, though much smaller than I was used to ended up working out nicely. The hall way in our house was like a T, if you turned left and went straight you were in my new room but right before my doorway on the right was another doorway; my sisters room.  I could not have made a turn like that. I had extremely poor vision, it was just bad and now I was in a power chair, yikes. I did a fair amount of damage to that house.

Anniversary

 

“We’re all put to the test… but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?”

                                                                David Mamet   

                                Today is the anniversary of the crash that forever changed my life and altered my path.

I think I have pretty much always been a strong person, since I was a small child and I would take the blame for things my older siblings did, to standing up for a friend when she wouldn’t stand up for herself.  I always thought I could handle anything that was thrown my way but, I never expected something like this. Even though I don’t have any enemies I still wouldn’t wish this life for them.   

I try to make this day a celebration of survival instead of the day that took my life away. I always try to do something I will enjoy, maybe next year I’ll go fishing and finally catch that elusive Sheep head I’ve been trying to catch for the past seven years. Tonight we went out to dinner, which I always enjoy and my younger sister, Melissa got me a truly wonderful and creative gift; she got me a Star.  Not a star that you can walk on or like Brad Pitt, although I wouldn’t mind that but a real star in the sky. You can’t get much better than that.

Thank you all for your support and PLEASE REMEMBER… DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE!  

 

 

 

Coping and living again.

Adjusting to my new life wasn’t easy. The only animals I got to bring from my old house were the fish in my 30 gallon salt water fish tank. It hadn’t been cleaned out in almost a year so it was a good thing; we had to take out more than half of the water so we could move it.   After we found a good spot in the house to put it, we filled it back up with clean saltwater and put the fish back in and they seemed to be happy to be swimming in clean water again.

Whhen I moved out of my family’s house I left my cat, Jack and he welcomed me back as if I had never left, sleeping with me every night in the crook of my arm just like he did before I moved out of the house.  He welcomed me back into his life like I’d never left, that shows how animals live in the moment and not in the past. He accepted me, whole heartedly despite all my new disabilities.

 

 

Jack was the best cat ever, in my opinion but he had a terrible start in life. I was  working for an animal hospital at the time I got him; my job was Kennel technician although occasionally I would help out wherever I was needed. On this day I was in the back when a woman walks in with a 12 week old kitten. She said I got this kitten from the pet store around the corner from you guys. My kids were playing catch with him and one of them fell on him and hurt him bad so I want you guys to put him to sleep.      Her kids were literally throwing the cat and catching him. When the veterinarian unwrapped the kitten from the towel he came wrapped in, to assess the damages, she immediately saw that it wasn’t life threatening.  Reluctantly she went to tell the woman that it was a fast and easy fix but that mom just said,” no, I don’t want him, I’ll go buy my kids a new kitten”,  she left before anyone could say another word. The vet went back and did the surgeries and now we had a kitten that needed a home. .She fixed what those kids did to him, which took less than five minutes and neutered him at the same time. Fixing his physical issues took less than a half an hour but fixing the post dramatic stress that those kids caused him took a little longer. Whenever we would let him out to play, he would run and jump over imaginary objects as if he were being chased and when he would attempt to jump onto counters or table tops he couldn’t do it. He most definitely had psychological scars, so one of the receptionists suggested that we call him Jack; for Jack Nicholson’s portrayal in the movie The Shining and so he became Jack. After a little while I finally talked my mom into letting me bring him home. Once I got him home all his psychological issues, all but went away, There was just one incident when my two year old nephew was running across my bedroom, Jack stalked, chased and pulled  him down by his diaper and then Jack, seemingly satisfied with himself for conquering the child left the room. Mikey wasn’t hurt at all just surprised; Jack wasn’t acting out in aggression but it was more like a game to him because Jack loved to play.  Jack became a loving and confident cat, not at all fearful of anything or any person, with the smarts to know where he could go and what he needed to stay away from. I really miss him. Out of the five dogs I had when I was hurt, I was now down to just two dogs; Buck, a senior Rottweiler/lab cross who was stupid happy and Fred, he was in the car with me. Fred was a Golden Retriever, Shar-pei cross, he did not have a good temperament even before the trauma so there was no way I could keep him, so my friends found him the best home where, after dealing with his own injuries became a great dog, thanks to his new owner. Thanks Ellen! As for my dog Buck, I asked my brother if he could care for him and he said yes. His daughter would lay on him and he just loved all that attention. Thanks Habicht family!

My two horses we moved to my neighbor’s house where I could still visit them but since I could no longer ride them they too eventually had to find new homes too. This was the hardest for me, while I love all animals I had a very special affinity to horses, I thought I was always best with them. It was especially hard because I trained them and I promised them I would never get rid of them. I know they didn’t know that, how could they but I loved them so much I never wanted them to be hurt or their spirits to be broken, especially my colt, Journey who was so meek and mild in temperament with absolutely no fight in him.

