At this point, I could walk if one person held on to my belt with one hand and held my hand in the other to support me. My balance was still not very good and my handwriting was worse, but I could at least walk with support. That became my Mother’s task: walking with me and supervising me while I used the restroom (some of that was embarrassing, but I was beyond embarrassment). I had a tiny room with a hospital bed (for me) and a terrible mattress set (for Mom). There was a bathroom in my room—if you could call it a bathroom (it was really a tile room with a shower head and a toilet inside of it); and a sink was next to my bed. The nurses had given me underwear-like bottoms, but they were no longer sufficient. That evening, I wore my first diaper, and I had so little control that I wet myself four times before I figured out to that the solution was to go to the bathroom all the time.
Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Physical Therapy were difficult. I couldn’t see very well, which challenged me in all of them, and I had trouble focusing my brain for more than a few seconds, so even simple tasks could take a very long time because I had to re-focus my brain so many times within the space of a minute.
Within just a couple of days, the fourth of July came. We were at the hospital, which is exactly at the base of the Butte that our city does fireworks off of for the fourth, so we had a prime space to view the fireworks. My Daddy went and got me a wheelchair to take me upstairs to a balcony so that we could watch the fireworks. The fireworks were incredible, and I remember sitting in my wheelchair with a blanket wrapped around me, watching the show. At this point in my hospital stay, my parents were so nice to me. My Dad gave me foot rubs and shoulder rubs all the time. Whenever I told him I loved him (which was all the time) he told me that he loved me more, and I quickly gave up trying to argue with him at all. I just agreed. Daddy also sat there and held me a lot when I was in the hospital. He would put his arms around me and his lips on my head and kiss my stubble and tell me how much he loved me. Mom also gave me foot massages every night before I went to bed. At the time, I perceived that this was odd and that it meant that something must be seriously wrong with me, but I didn’t say anything, I just appreciated my parents’ love.
I got several different therapists in everything at first. One of my first Occupational Therapists was a wonderful woman named Jane, who was middle-aged and thin, with long, dark hair. I loved her. She was one of the therapists that I instinctively got along with. Jane decided on one of my first days that for OT we would make pancakes. My first duty was to get out all the ingredients and write down a list of what I needed. Jane also appeared one day in my room with a game of “Connect Four.” I wasn’t very good at the stratagem of the game, and she took it easy. At the time, I knew she wasn’t really trying to beat me. Even though I could tell, I still didn’t say anything or try to up my game and challenge her to match me. I just went along with it.
At the point that I moved down to Rehab, I began having visitors en masse. I remember that on my first night having visitors, I ended up having fourteen people come see me. Part of my injury was that I lost my “social filter” and so I said a lot of things that I wouldn’t normally have thought or said out loud. Mom stayed by to watch me with people and make sure I didn’t do anything too terrible. I also managed to remain in control enough to be kind and welcoming to people who visited me.
I remember excitedly coming to the conclusion that I could suddenly say anything with a straight face. At this point I had a “pan face” and no expression in my voice or face and no gestures. With this in mind, I said mean, funny things with my straight face. All my visitors ignored my lack of expression and were extremely kind to me, and I was kind too, even if I never smiled.
I remember that Daddy brought the family dog, Lucky, to visit me one evening. Daddy was forever doing sweet things like these for me. He brought the dog and when I was cleared to drink coffee he brought me coffee every morning. When he brought Lucky, I looked at him and said (without an ounce of expression), “So where’s Snoopy?” Snoopy was my horse, so it was pretty smart and a little cruel to ask that, but of course she couldn’t visit the hospital.
It wasn’t until a few days into my residency in the Rehab floor that it even occurred to me to ask my Dad,
“Daddy, what happened?”
He looked at me with the air of someone who has grown politely bored with explaining something.
“Well, Anna, your horse fell and your brain started bleeding so they flew you to the hospital for observation, and in the morning you were worse instead of better so they operated on you.”
I remember being stunned yet detached, like someone who hears of an earthquake in a distant land. The flames and damage are no less real, no less tangible, but still far away. That was how I felt about my accident. I knew that I should feel bad, but I had difficulty with summoning emotion. Later on, as I quizzed my family members and the story unfolded, I would shed tears for the months that were taken from my life and for the emotional trauma my family was put through, but in the hospital I shed no tears. I asked my Dad what happened after surgery:
“You were unconscious for about five days.”
“Does that count as a coma Daddy?”
“Yes, honey. You were in a coma for about five days.”
This was a remarkable revelation. A coma is a big deal. If I was in a coma, then this was perhaps even more serious than I thought. And they did brain surgery on me! I couldn’t believe it.
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