In The Beginning

This is something I wrote a couple of years ago, reflecting what it was like for me those first days in the hospital.  Life is full of choices...

In The Beginning

Watching the news the other night, I saw a report about two high school teens, both recently paralyzed while playing hockey.  As I listened, instantly my heart sank and I felt ill.  I KNOW exactly their thoughts, the state of crisis bursting with questions.  What does this mean?  I’ll beat this, right?  Three months of therapy?!  Three different therapists – physical, occupational, recreational - daily…. Seriously?  What does a “Recreational Therapist” actually do??  And why do I have to go?  I can entertain myself.  Why do you have to take my blood at four in the morning is completely irritating.  All of these thoughts scurrying through your head and people keep flowing in and out of your room, with you being the only constant.  It’s surreal. 

But, I also know a little of their future and how much it stings.  Those first days in the hospital are lonely, even during the flow of people.  There’s too much thinking time between therapies and visitors.  Too much wondering why all this happened and the constant frantic imagining “what ifs”.  You wonder what it means to be paralyzed.  You watch all of the sad faces around you, as if you’re the strong one with the answers and the will.  The hour by hour change of what your new reality brings is all so overwhelming.  Doctors, standing over you while you lay in bed, describing their next step for you, like you’re a willing participant and whatever this new thing is, it’s going to help.  You look to your parents for rescue, but they can’t fix this.  This is a “go through” situation, not a “get me outta here” situation.  You have to do this.  You have to do this alone – with your own strength and will and voice.  

I pray for them, even though I wasn’t one to want prayer at the age of sixteen.  I was stubborn enough to believe I could conquer it.  My experience quickly brought a new and crushing realization, however.  I cannot do it.  I cannot conquer.  I cannot solve this and make it better.  I can only lean and trust, and in order for this to result in any sort of accumulation of wisdom, I pray.  The coming days are filled with anguish.  I cried every night at nine as my father walked out the door to go sleep at the apartment.  He never knew I so hated the nights or that I even cried.  They were long and isolating.  Of course, he was back in my room long before I woke up for the day and his person relaxed me.  He was my foundation that wasn’t going anywhere.  That was such a comforting feeling, seeing him first thing.  I felt protected.  Within minutes, the nurses are in with breakfast and then the doctors with their daily report and questions.  Dad, listening and nodding his head yes, just like me although neither of us knew what we were agreeing to.  Following that, my therapies started for the day, always three therapists, each twice a day and an appointment with the psychiatrist – to make sure I was coping with my new crazy. 

The first weeks after injury are filled with the assault of constant inspection of my body, all by other people - even the parts that are meant to be private.  At sixteen, I am shocked by the loss of privacy, the thorough care doctors and nurses feel they need to give, personal questions that turn my face red yet I HAVE to answer.  I really didn’t want doctors and their hordes of interns poking and prodding all of my parts for their discovery and instruction.  It’s humiliating.  It’s complete embarrassment.  So many times, I wanted to scream “Get out!  Stop!  Let me think!”  And, in the next fleeting moment, I was saying  “Don’t leave…Why is this happening?  How do I get out of this?”  It feels part nightmare and part raw reality.  There is no calm.  It’s one extreme and then the next with nothing ever resolved or completely processed, so a haze takes over.

To establish sanity inside your head, your eyes focus on others injured around you.  What is their issue?  Why are they here?  Hmmmm, that looks like someone similar to me.  Wow, he’s way worse off!  How does he do this?  Why does he do this – do his day like he’s going to win?  Where does that come from?  These are observations of the beaten looking for any shred of hope to cling to.  Eventually, I cornered that teen, sixteen it turns out, just like me.  He was a quad, paralyzed in all four limbs, moving his electric wheelchair with his mouth.  Incredible.  I stalked Craig day and night, wondering why his smile continued.  Once, I heard him yell at a nurse and I thought “Ah ha!  He’s real!”  I asked him where his pressing forward comes from.  He says, “Is there a choice?  I could die tomorrow, so I’m committed to feel today.  Dying is worse, right?”  He didn’t talk about “doing”.  He talked about “being”….. being with his friends and family and cracking jokes and attentively listening so he can care.  He tallied his accomplishments so much differently.  I thought Craig was a hero, losing so much, and still making something of his loss.  I craved his re-focus.  

So, I say to myself, “Seriously, Jill, Craig made a choice.  You have that choice, too.  Get it together!  What are you going to do?  Blow the haze out of your face, press pause, and think!”  It’s a list, really.  A: get up every day, put in my hours, sweat with every physical exertion and smile through every encouraging word even when you want to spit.  B: I could roll over and quit.  Just like that.  Stop.  Not necessarily wallow, but just stop because it’s so stinking hard.  This list is shockingly short, and the forced choice is a slap in my face.  Craig is right.  I have today and dying is worse.  So, I made my choice by default.  I knew I loved life and people and places too much to not see them.  I loved to laugh and experience and encourage.  I couldn’t just stop.  It wasn’t in me to stop.  My sixteen, stubborn, willful self decided to trudge forward, sometimes screaming and wasted, and sometimes I simply collapsed into a pile of giddy because I just won a battle I thought was impossible.

Now, I also wasn’t stupid.  I knew this sitting in a chair and being short was not going to disappear and there would be days I would want to cry and mourn and I gave myself permission to do so; unabandoned and without shame.  I deserved that.  I needed to be real with that.  I knew I would need to tolerate the stares of strangers and the too loud whispers.  I would need to file away a simple answer for the four year old who needs to know why I’m in a wheelchair, which he says too loudly and many ears are perked now.  He cannot be ignored, much to his nervous mothers’ chagrin.  And, I will need to conquer the daily, time-consuming tasks of taking care of myself in this altered state.  But quitting?  I couldn’t do that.  I was choosing to battle.  I had today and I was going to make my motions today worth going through.  And, I would feel the pain of my going through and take stock of my life.  I would be present, absorbing the details, good and bad.  This is my forced choice, yet still a choice.  

We all have this choice.  Every life pain we feel creates this choice.  It’s worth it to press forward.  It’s worth it to take stock.  These new teen injuries I ache for, I also have hope for.  They will scream and cry and swear at their doctors.  They will grunt through routine and think deeply.  They will laugh again and live with different purpose.  They will trudge forward because the forced choice says they must.