  We kept them the longest, I don’t know why, my mom says that they hoped to one day get me back up on them but I suspect it was just to give me time to except the reality of the truth, which was I will never ride again. In the beginning I would sit outside on a beautiful day and cry and think to myself, “this would be a perfect day to go riding” and think to myself of all the places I would go, with Journey running freely by my side and then I would look down at myself in my wheelchair and realize that, that can never be again.  My mom came outside with me, we cried together about all of the things we lost; we both lost so much, neither one by choice and she, in her wisdom said, we can be sad and angry about what happened, Lord knows we have the right to be or we can choose not to be, it’s our decision.  Journey was almost 4 years old, I would ride him but not a lot; I was teaching him to lie down. I like to teach animals tricks and I would have liked for Journey to be in the movies.   In those first few years it became very difficult when I would find myself with nothing to do but sit and think. For people that have a brain injury having a memory is good but it can also just cause more pain. Some people get all most completely better and are able to go back to their lives pretty much where they left off but for those who can’t, like me it can be terrible.   I remember how to write but, I can’t; I remember how to read, but I can’t I even remember how to braid my hair but I can’t do that either. On most days I’m happy and in a good mood but I think we all have those not so good days when the world seems to close in on you and you can barely breathe. There were many times when I felt like a second class citizen just by the way people spoke to me or the way people would treat me, like I don’t matter. I am no longer an easy person to deal with; I am considerably slower and it can be difficult to have a conversation with me but I do try. I definitely don’t fit in, in a fast pace world I am the fly in the ointment.  I except that and try to act as normal as I can. I can’t be the me I was but, change is a part of life and I go with the flow as best I can. In the beginning there wasn’t much I could do and, actually I don’t think that there was much I wanted to do besides watch Television and movies. One of my favorite shows to watch was the price is right. Funny story; I got hooked on that show while I was in the hospital and actually got pretty good at guessing the right price but I  would watch that television show in the mornings before the therapist would come to get me for therapy. One morning I was sitting in my wheelchair watching the price is right and they came to get me, I got so upset, that like a child who is made to do something that they don’t want to, I cried. I know, how ridiculous, my brain injury really set me back. But I digress. My family included me in what they could but, I could no longer just hop in any car. It took two people to put me in the car and to get me back out again.      The cost of a handicap van was astronomical and I didn’t have that kind of money so when family and friends gave us the money we were elated and now, I was able to go out again.

Life goes on and the impossible task of recovery.

Please forgive me for not posting in a while.

 Lord, help me to except the things I cannot change

The brain injuries I received are what keeps me in a wheelchair.  My cerebellum was damaged. Your cerebellum is what gives you balance, coordination and aids with your overall movement, I don’t have any balance and I can get jerky or should I say my movements can get jerky at times.     Also there was damage to my brain stem that was apparent during the time I spent in the coma. Your brain stem controls basic bodily functions like breathing, blood pressure and your heart rate. I also think my Temporal Lobe was damaged, that controls auditory stimulus and, my biggest whoa, speech.  I have other issues that are related to my brain injuries but I won’t go into those.

The brain injuries may  be The reason I’m in the position I’m in today but without them I don’t know how I would  cope. I mean I lost everything, every single one of my animals, my vision, my voice, the ability to sketch or draw and write all together, let alone walk.  Just because I lost my leg doesn’t mean I could not have gone back to my life, I still could have done every single thing I did before, just maybe a little slower and with even less coordination but I still would have done it.

When I was back in the first hospital, while I and my family had our own trauma to deal with, there were many other families going through their own traumas.   July seems pretty late for a school to be having Prom but early one night there was a large group of kids, all decked out for their prom in gowns and suits, whose limousine was hit by a drunk driver. The driver of the limo was in critical condition as were all of the kids. There were so many kids in that limo that some were sent to other hospitals in the surrounding area.  That is not how any one wants to remember their prom night. There was also a family whose two sons had been hit by a drunk driver. One son was in a coma and the other boy died. Those parents had to be at the hospital hoping and praying that their precious son would come out of his coma, while at the same time planning a funeral for their other son. These are just two of the families whose lives were forever changed in the worst way possible because of one poor decision that someone made.

When I got to the fourth hospital I was still extremely weak but slowly I was regaining some strength back. Ironically this hospital had very specific rules about restraint, even if it was necessary to keep the patient safe. My brain and body was having a hard time dealing with the entire trauma it was going through so it kept wanting to retract back into the fetal position, my right arm was curled up tight on my body and my left leg was trying to do the same thing. During my time in a coma my foot had started to contract and curl inwards, I think that is what was causing my knee to hurt excruciatingly bad so every night my dad would have to tie my leg to the bed to keep it from contracting back up towards my chest. The hospital made my parents sign a, kind of release form so the hospital would not be liable; however when they sat me up in a wheel chair nobody could tie me in.  I still was extremely weak and it really hurt me to sit up for hours and I would lean forward so I could relieve the pain in my tail bone. More than once I fell forward in my chair and couldn’t right myself because I lacked the strength and, though I never fell out of my wheelchair it still  always terrified me.

On most days I received three hours of therapy; 1 hour of speech. They wouldn’t take out my Tracheotomy until I had a good, strong cough, which was funny because I could cough it out, I would cough and it would go flying on more than one occasion. After only a week or two of being in that hospital they took it out so I could start trying to talk. At the beginning though speech therapy was mostly just re-teaching me how to eat, control my nerve damaged lips and strengthening my tongue. I received one hour of Occupational therapy, which consisted of a lot of stretching, prior to my injuries I was right handed but now that hand had become unusable  and now I would have to learn to do everything with my left hand.

I also received one hour of Physical therapy which was more stretching and working with my core strength, because I had none.

The therapist knew their jobs and did them well but some of the other employees did not, and had no business working with newly injured people.

They had days when they were under staffed for whatever reason and they would have to call in the nurses who normally worked in Registration and it was some of those nurses who seemed to have no empathy.  Those were the nurses you didn’t want caring for you.

One of those nurses dropped a newly injured man who couldn’t walk into his wheelchair causing the poor man a lot of pain, I heard him scream and my nurse said he cried for a long time. I to had a couple of bad experiences. One of “those” nurses, after getting me into my chair then dropped something heavy Right Square on my big toe. Once I dropped a manhole cover on my big toe and that hurt less. I started to cry and she said “don’t cry”, I asked her if she could look at my toe and she refused. Later that evening when my parents came to visit I asked my mom if she could take my sock off and look at my toe. The nurse crushed my toe nail and my sock was sticking because of the blood. My toe nail has never grown correctly since.

