Friday night out

Last Friday night I went out to dinner with my younger sister Chandra and her boyfriend James. My other younger sister Laura and her husband Brett met us at the restaurant, so there were five of us total. I was technically the "fifth wheel," but we all had lots of fun together, so it didn't feel that way at all.

I chose the restaurant -- O'Charley's. I went there for the first time on my Mom's birthday in October, and I've been wanting to go back ever since. I just ordered an appetizer so that I would have room for dessert. O'Charley's has an awesome chocolate cake that I got last time and I knew that I wanted it again! It's five thin layers of chocolate cake with a layer of fudgy chocolate between each layer of cake. It was so good!

You might be wondering why I'm writing about something as simple as going out to dinner, but I have to admit that I am really proud of myself for going out to a crowded restaurant on a Friday evening. After my accident I hated going out into public. There really wasn't one reason in particular, but I just didn't like the feeling of being in the way or being that "person" that everyone looked at and pitied... "I'm sure glad that's not me." I still have a lot of those same feelings, but I don't let them hold me back as much as I used to. I've come a long way in the past few years because going out to a crowded restaurant is something I never would have done a few years ago.

November 17, 2003: part one

November 17, 2003 started out an ordinary day, but it would end up anything other than ordinary. My nursing class was already involved in clinicals (that's where you go to a hospital or nursing home to practice your skills) and I woke up before 5 AM so I could be at the nursing home I was assigned to by 6 AM. For the next six hours I worked at the nursing home learning the finer points about taking care of the different needs of the residents at the nursing home. My classmates and I were released from clinicals about noon, and then I was off to tackle the rest of my very busy day.

I would head home to change out of my white student nurse uniform, and then I would go to school to take my Dosage Calculations final. After this I would go to St. John's Hospital for the physical each new employee was required to get. (I'd just gotten a new job at the hospital as a patient care tech so that I could gain experience.) Finally, I would head to the movie theater where I worked as an assistant manager to work from about 5 PM to 1 AM. These were my plans, anyway, but I wouldn't even make it home.

Leaving the nursing home was the last thing I remembered that day, and would be the last thing I remembered for quite some time. (The rest of the events that happened that day have been told to me by my family and friends.) When I got to the intersection of 21 and 141 I was stopped at a red light and was the first car in line. When the light turned green, I started to make a left-hand turn onto 141. As I did this, a car going perpendicular to mine ran a red light and T-boned my car on the driver's side. That car was going approximately 50 mph, and it struck my car with so much force that I was immediately knocked unconscious. The force of the impact caused my head to swing to the right, breaking my neck at the second cervical (C2) vertebrae. It also collapsed my left lung, ruptured my spleen, dislocated my pelvis, broke several of my ribs on the left side of my body and caused severe internal bleeding. 911 was called by someone that witnessed the accident, and it was reported that I arrived at St. Anthony's Hospital in South County, MO, six minutes after the call to 911 was made. With my neck broken at the C2 level, I was no longer able to use my diaphragm muscle which is used for breathing, so it was a good thing that the paramedics arrived so quickly so that I could be intubated and put on a ventilator.

Fortunately, I was very close to St. Anthony's Hospital. I was taken to have emergency surgery soon after arriving at the hospital to stop my internal bleeding. (My mom later found out from the surgeon that my internal bleeding was so severe that I would've bled to death if I'd had to wait any longer for surgery.) My bleeding was stopped and my ruptured spleen was removed.

Meanwhile, the police officers were trying to track down my mom. They went to my house and there was no answer, but they'd found the number of the movie theater on a pay stub in my purse. They called the theater and talked to my boss, Bob. He didn't know where my mom might be, but he knew where my younger sisters went to high school. The police officer called the school and asked the school secretary to notify my sisters that I had been in a car accident. She did and drove my sisters up to the hospital.

To make a long story short, my mom was finally tracked down at Barnes Jewish Hospital where she was doing her practicum for school. (Mom was in graduate school at this time getting a Master's degree in pastoral care.) Mom was in a patient's room with a woman who was sick with cervical cancer when her instructor called her out into the hall. She then told my mom that one of her daughters had been in a car accident. It was 2 PM so that meant the high school hadn't let out yet, so Mom knew that I was the one that had been in the car accident. Her instructor gave her the number of St. Anthony's Hospital and my mom made the call. The nurse that answered the phone told my mom that I had sustained a cervical fracture and that I'd already undergone emergency surgery. My mom asked the nurse, "Please, I have to know, is Heather alive?" The nurse told her that my vital signs were stable, but that I was hurt very badly, and she needed to get to the hospital right away.

Lawrence, one of the chaplains my mom was working with, decided that she wasn't in a fit state to drive, so he drove her to the hospital in her car and a couple of the other chaplains followed so that they could take Lawrence home afterward. On the drive to the hospital my mom started making the necessary phone calls. She started by calling my boss, Bob, to let him know I wouldn't be working that night, but Bob already knew since the police officer had talked to him earlier that day when he was trying to locate Mom. Mom also asked Bob to get word to my dear friend and coworker, Adam, because she knew I would want him to know what had happened. Bob told her that he already had.

Next, Mom called her friend Paul (also a chaplain) because she knew she would need the support of friends. She also called a neighbor and asked her if she could find two men from our church who could come to the hospital and give me a priesthood blessing. After the calls were complete, Mom started thinking about what the nurse had said on the phone... a cervical fracture. Initially, my mom was thinking cervical referred to the cervix, but when she actually thought about it, she realized that I had broken my neck.

More about that fateful day in my next post.

