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...

                                               

My Story Chapter One

Easter fell in March in 2005 and it was an early morning on the Saturday before when I was driving to the medical clinic to have an emergency check up on a persistent case of pneumonia. Suddenly, I started to cough uncontrollably. The car only swerved a little but I began to hydroplane on a patch of wet leaves along the edge of the same old road and the car began to spin out of control.

The next thing I knew I had driven up over an embankment backwards and hit a small tree from behind. I was thrown so violently against the back seat, my head hit first and my chin was jammed downward into my chest. Little did I know my spinal cord snapped in two and most of the vertebrae in my neck were crushed.

It seemed liked forever before help arrived. I remember trying desperately to move my arms... it was as if they were buried in cement. I knew right away I had used up all the free chances God had given me throughout my life and felt the familiar presence of  my guardian angel fleeing from my side. I tried to move my legs… not even a flinch. A fleeting thought kept me from full-fledged panic. Maybe they were trapped under the dash or some other part of the totaled car.

It must have been shock that kept me from going insane with fear as I waited endlessly for someone…anyone to come to my rescue. Finally, I remember a man putting a coat over me because I was cold from the chill still blowing in the late March wind and a big blue tarp because he said they had to cut me out of wrecked G. rand Am. I remember the helicopter coming from a distance and I remember the police officer telling me if I had worn my seat belt I’d be dead and thinking well that would have been better. But then the nice paramedics must have given some sleepy time drugs because I don't remember anything else until ...