My Story Chapter Two

    Through the haze of the drug cocktail IV I was getting I could hear voices speaking in subdued tones not far from my hospital bed. The two surgeons  who tried desperately to put my neck in traction and ending up having to fuse the vertebrae were talking to my fiancée of 11 years.  they told him that at the age of 39 I was paralyzed from the chest down, my hands were paralyzed as well, I would never walk again, i would need to use a catheter  and  would need help with moving my bowels for the rest of my life.

There was a long and awkward pause before anyone spoke again. I tried to open my eyes and found i was blind in my left eye. I couldn't open it because of the ridiculous amount of bandaging and tape. That's when I noticed all the tubes and the ventilator helping me breathe. My heart began to race and suddenly I realized where I was and why I was there. Panic rose in my throat and every fiber of being wanted to scream...but I was mute due the long tube in my lungs and mask wrapped tightly around my face. I weakly lifted my arm and stretched a useless hand out to a nearby nurse and managed to touch her elbow. After an awkward motion toward the direction of my eye, she explained to me that during the accident, my head hit the windshield and my cataract implant had been dislodged and ripped through my eye. They didn't expect me to regain my eyesight in that eye. Luckily, I did. Although now I have to wear a contact lens in my left eye.

One of the doctors spoke again and I listened attentively as he gently uttered the next words to the man I loved more than anything in the universe. He told my fiancé Eric that he had no reason to feel guilty if he felt the need to put me into a nursing facility since my family was unable or unwilling to help him with my care. Eric told both surgeons that he would die before seeing me in a home. Then he leaned down over my bed,  placed a huge red teddy bear holding a heart that said, "I love you" on it, under my arm, kissed me gently on the forehead and told me that no matter what happened we could get through it together. We would start a new life and forget about everyone who had forsaken us. I had only seen him cry one other time and that's when his Gram died...but he was crying then and so was I ...with joy, regret, relief, happiness, remorse, gratitude, sadness, and a love so deep and wide it forever cut a trench in my heart...