I met a few new people while I stayed in that hospital and we quickly became friends; after all we had similarities or things in common. One of the guys I met was Jimmy; he had become paraplegic while in Glamis. He didn’t put on his five point harness. It was at night and he didn’t see the bowl and rolled his sand rail, he was thrown and the buggy landed on him. I don’t know if he said he was drinking or not but I used to go to Glamis all the time and a lot of people who go there go just to get wasted. It’s like a big party where some people feel like they have the right to throw responsibility and caution to the wind and, unfortunately a lot of bad decisions are made. He didn’t get a brain injury but his life will never be the same. He had a fiancé but she said she didn’t want to be with someone that required so much care. One or two of the people were their because of injuries that they had received from the life path they chose for themselves. One man was shot and made paraplegic because of his involvement in a gang; he was shot by a rival gang member.

There were a lot of sad stories at that hospital and, I’m sure that there are similar stories like that en hospitals all over the country and the world.

While I was in the hospital recovering life was still happening on the outside. My roommate was still caring for my animals.  my work stopped doing the television show sometime after I was injured but they still had their fundraisers to put on.  One good thing about this hospital is they had a van that could transport patients and so I was able to go on my first outing.

The first event I got to go to was called Comedy Night. I still looked terrible, my hair had grown back in an ugly ashen brown color, I was missing my front tooth and my arm was stuck to my side with a withered looking hand but, hey I still got to be involved in something from my previous life. I was super excited, my family came in to the hospital early that day, and they brought me something nice to wear, curled my hair and put make-up on me. They made me feel great!

I was really oblivious to how I looked, like a little kid I was in my own world.

I got to the event, feeling good, I was so excited to see my old friends, and I was all smiles, missing tooth and all. It was still early in my recovery and I had extremely poor vision, which my mom said she was so glad about. I felt good, never thinking how scary I looked to people and how sad people would be at the sight of me. There was one girl, we worked together, I was her boss but we had become good friends, I didn’t know it but when she came over to say hi she was crying and that was the last time I saw her. I never realized it but now that makes me sad. I guess I lost most all my friends with what happened to me.

I can do none of the things I did before, no running out to grab a bite to eat, no catching a movie at the last minute and no going over to my friend’s house to watch a scary movie and then just falling asleep on the couch. Yup, I’m super sad about that.

One of my friends; she was my boss from my previous job but we had become good friends. I have always loved kids and her son is the most amazing kid I have ever known. He knew, since he was three years old what he was going to be when he grew up. We have a common bond, we both love insects and it was that link that made us become close. We would go to bug fairs together every year, he was much younger than me but we had a special bond.  He was just seven years old when I was injured, in first grade, of course he was devastated then he somehow heard the story of One Thousand origami cranes, in that story someone has to make one thousand origami cranes and there wish will come true. He told his entire first grade class about me and asked them to start making Cranes, I don’t know if they got all 1000 Cranes made but they did a lot.  Him and his mom would visit me in the hospital and it was him who had the idea  of having me spell out words since I couldn’t voice words and my lips had nerve damage I couldn’t always mouth the word I was trying to say. It was really too bad that I was a terrible speller.     That sweet little boy is now in college, his goals have changed only slightly, now Entomology is his minor, and we are still friends despite all my limitations.

The hospital was preparing to send me home, my parents were trying to prepare the house but they didn’t know what to expect after all I hadn’t lived with them in a few years and now their once independent daughter was coming home needing full time care. I was scheduled to go home in the last week in February but the insurance company hadn’t approved the things my mom needed to care for me, they got my released pushed back a week but that was all they could do so on March 1^st, 2001I came home, ready or not . I entered back into the world, no longer active and independent but, dependent and wheelchair bound.  My new life was about to begin.

Update

I am sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’m getting over an illness that I’ve been struggling with for almost a month. I am taking several different medications and I believe I’m getting better, so I will try to post in the next few days. Thanks for baring with me.

Waking up.

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is nothing but a candle that turns into a roaring flame.

I arrived at the third hospital at the end of October, 2000; where they continued weaning me off the ventilator; my blood pressure was still high but they, now had that under control with medication.  My eyes were opening off and on but, there was never a hint of recognition. While I was waiting in the hospital’s hallway, waiting for my room, my dad was asking me questions and I was trying to responded to him.  As my parents were preparing to leave that night, my dad said “We’re going to pray” and my eyes closed, then they said” amen” my eyes opened. I was waking up.

Everyone comes out of a coma differently; once I started to wake up, it took me several days, maybe even weeks. The doctors had been saying all along that they thought I was blind, because my eyes had no movement and my pupils wouldn’t dilate when they shined a light into them. They could see that I was coming out of my almost four and a half month long coma.  When my mind started to come back, the first day I remember; my parents came into my hospital room, I couldn’t see nor could I move any part of my body except my head. I knew that they were there. I knew their voices and though my vision was non-existent at the time I still knew it was my parents. When they were at my bedside I mouthed I love you to them. (my first day outside)

When I was a part of the Animal shelter, one of the things we did was a weekly television show at the local cable station, were we would show different adoptable dogs and cats on a local cable channel in hopes that we could get those animals adopted.  My mom asked them if they could put some of the segments with me together, when my family got all the “me” segments together they, then rolled in a television set and VCR and played those tapes at my bedside.    The hospital staff kept those tapes playing every waking hour and, I just stared in the direction of the voices I used to recognize.

