December 27, 2004, the day I was to go with him to the airport. I decided to dress up as sexy as I could for him; for a conservative person like me, it wasn’t much, but in my tight jeans, black spaghetti top, and black leather jacket, I felt beautiful. I put on extra makeup and my large golden hoops, making sure to wear my hair curly, the way he liked it. I guess had I known the outcome of my trip, I wouldn’t have worn what I did, but at that moment, I was in love and invincible.
I arrived early so that we could make out and talk once again of our plans. It sounded do-able as we planned for Josh to go home and sober up. He was to get a job and finish High School where we would meet back in Colorado in April so that we could start planning our marriage. Josh expressed his desire to stay in Colorado and feared returning home, but I convinced him there was no other way. I knew he needed his parents and their support; they could be the authority I could not. I made him promise me he would go home and do what he had committed to do.
The time to leave came too quickly. His friend wanted to take him to the airport and I asked if I could ride along. The three of us squeezed into the small, red, two seated Mazda Miata. Since it was David’s car, he was going to drive and I would sit on Josh’s lap. I was so excited to have an excuse to sit so close to him. The seat belt wouldn’t fit around us and I was excited as I felt his strong arms around my waist as he told me he would be my seat belt. We pulled out of the subdivision and I was content. The contentment was short lived, as was our trip when my life changed forever.
I don’t remember much, just a minute here and there. I remember having to sit in a chair as someone bathed me. I remember a family friend sitting at my bedside. I remember asking where Josh was and I remember being told he flew to Florida and hasn’t been heard from. I remember my aunt coming into the room crying. I remember my father telling me I could do it; I could walk out of here. I remember the painful ride home and I remember sleeping.
I felt as if I were living in an incomplete dream, a life that was about me, but not really my own as I watched through medicated eyes the events I had no control over. It was only later that my parents helped fill in all the gaps.
On our way to the air port a car pulled out in front of us. On impact I hit the windshield knocking me unconscious. I was pulled from the vehicle by paramedics and then rushed to the nearest hospital. It was upon arriving there that they informed me of their concerns of either a broken neck or back, which usually results in paralysis. They also expressed a concern of brain damage and fear of a concussion due to the impact which had caused blood to run from my ears and nostrils. My parents cried as they recounted their experience of arriving in the emergency room seeing me covered in blood, bruised and battered and the trauma it caused them and my sister as she was forced to leave my view for fear of fainting at seeing my condition. They tried to convey to me the seriousness of my condition and how close I was to losing my life. After several tests and hours of excruciating pain it was determined that I had shattered my Lumbar One Vertebra. This is the vertebra in the center of your back. If one were to bend over it is the one where your back curves. Due to its high location they thought for sure I had some paralysis. However, doctors and nurses alike were amazed that while several fragments of the bone lay against the spinal column, none had punctured it, so I had maintained complete use of all my extremities. If that wasn’t miracle enough they were again amazed that my brain function seemed to be normal and although I had smashed my head against a windshield at fifty miles an hour, I didn’t even have a concussion. While these were blessings, there was still a lot of trauma and an extreme seriousness to what I had suffered. It was then concluded that I would need surgery as soon as they could find a neurosurgeon and trauma team to operate. The surgeries were then scheduled for the 29th and 30th of December.
During the first surgery they entered my body through the left side, where the trauma surgeon team moved all of the vital organs around and detached my diaphragm to give the neurosurgeon access to the spinal column. The neurosurgeon team then carefully encased all of the bone fragments in a titanium cage and extracted bone from my hip to add to my new metal cage to make sure that the bone would then be able to fuse into its rightful place, restoring my lost vertebra. Two rods were also placed alongside the cage to allow movement in that area of my back and hold the cage in place. After five and a half hours I was then returned to the Intensive Care Unit where I was put under heavy sedation until surgery the following morning.
The next morning I was again taken into surgery where they then entered my body through my back along the spinal column. The doctors put in two large rods so that I would have no loss or limitations in my movements. After this five hour procedure, I was then again returned to the Intensive Care Unit where I received a blood transfusion to replace all the blood I had lost. I stayed in the hospital for another two weeks learning how to walk with a walker, then with a cane, and then with nothing at all. The doctors said it was okay to use a cane for a month or so, but according to my parents, I wanted to walk out of the hospital on my own.
After my three week stay in the hospital I was released and able to return home with my family where I would continue to work on my recovery. Once I returned home, I became more aware of my situation and what had happened to me. The hardest thing for me to overcome was the pain. Even though I was highly medicated, the pain was sometimes so unbearable that all I could do was lie in my bed for hours as I tried desperately to remember what had put me into these circumstances. My family was a very large support to me as they answered all of my questions several times and explained that due to the head collision I had “bruised my brain” in the area that effects hearing, sight, and memory. Since it was a bruise it shouldn’t be permanent and things would return to me with time. They also explained that back pain is the worst type of pain a person could have. Had I not have been as heavily sedated and medicated then literally the pain alone would have killed me. The pain was so severe it can send a person in shock and stop their heart. However, due to this sedation, I may never remember the accident or my time in the hospital. My family taught me to look at it as a blessing that I don’t remember much of the accident; for me though, that’s three weeks of my life I don’t remember and it was scary for me as I tried and piece together other people’s memories, in time making them my own. Although this bothered me, my parents helped me see that all I needed to focus on now was my recovery.
