From the time I was born on August 29, 1988 until 7th grade, I went to bible school every summer. I also went to church on holidays, like Christmas, and Easter, but that was it. I didn’t have to go to church, since our family stayed home on Sundays. So, as I got older, I really didn't believe in God, although I did think that something was out there. But what I experienced as a teenager made me believe in God completely.
The summer before I turned sixteen, I met younger teenagers who introduced me to their older friends. I was introduced to drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, and I began sneaking out of my house at midnight and not coming back until five a.m., when my mother would start getting ready for work. But after I turned 16, I had a major life-changing experience, when I was involved with three other people in a serious, supposedly fatal accident.
The night of Oct. 9th, 2004, my friends and I wanted to have a little pre-Halloween fun, but things didn't go as planned. I snuck out of my house as usual, like I did every weekend, but this night was different. One of my friends, who was with my boyfriend at the time, called me up to tell me that my boyfriend was really drunk, and that she had never seen him that way. But, although he was supposed to drive the car that night, no one was worried; everyone trusted him, since he always drove drunk and never had an accident before. I decided that I wanted to be the driver, but I never got the chance. I realize now that if I had, I wouldn't be like I am today.
My boyfriend drove all of us to a town that was over an hour away, where there was supposedly a haunted cemetery out in the country. As we were getting near the cemetery, we approached a T-intersection that had a missing traffic sign. We ended up going straight through the intersection, down a ditch and into a tree.
Everyone in the car was hurt, but I was in the worst condition. My friends had injuries like a broken wrist, broken jaw, dislocated hip, fractured vertebrae, fractured ankle, punctured lung and so on. My injuries included a severed artery leading from my heart to my brain, two collapsed lungs, a ripped trachea, and a couple of fractured vertebrae.
I flat lined twice, first at the scene of the accident, and then in the ambulance, as I was being rushed to the hospital. Once I arrived, I was given a battery of tests, and prepped for an abdominal procedure to see if anything was wrong with my internal organs. Since I wasn’t breathing and had an air leakage, my body was swollen and red from the oxygen getting under my skin.
Then, the next day, on my parent’s wedding anniversary, I had a stroke that not only saved my life, but ruined it, as well. No one could figure out what was wrong with me. I was bleeding internally and I was on my deathbed (I was only given a 3% chance to live). Then, as my brain surgeon reviewed my CT scan in preparation for brain surgery, he found that I had severed the artery leading from my heart to my brain. I had emergency open heart surgery to repair the problem (it was suppose to take 6 hours, but the doctors ended up doing it in 2).
As a result of the stroke, I was paralyzed on the left side of my body. My doctors thought I would never be able to walk again, and that I would use a wheelchair for the rest of my life. But, after 14 days or so in ICU, I was finally able to move some on my left side. Evidently, on that night, things were abnormal all over the unit. (Keep in mind that I don't remember anything about being in the ICU, since I was always sedated, so I'm only relating what others have told me.) All of the machines shut down at one point, a man who was in a coma woke up, and said he was hungry, and then, I told my nurse I could move my arm and my leg.
I also don’t remember this conversation, but my father says that the next day I told him, "I saw Jesus. He said everyone is praying for me, and that I'll be all right." (I didn’t believe in God at the time, so why would I make this up?) I was on a lot of prayer lists. I was told people from around the world were praying for me including soldiers, truckers who heard of me, and communicated back and forth, and a minister, who came up to Illinois from Mississippi because God told her there was a little girl that was dying and needed to be saved.
From then on, everything got better. I was moved to pediatrics and started therapy to retrain my mind and body. Even though I could only drink liquids, and walk in a walker, I was very determined to get out of the hospital. I remember telling my dad, “I'm going to run out of this hospital when I leave, and I'm going to get through this."
Things improved little by little. Once I was able to chew solid food, I was moved to rehab where the REAL work began. For two weeks, I had speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy, several times a day, everyday. But, I was finally able to walk on my own, and after being in the hospital for 33 days, I walked out on Nov. 12, 2004.
I missing going to school, and I was tired of rehabilitation, so 4 days after I left the hospital, I made the decision to go back to school. I continued to have out-patient therapy for 8 more months after my stroke. I stopped for a while, but then I noticed a limp in my walk, so I went back to physical therapy again, for a short time.
I still have many problems resulting from the stroke: I limp when I walk, I have no feeling on my left side and my left hand is not coordinated. I still have short-term memory problems, as well as cognitive problems, which include difficulty processing numbers. Also, among other things, I didn’t feel good about how I looked when I walked among other people, so I worked with a psychologist for 2 years.
Finally, a year and a half post-stroke, I noticed that I was developing a hammer-claw toe, and that my Achilles tendon on my left foot was getting shorter. I had acupuncture and soft tissue massage done on my foot, and I tried 3 different braces, but nothing helped. I recently had to have surgery to lengthen my tendon, and to put implants in my toes to straighten them out. (So far, I'm not happy with the results, since two of my toes are still curling, but at different joints than the ones the doctor fused.)
At this time, I live in Illinois, and I’m going to college in Kansas. Taking classes has been very challenging. Because it’s hard for me to work with numbers, I’ve had trouble studying math. When I had the stroke, I was a sophomore in high school, and I was taking geometry, but after I returned to school, I failed the remainder of the class. I took it again the following year, and I barely got by. I took Algebra II, and I failed that, as well.
Since I have trouble with my short term memory, it’s also been hard to learn new languages. When I returned to high school after my stroke, I was in the middle of my second year of Spanish. I tried to finish the year, but I found that it was too difficult to memorize new words. I had planned to try Spanish again, since I still use some of it, but my parents discouraged me. (My doctor told me and my parents that I won’t be able to learn another language.) However, right now I'm trying to teach myself Japanese. It’s more difficult than Spanish, but it helps that my boyfriend is from Japan.
So, overall, college has been very challenging. Before my stroke, I was an A and B student, and after my stroke, I was struggling just to get C's and D's. I still work very hard to get just average grades, so I was proud of myself for getting all C's and B's my first year of college. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did.
It will be four years this October since my stroke, and I’m still struggling to be “normal” again. Since my initial stroke, I’ve had TIA's (mini-strokes) that have caused me to be hospitalized. I’m currently on Coumadin, and my doctor says I’ll probably be on it the rest of my life. I still get depressed over what happened. I still get mad at myself for getting in a car with a drunk driver; I blame myself for being naïve. And, I wish that all this had never happened to me.
But even though I try to live my life as normally as possible, I know that miracles can happen. I went from being on my deathbed and suffering a stroke, to walking out of the hospital only 33 days later. Because of my stroke, I’ve learned to never give up on anything. I’m a very determined person now. I say that anything is possible, and I can prove it.
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