When I got to the hospital initially the breathing tubes that were going down my throat, were helping me breathe but I was biting down so hard on them that I broke two of my teeth. To avoid more complications the doctors performed a Tracheotomy on me a few weeks after I fell into a coma. I don’t know if it is because I had tubes running down my throat or my brain injury but I never got my voice back and that hurts me the most. So I now had a hole in my neck and, therefore was unable to talk at all, so they had to come up with a way to communicate with me.  People, who know me, know that I am not at all coordinated and since now I was unable to move any part of my body except my head and face my dad came up with, blink once for yes and twice for no. Sounds simple right? Not for me, I was just relearning how to control my face and it wasn’t easy, partly because I had receive quite a bit of nerve damage to the left side of my face from the cuts; I could blink but not really on command so it was decided, blink for yes and stick out my tongue for no.

I wasn’t totally blind but everything was very dark and I only had some peripheral vision due to the optic nerve damage from the anoxia. In the beginning, I couldn’t talk but my hearing was still good, so I knew a lot of what was happening with my roommates and in different parts of the hospital.  I am not sure how I communicated but one of my therapists called me “a nosey momo”, whatever that is, because I always needed to know what was happening in the hospital.

My family made the decision to allow the doctor to amputate my leg as a group and they said that, when and if the time came they would all tell me as a group, Ya that didn’t happen. I was unaware that my leg was gone, after all I could still feel my ankle, foot and toes and sometimes they would really itch and usually my dad would scratch it for me. My therapist would work with me, they put a shoe on my right foot but never my left and the thing is I never thought about it.  My mind was so injured, that I became like a child again, mentally and I wasn’t able to put two and two together. One day my sister, Melissa came to visit me and I asked her if she could have mom and dad bring me a shoe for my left foot. I think that scared her and she called my parents. My parents then called the rest of the family but no one wanted to come, they all chickened out, saying we don’t want her to hate us. Later that evening my parents arrived with no shoe. I had a lot of short term memory issues but I do think I remembered the shoe. I still couldn’t really move and I had no voice but when they told me I had no leg the whole hospital could hear me wail, the first sound I had made since that fateful night. I actually was so loud that nurses came into my room to see what was happening to me.    That was a hard night, my parents trying to explain through their tears what had happened to me.  My grandma was right; what was I going to do with just one leg?! I wasn’t angry with any one, just overwhelmingly sad.

God was with me and the shock of hearing that news was not long. My brain injury helped me not to focus on the bad news and by the next day I think I was pretty much over it.  My therapist were amazing, My body was still traumatized, my muscles were tight and contracted and it was not easy for the therapist to get them stretched back out, which they never did. My speech therapist had her work cut out for her. I didn’t have a voice to work with and I hadn’t eaten, by mouth for more than five months and, I had a lot of nerve damage to my top lip

One of my many therapist over the years said,” I love working with brain injured people.”, “They only get better” We love that and it’s so true!   In an effort to help my lips to regain their movement she used vibration; at first it felt like she was giving me an electrical shock but in just a short time it was starting to help. The best and the worst was when I finally regained enough control of my entire mouth to eat and drink. The worst was the thick liquids, thick water, yuck! The thick apple juice wasn’t that bad but when it came time to try foods they would only give me mashed potatoes. Normally mashed potatoes aren’t that bad, some are even good but, not these. I think the worst part was they gave me them with almost every meal. Like a kid throwing a temper tantrum I threw a fit and sometimes refused to eat. Then the day came when the speech pathologist said I can have my family bring me something from home or the store as long as it fit the criteria, soft and pasty. I picked liverwurst I used to love Liverwurst and Deviled Ham sandwiches, so my family brought them for me and they fed it to me with a spoon and I loved it.

Before we knew it, it was Thanksgiving, I still had pretty much no muscle control but they would sit me up in a wheelchair and take me around the hospital. I had no muscle control in my neck so my head would just fall forward if no one was holding it up for me. I got to have Thanksgiving dinner with my family there celebrating with me. I think that Thanksgiving was the best and the saddest Thanksgiving my family has ever celebrated.  The unfortunate ending to that day was I wasn’t able to keep any of that dinner down.

I was sleeping a lot at the beginning but my family and some of my friends would still come to see me. My parents brought our family dog, that when I was still living with them I would take her horseback riding with me, her name was Sasha and my roommate brought me one of my dogs, Fred, the first dog I rescued.   It was really good to see them but it just made me sad.

 

At Christmas my sister, Melissa came to spend the night with me, so they rolled in a kind of chair that could almost lie down and she spent the night with me in my hospital room. It was very sweet! After my brother and older sister moved out, on Christmas eves, my younger sister and I would sleep in the same room and she wanted to keep that tradition alive.(our Christmas card,2000)

My stay at that hospital seemed to come to an end very fast, before we knew it, it was time for me to move on again. On my last day in that long term care facility I got my first shower in over six months, it was awesome, a nice sendoff gift. (my therapists saying goodbye, I look so much better)

I was off to a new hospital that specialized in rehabilitation; we had no idea what would be in store for me.

Moving day

. My mom and I had a disagreement on that day, as my mom pulled out of the parking lot she waved goodbye with a heavy heart; none of us knew the trauma that would unfold in just a few hours.

My family found some comfort in this song.