Although I had my families support, I felt more alone than ever. I didn’t fully understand what had happened to me and I felt like a burden as my family took care of me, feeling as if all of it were my fault. I was rendered utterly incapable of performing the simplest of tasks. My mother bathed, fed, and dressed me. Yet, all the while I was wondering why Josh had left me. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t stay with me in the hospital like my other friends and family did. My mother got upset every time I tried to talk about him. She said it was his fault I was in the car and she was bitter about the fact he left me while I was still in the hospital. My heart was broken and heavy just as my body was. I ached in ways I never knew I could hurt. Every moment I was awake I hurt from the inside out wondering what I had done so wrong to be where I was. I wanted to badly to be strong. I wanted to recover quickly and brush off my broken heart, but both tasks felt impossible. I tried to teach myself to take things day by day, telling myself my life will be better for all of this, but such thoughts were easily clouded and lost. Was this really my punishment for falling for a silly boy? I didn’t think so. In fact I felt as if everything that happened to me was entirely my fault and my fault alone. I was the stupid one who decided to get into a car without a seatbelt. I was the one who had gotten hurt and it was my fault my family was hurting due to my pain. I didn’t share these thoughts though because I knew they would only be dismissed and I felt comforted by the love and support that surrounded me despite my decisions.
Due to the medication and pain, my day consisted of me sitting or lying on the couch for hours until I was finally tired enough to sleep. Because of the medication, I had a very limited attention span that made watching TV difficult. So all I was able to do was contemplate. This was the case for the first two weeks after my return home. I tried to figure out why I had been the only person injured when everyone else was able to walk away from the accident. I tried to understand how this could happen when I was supposed to have left for college on the 29th of December, knowing that I would now miss out on a year of school and the scholarship that I had been awarded. I also fought with the thought of me now having 80 staples and large scars that I would carry for the rest of my life.
It was on one of these more troubled days that he called me for the first time, apologizing profusely for taking so long in calling me. He told me he had been e-mailing me instead because he knew what my parents thought of him, but more importantly he hadn’t called because of the guilt he felt. He too blamed the accident on himself. After all we were the ones taking him to the airport. I heard the pain in his voice as he told me how my mother looked at him while they were in the waiting room. He said he knew he was a coward for not talking with her, but he didn’t know how he could explain why her daughter was in the situation she was. He told me of how badly he wanted to stay with me, but left to return to his parents’ house so that he could become a man I would marry. He went home only because I had made him promise me that he would do so.
It still hurt that I had to go through all of this without him, but he was right. I had made him promise to go home and now he had the opportunity to change his life around like we had planned. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of me talking with him again, but how could I not? We e-mailed and talked on the phone every day. I would be lying if I said I was not upset for him leaving while in the hospital, but I understood why he left and the importance of his needing to leave. I rejoiced to have him back in my life because I did love him and because he was in the car accident with me, he gave me the memories I did not have. Once again I felt as though he were the only one who could understand me because he was in the car with me. He was there when the paramedics had to pull my lifeless body from the car. He saw me beat up and bloody and still loved me. According to him, it made him love me more.
Although he didn’t understand the pain I woke to every morning and although he couldn’t see the helpless condition I was in, he understood because he was there when it all happened and was able to fill in the gaps my parents could not. I felt like I once again had a reason to get better. I had a reason to try and walk again, to try and dress and bath myself again. Although my parents hated it, Josh gave my life purpose again because I knew I was loved by someone who didn’t have to love me. I never doubted his love either; after all he gave up his life in Colorado so that he could clean himself up. Every day we would talk of the smoke he never took and the difficulties of letting things go. He told me how happy his parents were to have him home and how he never realized how close to death he had been. You see Josh would give up eating for days on end so that he could afford his next fix. He would call complaining about how eating made his stomach hurt, but he was gaining some healthy weight. I was so excited to hear that he was finally changing his life for the better.
My life, however, never felt like it was getting better. No one can tell me they know what it feels like unless someone else has lain down and felt the staples in their back push up against the mattress. I wish I knew how to describe the pain I felt, but word cannot come close to conveying the intensity of every movement, every breath, every yawn and every cough. There was pain in everything. Yes I had pain meds, but they only helped me sleep, which would help while I was asleep, but every waking moment was agony. I felt as if I had liquid molten burning me from the inside out. I felt as if the very core of me was constantly on fire and nothing I did would help. My parents had been trained to ask how the pain was so they could administer medication, but I saw the look in their eyes every time they saw the pain and knew they could do nothing about it. I wanted to be strong so I did the only thing I could do: I pushed through it.