Trip to the urologist

Yesterday I went to the urologist. I had to get a few x-rays of my kidneys, ureters and bladder prior to my appointment with the doctor. Getting these x-rays never thrills me because I have to get out of my wheelchair so that I can lay on the hard x-ray table -- not comfortable, especially on the tail bone! After I got back in my chair we went to see the doctor. We had to wait 45 minutes, but once I got in to see the doctor things quickly. He pulled my x-rays up on the computer in the room and took a look. Good news: I haven't developed any new kidney stones, and the two small stones in my left kidney haven't gotten any bigger in the past six months. I know it's risky saying this, but I think I'm going to make my goal of not being hospitalized at all in 2009.

Kidney stones are inevitably going to be a problem for me, as they are for most people with spinal cord injuries. Your kidneys don't empty near as efficiently when you can't stand up, so stones form much more easily.

The reason I made the goal not to be hospitalized at all in 2009 was because I was hospitalized twice in 2007 and twice in 2008, both due to complications with kidney stones. In 2007 I had two large kidney stones (one of them was an inch and a forth long) and they were both infected. My doctor went in through my back to remove the stones and the surgery was much more difficult than he anticipated and a lot of infected stuff got stirred up in my blood in the process. I was terribly sick for the next 10 or so days. I was delirious and I wasn't responding to antibiotics.

Sometimes I would talk to people who weren't there, or other times I would just stare blankly into space. There was one day when I chanted, "Leave me alone!" any time anyone would try to talk to me. (Including my family and friends, and even my my own Mom!) Even when no one was talking to me I was still mouthing those same words. To make a long story short, after about 10 days of being delirious I finally "snapped out of it." All of a sudden -- about the span of one day -- I just started acting like myself again. (That might not seem like all of a sudden, but it pretty much was considering where I was coming from.)

I had absolutely no memory of the things that I said and did while I was consumed with delirium, but I do remember having nightmare after nightmare and feeling absolutely tormented. I laughed when my family and friends would tell me the things I said and did, although I knew it really wasn't a laughing matter, especially since my doctor couldn't figure out why I was delirious for so long.

When I met with my urologist for a follow-up visit a few weeks after returning home from the hospital, I asked him just how close to death I'd actually been, and he said that I was "teetering" on the edge (of life and death) and that it could have gone "either way." It was sobering to realize just how sick those kidney stones had made me.

So now, although I don't look forward to getting x-rays and seeing my urologist, I know that it's worth it so as to try and avoid kidney stones and the complications they can bring.

It's that time again

I'm a nostalgic person and the simplest things can trigger memories in me. The scent of something, the taste of something, the weather, etc. November is the month that my car accident occurred in, and every November I think back to the time in my life when it changed in a big, big way. This is what what was going on in my life back in November 2003:

I was in my first semester of a two-year nursing program. I decided to do a two-year RN program, and had plans of getting my BSN later on after I was out of school and working at a hospital. (Hospitals usually pay your tuition if you are continuing your nursing education.) I loved what I was learning in nursing school and I was excited at the prospect of a career where I could help care for people. I went to school Monday through Friday, 8–4:30 PM. I usually had three or four tests a week, so I studied hard so that I could make good grades.

I was also working 30+ hours each week at the movie theater. I had a fixed schedule and I worked every Monday night, Thursday night, Friday night and some time on Saturday. Thursday nights were busy as we closed out one movie week and prepared for the next. Fridays and Saturdays were busy because that's when the new movies would come out and people would be out of work/school. Monday evenings usually weren't too busy. I'd make the employee schedule for the following week, but would usually have a little bit of time to study as I waited for all of the movies to end. (I was usually the last manager working, so it was my responsibility to shut down the projection booth after all of the movies let out. I'd also have to take the money we made that day to the bank and put it in the night deposit slot. I'd finally get home about 1 AM.

Although I loved working at the movie theater, that fall I'd started looking for a new job at a hospital as a nurse's aide so that I could gain experience and practice the things I was learning about in school. I applied at St. John's Hospital had gotten the job. As bittersweet as it would be to leave the movie theater where I'd worked for the past 3½ years—pretty much my first and only job—I felt it was the right move to make. Sadly, I'd never be able to start this new job at the hospital, or ever work caring for others.

That's all I have time to write about today, but I look forward to writing more about my experiences in November 2003.

Catching up

I realized this morning that I haven't written anything new all week, so I need to catch up
　
I was feeling kind of bummed last weekend because there were a few Halloween activities that people at my religion class were taking part in, but neither of these activities were handicapped accessible, so I couldn't go to either of them. On Friday evening my younger sister Chandra took me out shopping because I was itching to get out and do something. Our friends Barbara and Nate called us while we were out and asked if they could come over and watch a movie with us. (They'd decided not to go to the activity that everyone else was participating in that night.) Nate made a batch of brownies when he arrived so that we could have brownie sundaes. My mom made hot chocolate and Nate made some homemade whipped cream to put in the hot chocolate... very yummy! I got back in my bed and we watched the movie in my room because I have a bigger TV than we have in my living room. We pulled the recliners from the living room into my room and although it was a little cramped, we had a cozy little movie night. What I thought might be a lonely Friday night actually turned out to be really fun!
　
I recently wrote about my friend Shellie helping me order a new laptop. It arrived earlier this week, and it looks awesome! I've started the setup process, but it's not up and running quite yet because I'm having trouble connecting to the network/internet. I really wish I knew more about computers so that I could be more self reliant in this aspect, but I'm not. I'm having a friend help me out with that, so I hope that I will be able to load all of my special software in the near future and be up and running sometime next week. I love spending money and buying new toys... so much fun!