After almost two months, the hospital that saved my life decided that my condition was stable enough that I could be moved to a hospital that was more set up for the long term care of patients. But before I left that hospital one of the respiratory therapist told my
parents, “ you need to try to get her off the ventilator, that’s the most important thing right now.”
The doctors predicted that I would be on the ventilator long term, so they wanted to send me to a hospital that could provide me with all the long term care I still required.
The fear and the thought that I might die started to fade and now it was all about getting me off the breathing machine and getting my blood pressure under control. As my condition improved, they began trying to wean me off of the ventilator , I’m guessing by slowly lessening the amount of oxygen I was getting and allowing me to try to breathe on my own. It wasn’t easy, it didn’t always work I wouldn’t breathe or I would breathe a little bit on my own then just stop and the machine would kick on and help me. I don’t know if my brain was still too damaged or the fact that my diaphragm was still too weak from the rupture but I wouldn’t fully get off the ventilator for a couple more months.
One day, while still in the second hospital they started bouncing the pay checks of the nurses, so some just stopped showing up for work. The hospital was in financial trouble so they had to file Chapter eleven. My parents would now have to show up at every shift change to insure there were going to be enough nurses to provide my care. The hospital was slowly sending their patients to other facilities. I was one of five remaining patients as my parents were looking for the best place for a recovery. I was still in a coma and I wasn’t the only one that required constant care. So my insurance company decided to move me but the hospital they wanted to move me to was too far away, too far to be a reasonable option. My parents were in for another fight. The insurance company was going to send an ambulance to pick me up and take me somewhere out in Los Angeles County, which is not at all close. The case manager at the insurance company told my mom, “I’m coming to get her and there’s nothing you can do about it.” O Yaaa! my mom, angry and probably scared, called the insurance company and threatened to call the police and file a kidnapping charges against them if they tried to move me without their approval. My dad was on the other line trying to rally troops once again to help me get into a rehab hospital instead of their choice, a convalesent home. You have got to love my parents!
The constant threat of death wasn’t there anymore but now the uncertainty of the unknown was hanging over my loved ones but I was still critical and still required full time care. Some of the nurses weren’t showing up for their shifts and what few patients there were, weren’t receiving the undivided attention that they deserved. It was up to the families to make sure their loved ones were getting the care that they needed; all the while trying to find the right facility for them to be moved to.

My condition was still not good, I was still a 7 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which just meant that the brain injury was severe. Nobody really knew what that meant in terms of functionality. Every time someone would ask a Neurologist if he thinks “this” will come back, it would always be the same response; “we’ll just have to wait and see”. Doctor, will she remember her life?? “We’ll just have to wait and see”, Doctor, will she remember all our names? “I don’t know, we’ll just have to wait and see”. By the end of it they all determined that they could be Neurologist… We’ll just have to wait and see.
My mom remembers walking through different long term facilities crying thinking “this is no place for a young person”. The doctors didn’t have any hope that I would have any kind of recovery at all, so they sent my parents to convalescent hospitals. She remembers touring some of them thinking how bad they smelled and how dirty everything was. The only hospital she liked was out of my network, so with great urgency she called my boss who’s boss was on the board of her primary care hospital, they pulled out the big guns. She didn’t have a lot of time, the hospital that I was in was getting ready to close their doors, the hospital of choice only had one bed available so, she was in a race. My boss then called the Big boss, and he called the insurance and told them, “you send Jennifer where ever her mom and dad wants her to go, I’ll pay if you won’t, what a great man.
God is “such a last minute God”.
So, while still in a coma I arrived at my third hospital and this is the hospital I woke up in.

Moving day

. My mom and I had a disagreement on that day, as my mom pulled out of the parking lot she waved goodbye with a heavy heart; none of us knew the trauma that would unfold in just a few hours.

After almost two months, the hospital that saved my life decided that my condition was stable enough that I could be moved to a hospital that was more set up for the long term care of patients but before I left that hospital one of the respiratory therapist told my
parents, “ you need to try to get her off the ventilator, that’s the most important thing right now.”
The doctors predicted that I would be on the ventilator long term, so they wanted to send me to a hospital that could provide me with all the long term care I still required.
The fear and the thought that I might die started to fade and now it was all about getting me off the breathing machine and getting my blood pressure under control. As my condition improved, they began trying to wean me off of the ventilator , I’m guessing by slowly lessening the amount of oxygen I was getting and allowing me to try to breathe on my own. It wasn’t easy, it didn’t always work I wouldn’t breathe or I would breathe a little bit on my own then just stop and the machine would kick on and help me. I don’t know if my brain was just still too damaged or the fact that my diaphragm was still too weak from the rupture but I wouldn’t fully get off the ventilator for a couple more months.
One day, while still in the second hospital the hospital started bouncing the pay checks of the nurses, so some just stopped showing up for work. The hospital was in financial trouble so they had to file Chapter eleven, the hospital was slowly sending their patients to other facilities. I was one of five remaining patients but we all had to find a place to go. I was still in a coma and I wasn’t the only one that required constant care. So my insurance company had to move me but the hospital they wanted to move me to was too far away, too far to be a reasonable option. My mom was in for another fight. The insurance was going to send an ambulance to pick me up and take me somewhere out in Los Angeles county, which is not at all close. The insurance lady told my mom, “I’m coming to get her and there’s nothing you can do about it.” O Ya! my mom, angry and probably scared, called the insurance company and threatened to call the police and file a kidnapping charge against them, got to love my mom!
The constant threat of death wasn’t there anymore but now the uncertainty of the unknown was hanging over my loved ones but I was still critical and still required full time care. Some of the nurses weren’t showing up for their shifts and what few patients there were, weren’t receiving the undivided attention that they deserved, It was up to the families to make sure their loved ones were getting the care that they needed; all the while trying to find the right facility for them to be moved to.

