Hey there y'all! I know it has been over 6 months since I have written, let me tell you, a lot has happened to me it that short time frame...When I left you last, I was interviewing for the Supervisor position. Well, happy me I got it and I am going to be assigned to the Hydraulics and Air Group which is just perfect! I get to stay with my guys, I see a lot of good things happening in Shop 31F. We have the best group in the whole shop and together we will improve even more. I had a plan...it was just me now. I was going to throw myself into my job for the next ten years, work as much overtime as possible, payoff all the bills and debt I was let with, stash money into my retirement, sock something away for a rainy day and if all went right, maybe I could retire at the age of 58. Then I could just work for myself, doing my photography and art shows and live the simple life. (I should have known the Man Upstairs (God), never seems to like my plans). I was supposed to start in my new position on May 15th. Did you catch the "supposed to"? No as of I yet I have not been able to take on my new position, You ask....Why not Debbie? The answer would be ....because I'm an idiot who likes to burn the candle at both ends, who thinks sleep is highly over-rated, who can do anything...I can handle it!!!
Surprise!! No I can't. On the morning of May 9th, I was driving Ol' Buttercup, a pet name for my old suburban, to work. I was driving Buttercup because the car and the truck both needed gas and I was too tired and lazy to stop for fuel. Well, that weekend I had an Art Show out on St. Simons Island, Buttercup is the vehicle I use to haul everything to the shows. Of course, Sunday afternoon I was too tired and lazy to unload everything from the truck.
I have a 35 mile drive to work and I admit I was very tired. I thought if I can just make it till I get off the interstate, I will stop and get a diet coke or three and the caffeine running through my veins again and will be right in my world. I got within a half mile of the store. I get off at exit 6 off I-95. Best I can remember is I opened my eyes and saw pine trees. Pine trees scare the hell out of me since Don's accident, so I snatched the wheel and made a U-turn right on the ramp, only to be facing the wrong way and headed toward more pine trees. So, I once again snatched the wheel of Ol' Buttercup, made another impressive U-turn, but I was more on the dirt than the road, I tried to her back on the road, but I felt her slip and knew I was going over. I rolled onto the drivers side and landed on the roof. As I rolled, I could my back cracking, it didn't hurt, just making a cracking noise. I guess you could say, my world was literally upside down and so was I! Now before you start preaching to me about a seat belt, no I was not wearing one. Keep that in mind, we will come back to that later. I never lost conciseness and the first thing I thought of was how to get out of here, but my feet were tangled in the steering wheel and my left arm was pinned under something very heavy. I could hear people stopping and calling 911 for assistance. I guy who actually works at Kings Bay as an EMT was the first one the scene trying to help me. I heard them taking about moving all this stuff and these pictures out of the way. I remember yelling to please be careful with my photos, that was all my hard work.
So my next thought was I had to call my parents. I found my phone and remained very calm, I called and woke my Mom up. I told her what happened and just about then they were getting me out of the truck and I was telling her that I was probably going to Camden Hospital to be checked out and that I was going to try to get back to work that afternoon. The Ambulance crew interrupted me to tell me I wasn't going to Camden, I was going to Shands Trauma Center in Jacksonville and that I wouldn't be going to work that day. I also did the responsible thing and called work and told them I might be out for a day or two. Once they got me in the ambulance, that was when the pain set in. My blood pressure was so low all they could give me for pain was laughing gas. It didn't help much. But I did laugh a bit with the crew on the way to the hospital. I kept thinking to myself, this is weird, I was in accident with a truck, just like Don was, I was able to call people I loved, just like Don did. I was being taken to the same place Don had gone to when he was in his accident. There was so much going on, lots of crazy questions, tests, x-rays, MRI's, IV needles, drawing blood, heart monitors....so much of it reminded me of when Don was here. They stabilized me and sent me to SICU, I was in the same room as Don, I had the same attending physician Dr. Ra and several of the same nurses, techs and therapists. They were having trouble maintaining my blood pressure, they wanted to put in an arterial line to monitor it better...guess what, Don had one of those too.
A couple days were a blur, they told me I broke 5 vertebrae in my thoracic spine and that they were going to put cement into one of the vertebrae to hold it together, but I had to be more stabilized first. The physical therapists came in and I was fitted for a darling little blue back brace....I'm lying in case you don't get my sarcasm. The back brace sucks! It sucked when they first gave it to me and it sucked three months later when I was able to stop wearing it! But I was up and walking around the ICU ward with a walker and my lovely brace. So three days later, the perform this procedure and put the cement in my back. I wake up and I feel pretty good, except, I can't feel anything from the waist down. I can move my legs and my toes, but I cannot feel them. I expressed my concerns to the surgeon and his assistant and they assured me it was all positional from the surgery and that by the next day it would be better...they lied. The next day, there was still no feeling, I went back for another MRI to find out I had a hematoma (blood clot) the length of my thoracic spine. I was taken in for immediate surgery. a six or seven inch incision, the performed a laminectomy, basically cleaned the blood clot out. When I woke up, now I was sore and I still had no feeling.
I remember seeing my mom and dad looking very worried, the doctor checking in every hour, oh and the state trooper who worked my accident came by to see me for the second time. He asked me if I was wearing my seat belt at the time of the accident, I asked him if he was going to give me a ticket, because they did that to Don too. He said No, he just wanted to know for himself, he said he looked that truck over more than once and just couldn't see how I could have survived if I was wearing my seat belt. The main support in the front of the truck took a really hard hit and caved in, which is where my head most likely would have been, had I been wearing a safety belt. That's all I'm going to say about that matter. I'm an adult and I should be able to decide if I want to wear a seat belt.
The physical terrorists (I mean therapists) came back to see me and that is when I realized you cannot stand on legs you don't feel. The bottoms of my feet felt warty, like the little bumps inside the Crocs shoes, all over the bottom of my feet and toes, (they still feel that way most days). Trying to stand on legs you can't feel is like trying to stand on marshmallows (that's what my feet felt like) on legs that were filled with jello. It was not happening! That was when I started to get scared. That was when I realized, maybe I wasn't six foot tall and bullet proof.
This is where I am going to leave you for now. I will pick up again in a few days. I have missed writing, it helped me get through a lot of issues I was dealing with grieving for Don. Maybe it can bring me out of this funk I have been in lately, maybe it will help me realize just how far I have come. I am not a patient person and no one can give me a time line on healing with spinal cord injuries (doesn't that sound familiar....no timeline), it could be six months, a year, maybe never....who knows. That is not what I want to hear! I am trying to remain positive and happy, I will not quit, I will not give up and I will not surrender!
