22 Jun 2016
The doctors and nurses are the ones I am continuing my education for, when I was in rehabilitation after my Traumatic Brain Injury, they were the ones who said that I would never walk, talk, see, hear, be a fully functioning or self sufficient person. They also said that I would not be on the same educational level that I had been before, that I would not graduate high school, and I definitely would not ever graduate college. I have been able to prove them wrong on everything, except one. I am currently working towards proving them wrong, one last time.
On June 30th, 2004, shortly after I had turned 17, I was driving into town to go to work at about 12:15am. Driving on a Farm to Market road that was roughly paved with tar-chip, I had passed the only convenience store out there, to see a truck that was nose-down in the ditch, about halfway through a dangerous S-curve. It had looked just like the one that my mother was driving at the time. Since she had fallen asleep behind the wheel before, numerous times, I had worried that she had done that again. I had pulled my car around and parked in the Steep Hollow Cemetery drive way, left my car running, with the door open, and ran across the road to check the truck out. When I got over there, it was not my mom’s truck, there was nobody there, nothing even inside the truck. I was so relieved, I started to head back across the road, to my car. I had gotten about three-quarters of the way back across the road, when a girl I had class with, the year before, came around the corner very fast. She had hit the inside of my right calf, with the front driver’s side corner of her Dodge Neon. She had hit me with such force, that the left side of my body impacted the driver’s side of her hood, and the front left quadrant of my head smashed through her windshield. I was buried in her windshield down to my chest. Her windshield had sliced open my left shoulder and gouged open the left side of my chest. When she had finally stopped and called the police, the officer that was dispatched, was the father of another of my classmates from the previous year. Officer Dawson had arrived on the scene after the ambulance had picked me up, but there had also been a fire truck dispatched, that had blocked my car from anyone’s sight. Officer Dawson had sent me to the hospital as Jane Doe, because there was nothing inside the truck, and nobody noticed the car that was still running with the lights on and door open. I was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bryan, TX, where they sewed up my shoulder, stapled my chest, and did a CT scan to find a blood clot on my brain. The nearest on-call neuro-surgeon, was in Temple, TX, which was a little over 82 miles away. The doctor’s wanted to life-flight me there, but there was a really bad storm in Temple, so they had to take me by ambulance.
After Officer Dawson had sent me to the hospital as Jane Doe, he had left the scene to attempt to see if I was actually the owner of the truck, and to give me my name back. When he hadn’t found any information about me from the truck, he returned to the scene of the accident, long after everyone else had left, he finally saw my car, still sitting on the side of the road, with the door open, interior lights still on, still running with the headlights on, with all of my stuff inside. He found my school ID and license, and called the hospital as soon as he could, so I would have my name back. He then drove out to my parent’s house, to find that nobody was home. My parent’s both worked over night, and my siblings were all over at our grandmother’s house. Officer Dawson then knocked on the door of Willie Glover, who told him that his granddaughter, Brooke Cooper, was best friends with one of my sisters. When Officer Dawson drove down the street and got my grandmother’s number from Brooke. Officer Dawson contacted my grandmother and was able to get in touch with my parents through her. He had told my parents that I was involved in an accident, and they needed to get to St. Joseph’s Hospital as soon as possible. When they got there, and they were being told what had happened to me, I was being loaded into the ambulance, to go to Scott & While Memorial Hospital in Temple, TX. They were told what was wrong and why they couldn’t treat me there. My parents were told that because of the severity of the blood clot, and they needed to get to Temple, as fast as they could.
Since I was going to be in surgery for a few hours, at least, they made the decisions that they would only deliver to the certain people, who they knew would be very irate, if they did not receive their newspapers. They didn’t deliver to a lot of people that morning. As soon as they had finished the little bit they did, they met each other at my grandmother’s house, and drove to Temple, TX. They had arrived at the hospital shortly after I had come out of surgery, as they were placing me in a medically induced coma and taking x-rays. The doctors then told my parents that I had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury, and there was significant swelling of my brain, and it would extend to the rest of my body. The surgeons, doctors, and nurses, kept telling my parents that they could only guarantee the next 24 hours for me. This went on for about a week and a half, until I became stable. I was in ICU for 40 days, 33 of which, I was in a medically induced coma. I was in the hospital for a total of 69 days. It was a small miracle, that I had not broken any bones or ruptured any organs.
While I was in the hospital, a teacher from Temple ISD had evaluated me, and was completely astounded at how well my understanding of things was. She had made the comment on numerous occasions, that I had a better understanding of things, than majority of my peers. There was a tremendous amount of support from all of my classmates and friends. While I missed almost half of my senior year in high school, it really showed me how a community can come together, to help one person, and how many people really and truly cared. Since my parents did not have medical insurance on me at the time, they had to pay a combined total of roughly $750,000, all out of pocket. People in my community had donated over the course of six months, a total of $80,000 to help my family. This experience has drastically changed my life, I am not able to think or learn the same way. I have had people tell me that, since my accident, I am much more blunt and out-spoken about my thoughts.
That accident, had actually triggered a significant increase in the impact that Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome has on my mind and body. I had not learned about Ehlers-Danlos, or even that I had it, until 8 years later. Looking back now, I see that there were a lot of times, I would get horrendous migraines, usually from the TBI, but no medication would ever work, because of EDS. There were also times that I would be terribly exhausted and need two or three naps a day, which everyone attributed to the TBI, but it was EDS. I had had to learn to change things in my life to compensate for recovering from a TBI, and it never really made any sense to any doctors why my symptoms were so sporadic and had such a wide variety to them. I am still learning to get through life after a Traumatic Brain Injury, while also having Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Some days feel like I am trapped in a body that is constantly ravaged with aches and pains, that have no reason to be there. I just constantly remind myself of the reasons I still go through life, working, and dealing with the pain however I can, all for my two children.