My condition was still not good, I was still a 7 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which just meant that the brain injury was severe. Nobody really knew what that meant in terms of functionality. Every time someone would ask a Neurologist if he thinks “this” will come back,, it would always be the same response; “we’ll just have to wait and see”. Doctor, will she remember her life?? “We’ll just have to wait and see”, Doctor, will she remember all our names? “I don’t know, we’ll just have to wait and see”. By the end of it we all determined that we can be Neurologist… We’ll just have to wait and see.
My mom remembers walking through different long term facilities crying thinking “this is no place for a young person”. The doctors didn’t have any hope that I would have any kind of recovery at all, so they sent my parents to convalescent hospitals. She remembers touring some of them thinking how bad they smelled and how dirty everything was. The only hospital She liked was out of my network, so with great urgency she called my boss. She didn’t have a lot of time, the hospital that I was in was getting ready to close their doors so, she was in a race, my boss then called the Big boss, and he called the insurance and told them, “you send Jennifer where ever her mom and dad wants her to go, I’ll pay if you won’t’, what a great man.
God is “such a last minute God”.
So, while still in a coma I arrived at my third hospital and this is the hospital I woke up in.

More hardships and Loving Support

Everyone’s life is hard to a degree; it’s how you handle it that decides how you live it.

On July 10^th my sister Kim, called the school I graduated from to put me on the prayer chain. Russell, the very same man who came to my aid the night before, was in the office and overhearing the conversation said that he needed to tell my parents all that happened and what I had said, just in case. Russell came to the hospital later that week to speak to my parents, he told them all he did and what I said to him; my dad, through his tears said “Thank you for stepping in for me and holding her when I couldn’t “

The first couple weeks after my crash my family and friends filled up two waiting rooms to capacity, but only a very few of my friends got to actually come in and see me.   I wasn’t exactly presentable, you know what I mean. This picture was taken 9 days after my crash, my family’s faces still red from all the tears.

The entire left side of my body received the most damage, from my eye down to my mangled foot.  The doctors didn’t address my broken bones for almost a week; they still didn’t think I was going to live. They kept my left leg stabilized, holding it down while keeping it stretched out, since in the crash six inches of my tibia just disappeared, and the engine completely crushed all the bones in my foot.

While I was fighting for my life in the hospital, my community of friends and family were rallying support for me. The Press Enterprise, our local newspaper, ran a couple of articles to promote the blood drive and channel 4 news came out and covered it.  The blood drive got so big that they had to move it to the Riverside Convention Center. They said that this one blood drive restocked the entire Inland Empire Blood supply when the blood banks were particularly low.  It blows me away, that I got so much support and love. Thank you friends and family!

The nurses worked day and night making sure I, in my fragile condition, would have no further complications but they didn’t realize what had already happened on the inside of my body.

When my seat belt failed causing my chest to hit the steering-wheel, the trauma and force of that impact caused my diaphragm to rupture; but it took almost a month to reveal itself.

The damage to my left leg was irreversible but they still had to keep it clean, about once a week they took me into surgery to get all of the dead skin off and to keep it healthy. Then one day the doctors noticed my heart rate and pulse were getting dangerously high and assumed the reason was my leg. They thought my leg went septic, even though they had just cleaned it the day before and it was fine. They called my parents down to sign the consent forms for the amputation.  My mom knew it wasn’t my leg but she still had to fight to the point of tears before she could get anyone to listen. She had been telling them for five days prior that I was showing signs of being in pain but she could get no one to listen. She didn’t want to sign the consent form that would allow them to take my leg if it wasn’t the leg causing my system this stress. The chief surgeon of the hospital had been on vacation and had just gotten home on that day; so the doctor who was in charge in his absence decided that he should call him. From what my mom told me it sounded like a one sided conversation, “ no, no, yes, no, no, yes sir”, and then they went and did what my mom had been asking them to do for almost the entire week, go back and look at my CT scans. That’s when they saw it; my intestines were crowding up into my chest cavity pushing on my already stressed heart and my bruised lungs.

The chief surgeon came in to preform emergency surgery and he got everything put back where it was supposed to be, but the scar from this surgery took months to heal. My already traumatized body was overtaxed with having to deal with so many injuries.

Our pastor, at that time, was awesome through this whole thing. Pastor Dennis, or Pastor D as we called him, sat and prayed with my parents every night.  My car crash interrupted not only my life, but my parent’s lives too. That fall they had planned to go to Italy for their anniversary, they would have to put that trip on hold, indefinitely.

A month later the doctors spoke to my family about my left leg and amputation. One of the doctors was very negative and told my mom, “ It doesn’t matter where I amputate her leg, she’s not going to wake up let alone walk again”. They said that I would most likely be blind and vegetative with no memory, ha ha, they don’t know my God.

If the bones in my foot had been only minimally damaged then they would have talked about bringing in a cadaver bone to replace the one that was missing but the doctors said, “If she can ever walk again, we can’t fix all of the bones in her foot, so she would drag that leg behind her.” It had to be done, but the decision was still excruciatingly hard for my family. I think my grandma had the hardest time with it; she said “what is a 24 year old young girl going to do with one leg?” You have to remember I was extremely active; I had my two horses, an ATC I loved to ride, my own five dogs, a salt water fish tank, an Iguana, a parrot, and the best part of my job at the animal shelter, rescuing dogs and cats from certain death. So the decision was made and on a hot day in August they took my leg. It wasn’t easy, the doctors wanted to take my leg above my knee; I thank the Lord for my mom and her willingness to fight for me because they left four inches below my knee. Thank God she had the foresight to demand those four inches. Walking is hard enough for me and I can’t imagine trying to walk with an above the knee prosthetic.

This verse is great, it offers hope.

