our headbangers ball

Really in the bigger picture of things we are living happily ever after, or trying  too. But we all know that sometimes it just doesn’t happen that way. I really don’t like to write about this part. But I need to. So I will. Some of it I have never talked about before. What I see and feel next does not make me very happy.

The nurse lifts the blankets to remove my catheter. Oh my God! I have a catheter. I don’t even want to know how they got that thing in there. With one swift motion the nurse removes the catheter. I try to block out this procedure as much as I can. I guess that’s why I didn’t have to get up and use the bathroom. Now I will. I have no idea how though.

I haven’t eaten for six days. The thought of eating hasn’t even crossed by mind. Only pain and thinking through what happened is all I can think about. All I know is that I do not ever want pizza again.

 I get up enough nerve to look in the mirror. My hair looks horrible. A very long curly matted mess mixed with blood and glass. Why didn’t anybody fix my hair? Dan said he was afraid to touch me. I guess when you’re hurt nobody is concerned about your hair. I hurt too much and am to sleepy to do anything about it. My face looks worse. I have three big cuts running from above my forehead up into my hair to down along my jaw line. They are about as thick as a pencil. There are numerous cuts on my face especially around my eye, some have stitches, and it is very swollen. The  swelling won’t go away for about six months. I reach up to touch it and glass falls out of my hair. I continue assessing my body. Under my right breast I have a tube an inch around inserted into my lung and another coming out just a few ribs down. This keeps my lung inflated. It’s draining fluid and blood. I can feel it pressing my ribs apart.  In between the tubes is a bandage covering an incision that goes from my breast around to my back. This is where they took out two crushed ribs(i won’t know that for 6 years after complaining to a thoracic surgeon that the pain in my side won’t go away) and repaired my lung and diaphragm. Where my pelvic bone is crushed it hurts so bad I have to keep moving to try to relieve the pain and keep pillows between my legs. But I can’t move. Not without great painful effort.  It takes all my strength to push myself to a new position, even with the nurses helping me. On my abdomen is a large bandage covering a 7 inch incision, I think to repair my liver ,spleen and diaphragm and stop the internal bleeding. Next I find a tube the size of the little plastic tube that holds ink in your pen on my upper left chest. That was for saving my life. They gave me a healthy dose of medication that restarted my heart when it quit. I gently finger that tube in amazement of everything that has happened. I push away feelings,  and push my favorite little morphine button and sleep. This is all too much to take in. Why did this happen, why did I live. Little do I know the struggle ahead of me. There are some moments when I wish I wouldn’t have lived.

I make faces at the Physical Therapist as he comes into my room. “Time for more torture” I say, with a smile on my swollen face as I quickly push the button for more morphine. It takes us ten minutes for me to get out of bed and to pack up the I.V. pole, the big tube and box that looks like a portable vacuum that is keeping my lung inflated, complete with the large blood filled tube stuck in between my ribs through my skin. Soooo gross. With the help of a walker we go together down the hall. It takes three of us to hang onto everything attached. Dan is always with me, every step of the way. He teaches me to walk again. To climb stairs. To swallow right. I try to be positive but this all hurts like hell. I don’t even care if my butt is showing through the back of my hospital gown or that my hair is a hideous, frizzy mess. Later I will find I need to learn how to write and read again. It comes back easy enough. Activities come pretty natural, but slow. It will be years before I can watch a movie all the way to the end and know whats going on, I still have trouble reading books.

I had a team of five Dr’s working on me the night of the accident.  One a good family friend. They have all made it to my hospital room, some daily, some once or twice during the week. They each tell me that they can’t believe I made it. They tell me how lucky we are. They didn’t think I would live. I don’t feel lucky. I sleep, push the morphine button and try to stay awake when visitors come.  I remember falling asleep mid-sentence while talking to a friend.  I dread therapy because it hurts and makes me unbelievably tired. They are always waking me up for something. Maybe because I am always asleep.

Time for a bath. The nurse helps me get to the bathroom. She helps me undress. I can hardly move. There is an old person chair in the tub. It’s for me. Painfully and slowly the nurse helps me to the chair. She bathes me. I am not even embarrassed because there is no way I could do this by myself. She has to do everything. Tired and wanting to go back to bed I hang my head. The floor of the tub is red with blood and filled with pieces of glass. She has to wash my hair three times to get it all out. She scoops the glass out into a bucket. I have never seen so much glass. I have had this in my hair for days. When we get finish and get back to the bed there is blood and glass all over the sheets. I sit in a chair, numb, while they change my sheets. I can’t brush my teeth or fix my hair. I really have no idea how I have made it through this. I am just hanging onto the fact that God told me I would be ok. I have no idea when that will be.  So much pain and so much sleep. (Dr. Baker will remove glass from around my eye for over a year, and I will remove some on my own for five!)

I am doing so well that they let me out of the hospital on Friday. Exactly one week after the accident. Dan and I are shocked. I think the Dr. is crazy. So does Dan. It’s too early to go home. I can’t think, I can’t move. I cry. I am not ready to go home. 

Busy day. After I show them I can eat, two bites of tomato soup, then I can go. The nurse takes all the tubes out of me. Therapists come to teach me how to use the stairs and get into bed. I can’t be left alone, I can’t lose weight, I can’t fall, I have to ride in the back of a car or as far away from an airbag as possible. So many instructions and so many meds. I have to depend on somebody else to do everything for me. 

We don’t have a car so my mom takes us home. This is all too much for me. I feel like I am in a fog. I don’t remember much of this day. They help me get settled in the back seat among a mountain of pillows my mom got for me. I lay down and cry till I fall asleep because I don’t want to be in a car again. Next thing I know is I am home. Everyone is there. My sister has moved into my house with her kids to take care of my kids. She has it all ready and cleaned. She tried to keep things as normal as possible for them. This is the first time I have seen them since the car accident. I can’t hug them and I can’t pick them up. We gently hold each other. Then exhausted I go to bed. Surrounded by prayers, balloons and hundreds of flowers. Desperately hanging on to being ok. I have a long road ahead of me. But I can do it. I will get through this.

~ by gonefishindd5 on March 24, 2010.

Posted in Uncategorized