Push through it. Many days that was easier said than done. Especially the day I went to have the staples removed. The doctor pulled out what looked like small pliers and explained he was going to do this as quickly as possible. I wasn’t sure what to expect, after all I was always in constant pain, what more could he do to me? I hadn’t realized that the skin had grown around the staples, so it felt as if he were ripping pieces of my skin out as he pulled each staple out and in reality that’s exactly what he was doing. The pain was intense and I was upset at him for yanking out the staples one after the other without giving me time to so much as catch my breath. As weird as it sounds I had come to know the staples, so it felt as if he were ripping out a part of my body and it hurt. When I got home I looked in my full length mirror, horrified at what I saw. I had a long purple line that ran along my side and all the way up my back and on each side of the line there was a dot from where the staples had been. It looked as if I had been zipped together. I cried. What had happened to my body? When I finally had the courage I would touch the soft purple scar feeling its raised edge above my otherwise smooth skin. I hated how it felt and hated how it looked, but I guess it was minimal outward damage; after all, I could have suffered a lot more (Picture 8).
The medication continued to prove valueless as I realized my parents were spending hundreds of dollars a week on my pain medication. Due to the pain and the medication I had no appetite and often times had to force feed myself a smoothie just to get needed calories. The pain medication didn’t relieve much of the pain; how could it be relieving much when all I did all day every day was hurt? I tried to hide the pain as much as I could and I decided with certainty that I wanted to quit the medication. I thought quitting the medication would be easy because it didn’t seem to be helping much and I was determined to not only get better, but to get better fast. I had a life to live and I didn’t want to miss any of it. After all I still had a boyfriend I wanted to marry in four months.
Getting off the medication was not as easy as I had anticipated. After only two months of medication I already felt my body needing it. As I already said, the pain medication in the end did little for my pain, but I felt as if I had to swallow every pill. I had to have the vicodin, valium, and dilotted (sp?) running through my veins. It was a weird sensation as I sat on the couch thinking I needed to get up and take a pain pill. Often times I would argue with myself in my head telling myself I wasn’t in too much pain, nothing out of the usual, why then would I want to put those chemicals in my body? The other half of me would always respond that it would make me feel better, plus it had become habit; all I needed to do was get up and take my pill. It was a constant battle but I started cutting medications out and I felt more alone and depressed than ever before. I felt pain every minute of every hour and starting thinking of solutions that would make the pain stop, but the only solution with that resolution was death.
Yes, I constantly thought about death. I had been saved from death and in every sense I should be dead right now. I didn’t die though, I felt. I felt every second and I wanted to stop feeling because it was just too much. My body wanted the medication and I hated myself for wanting it and when I did not take it I hated the life I had. I would lie in bed and wonder why I was forced to live. I knew this depression was due to the medication, but so many thoughts clouded my mind making me hate what I went through every day. I began having trouble sleeping and I would lie awake while the rest of the house slept soundly. I wasn’t sure I would ever sleep a full night again. How could I ever have a normal life? I was putting so much strain on my family, how could I continue to do this to them? Wouldn’t it just be easier to end it all? My mother was constantly by my side speaking words of encouragement and congratulating me on my positive outlook, but inside I hated it all. Luckily I was never so desperate as to try suicide, but I thought about it; a lot. I though what it would feel like if I over dosed on my pain medication, maybe then at least my back might not hurt. I thought over and over how I wished I had died in the car. It would have been so quick. Especially since I can’t remember it; that would be the ideal way to go. Even if they would have let the pain stop my heart, then I would have at least had an end to the pain. Anything really as long as something could take away the pain that was eating my body and mind. I could never do that though after everything people had done to save my life. I was surrounded by friends and family who loved me, but the pain of my body and the pain of the craving weakened me, making me feel as if I didn’t deserve to live anyway. I hated my situation and I hated myself for hating everything. Once again, there was only one person who understood what I was going through.
Josh talked me through my depressions and could relate to these cravings my body had. We were able to relate as we felt as if we both had no control over what our minds desired. We talked for hours on our progress and what the other had to endure during the day. I went to bed every night realizing I wasn’t alone. Although my mom helped me with my whole recovery, it seemed as if Josh were the only one who could help me with my depression because he was the only one who really understood what it was like to have such conflicting emotions fight inside of you. I felt as if every thought was clouded and looking back on it, I realize it was. It was a sickening circle of doubts and negativity pulling me down, having me ask myself what was the point of even getting out of bed because in truth there was so little I could accomplish. Despite all this negativity, Josh was there to relate to and I grew increasingly thankful he was sticking by me.
Every day that went by I heard more and more negative things about Josh from my mother and family. They kept telling me that I really didn’t know if Josh was cleaning his life up and where was he when I needed him the most. He was a person I could not rely on and I shouldn’t be expected to take care of him. He has no education and no goals so why waste my time talking to him when I have friends and family here who love me. I almost lost my life and this is my new beginning, my chance to start over. A chance to dedicate myself to my Lord, my studies and my goals, things I couldn’t do with Josh.
After hearing such things every day they began to make sense. I didn’t really have a reason to break up with Josh, but I did. I told him I needed to focus on recovery and he needed to prove to me he could do what he went to Florida to do. We didn’t speak for a couple of nights.
When we talked again I found out he had returned to his old habits. He had been cleaning himself up for me and now that he didn’t have me, what was the point? I on the other hand pushed forward as I began physical therapy and once again we were in two very different worlds.
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