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10

Comatose

BE ADVISED: NOBODY HAS SEEN THESE PICTURES OUTSIDE OF IMMEDIATE FAMILY. THEY ARE NOT PRETTY AND THEY MAY BE GRAPHIC FOR SOME PEOPLE.

In an effort to not hide the truth and reality of what drinking and driving can do to people’s lives, I need to tell my story unedited.

It’s remarkable, how one bad decision can completely devastate the rhythm of a happy family and a person’s life, changing it forever.

By the time we arrived on the roof of the hospital my body had begun to shut down. It had suffered so much trauma already, it was done. My prognoses was grave, they didn’t know if I had internal damages yet, but they could see the bruising and my ravaged legs, along with the finger that only seemed to be hanging on by a piece of skin.  My blood pressure was uncontrollable and my pulse was fluttering. They immediately took me into surgery to stop the bleeding and stitch up the lacerations on my face and hand and, they had to reinflate one lung and drain the blood. They put in a chest tube to keep it from filling back up, while pumping me full of fluids to try and combat my out of control heart, blood pressure and get me stable.   Since my heart stopped three times while in transit, it was also struggling to get a grip.  I suffered a closed head injury, so they put something that looks similar to a bolt on the top of my head to measure the pressure caused by my swelling brain. 

At first they couldn’t worry about what seemed like the small things, like my bloody, matted hair and a smashed nose; they had more urgent things to concern themselves with, like any internal damages that I might have received.

My left leg suffered a tremendous amount of trauma; not only had my femur had been broken in two places, I was missing six inches of my shin bone and they would later discover that all the bones in my foot had also been crushed from the car engine. Within thirty days my family would be faced with yet another difficult decision, the amputation of my leg.

The purse that the police gave to the paramedics, was, in actuality the bag I brought with me to the beach that day.  The hospital had no way of identifying me, so I became a Jane Doe. Surprisingly I wasn’t the only female to be admitted without identification that warm night. I was in fact the eighth Jane Doe to be brought in, and so, we were all given middle names according to the order in which we arrived and so, I became Jane Hydro Doe.

My wallet had slipped down and was wedged under my broken seat; it wasn’t until a few hours later that the police found it. They now knew who I was but, they didn’t know who to call. I had a list of phone numbers for work in my wallet but none looked promising so they started at the top of the list and eventually got in touch with my boss, she gave the police my parent’s number. It wasn’t until three in the morning when they called my parents’ house. All they would say is you need to get here as soon as you can, they wouldn’t tell them more than I was involved in a car accident and they needed come right away. Despite my mom’s pleas to know more, all they would say is, “it’s serious, get here as soon you can”.  The hospital was around ten miles from their house but I’m sure it seemed like it was in another state.

The crash happened around 10:30 pm and my parents got to the hospital around 3:30 am due to the purse mix up. When my parents finally got to the hospital I was still in surgery.  At 6:30 am they were finally able to go in and see me.  Shortly after they walked into the room I started to crash again, my blood pressure dropping suddenly, so they were asked to leave. My mom would later tell me that when she walked into the room I was barely recognizable; I had a breathing tube in my mouth, IVs in my arm and a heart monitor but the most shocking sight was how swollen my body was from all the fluids they were giving me. My eyes had become just slits in my face and my ears just holes in the sides of my head.

Even though by this time I was probably comatose, I still feel like my subconscious was still able to hear and when I heard my parents come in, I could hear the fear in their voices and the incredible pain this was causing them.

Life and Death

It is a fact, in this country a drunk driver kills or mames a person every 15 minutes; I am one of those people.

The crash happened on a dark, isolated road that was out in the country. I think it was no coincidence that there were so many people there at that time of night. It was no coincidence that Russell and his family happened upon the accident scene right after it happened and were able to call for help. No coincidence that he would hold me and pray with me before I slipped into unconsciousness. God sent Russell and his family my way because He knew that this wonderful man would come to my aid despite the risk to himself. He was the first to arrive upon this horrific scene, he called 911, and without hesitation he came to my side. You can imagine, I’m covered in blood, literally from head to toe, and he didn’t know me, yet he was willing to leave his own family in the car as he ran over to hold me up. He held me in a way to comfort me, all the while thinking I was dying. I looked up at him and said, “It hurts”, and he said “I’m with you” and then I said “I’m scared” and he responded by saying “ I’m going to pray with you”, and as he did I slipped into unconsciousness. God was definitely with him on that night. Russell was the last person to hear me speak in my original voice; no one has heard it since. Without Russell I probably wouldn’t be here, I thank God for him.

It just so happened that there was a Fire station right around the corner from the crash site. So when the paramedics arrived several minutes later, they triaged the crash scene and quickly determined that I was the only one with life threatening injuries and began working to get me stable for the ride to the hospital. It took a team of firefighters and the Jaws of Life almost an hour to free my broken body from the twisted metal. I was struggling to breathe and semi-conscious for most of that time, the paramedics tried their best to keep me breathing while the firemen worked. When the paramedics were freeing me from my vehicle I became combative, which is the normal reaction. When someone or something is trying to kill you, it’s either flight or fight and my injured brain started to fight.

I believe that the first paramedic to arrive, seeing that I was having difficulty breathing, began to give me artificial respiration with a bag and mask since I was still trapped in my vehicle. I am guessing my heart didn’t stop until the paramedics laid me down on the gurney. I don’t know for how long, I think only God, the paramedic’s and the doctors know that. My entire head and face were covered in blood from the lacerations and broken bones, but he got me breathing again, but only briefly.

When a paramedic arrives on a crash scene, they are faced with a terrible decision. They have to assess the crash site and determine who to save first. It’s not easy; if there is more than one critical person, they will help them both but, they have to consider that persons odds for survival, and then treat accordingly. At my crash scene I was the only one that was physically injured, the drunk driver that hit me was DOA, and the family that hit me from behind was shaken up but otherwise unhurt. My prognosis was not good, to say the least. A paramedic told me, if there had been anybody else who was less critical we would have saved them first, they didn’t think my condition was survivable. He told me that he has never, in twenty years, seen anyone that was as critically injured as I was, let alone survive. All of the medics and police who were at the scene thought I wasn’t going to make it, so much so that they actually called out two coroner vans, one for the drunk driver and one for me, but the van for me never made it. It just so happened that while in route to the scene of my crash it was hit by another drunk driver, and that gave the paramedics time to save my life.
I was semi-conscious through the entire event, except when I wasn’t, the times I went into cardiac arrest. They gave me something at the scene to stop me from fighting so they could stabilize me, treat me, start IV’s, open up my airway, the side effect of that was amnesia of the incident. They would tell me later its better you don’t remember this! They got me loaded into the ambulance for a short drive to the awaiting flight for life helicopter, and that is when, I’m told, I went into my second cardiac arrest. The paramedics in the ambulance got me resuscitated before they did the transfer; they then loaded me into the awaiting Helicopter. The police, in an effort to identify me, grabbed what they thought was my purse and gave it to one of the paramedics on the helicopter. I think almost immediately after the transfer I went into my third cardiac arrest, and I believe this was the longest one, according to the records, eight and a half minutes.
A year later I asked Frank, one of the paramedic’s, why he decided to save me since my prognoses was so bad, and he said, “You were trying to talk to me through the whole thing; you were fighting, so I fought too”. He was my Angel; God sent Frank and his team to save my life on that fateful night. God knew what my future would be.

The Crash

When a person is injured as catastrophically as I was, there is little hope that they will survive or be cognitive or still have any of their memories.

I was hit head-on; my seatbelt failed which caused my chest to hit the steering wheel, and my head and face to hit the A-frame of my car door. When my chest collided with the steering wheel, the force of that caused all the ribs on the left side of my body to break, and some of the ribs on the right. One of my lungs collapsed, and the other lung was punctured by one of the ribs, and thus, that lung filled with blood. When my head and face hit the A-frame, the impact of that caused a few different things to happen all at once; several bones in my face were broken, including my nose and left eye orbit, my face was cut in several places which caused nerve damage to the left side of my face. This sudden impact  caused my first two brain injuries one is called blunt force trauma the other called sheering, resulting from my brain being jossled around.

I was hit head on, but the collision was more to the left side of my car, which forced my engine to encroach into my cabin, crushing and trapping my left leg. I was also hit from behind. That added to the brain injuries causing additional damage to my brain stem. I am not sure which impact caused my door to blow off but, in any event, I was left hanging out of my vehicle, and that gave my dogs their way to escape.

The other people that were part of this life altering event were in shock or in another place, deceased, but a wonderful man saw me, and bravely came and gave me support. He held me up, and prayed with me; I said a couple things to him, the paramedics came and carefully took me out of my car, and then, I died…

My Homecoming

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It was March 1^{st, 2001} when I was released from the hospital to come home, back to my parents’ house.  My birthday is July 16^th, that means I missed my birthday, “I slept through it”, so when it approached July, there was both a terrible day and a celebratory day. We decided to combine the two days. I          wanted to have a big party, to celebrate another year and my survival of that awful event in both my families and my lives. We invited everybody, my old friends, family I hadn’t seen in about twenty year, some of the new friends I met while I was in the hospital and most importantly some of the people who saved my life.

I was a sight, my hair was barely grown back, my nose was broken, I had scars across my face and neck, and, I think the freakiest thing, my one missing incisor. Yup, I was styling for sure. The Survivor/birthday party went great though, and it was really good to see how much support I still had.

 

A cataclysmic event

I’m not the me I was. I’m in a different form; I have a slightly different face, a different voice, less vision, a totally different body and, a different personality.  

                In the summer of 1998 I moved into a small, apartment like house that was on five acres of land. A portion of it was fenced for my horses and attached to the house were 23 dog kennels.        I was the manager at a no-kill animal shelter and I would go to other “kill” animal shelters and rescue adoptable animals. I, then took them back to my house and cared for them until they were ready to be put up for adoption. There were no plants in the yard so I planted roses, blooming bushes, a small tree and I tried to grow a little lawn. I loved it! I rode my horses as often as I could and I also had an ATC that I rode in Glamis and Pismo beach.   I loved to train, I trained my horses and dogs, and even my cat was kind of trained.  That was, before July 9^th 2000…

                I had spent July 9^th at dog beach, celebrating my nephews 6^th birthday with my entire family and my sister in laws family. I had gotten their yellow lab, Maggie a toy that floats in the water and I took 2 of my 5 dogs with me that day. We spent the day having tons of fun with our dogs. Maggie running and swimming out to fetch her floating toy and the other dogs just playing in the surf.

That evening my siblings and I stopped for a bite to eat and, we all went our separate ways for home.  It wasn’t too late, around 10:00 pm; I was less than a couple miles from home when everything stopped. 

I was involved in what nearly ended my physical life and, ended my active life;   A car crash.

In a split second, I lost everything. No more horseback riding,  No more driving to my sister’s house to make or create dinner, no more going to my parents’ house to soak in a hot bath, and no more training or rescuing dogs and cats.

I suffered an incredible amount of damages to my brain and body; I spent more than four months in a coma, and a total of eight months in four different hospitals before I was released to go home. Only I could not return to life on my own; I had become irrevocably and permanently disabled. So I went home to live with my parents, without question they brought me back home and that is where I am today.