New Beginings

I don't really remember the first time I was born, but I imagine it went much the same way anybody's first time goes. I'm sure there were tears and commotion. I'm sure it was a messy affair with quite a bit of pain, or so my mother tells me. The second time I was born it was pretty much the same, only that time I was born alone and the pain stuck around.

I was very nearly killed in a car accident at midnight on Friday October 13, 2001. A drunk driver entered an exit ramp going the wrong way on a divided highway and collided with my car head on. As the headlights of the other car slowly registered in my brain, which was tired and sluggish after working that night, I realized my misfortune in being in the left hand lane. As memories from the drivers ed classes I took at 16, flashed in front of me in a fraction of a second, there was one lesson that I remember instinctively, out of survival. "If you see a car on the wrong side of the road, always pull over onto the right hand shoulder and stop." But this car was barreling down the middle of both lanes, and having no other choice I pulled onto the left shoulder and started to slow down. I looked down at my speedometer, and in the exact same second that I looked up, the headlights veered and came straight at me. The only thought that ran through my head was, "this is going to hurt." The world convulsed and then nothing.

I was conscious for several long seconds before I opened my eyes. My brain screamed back to into consciousness, but the rest of my body didn't seem to be on the same wave length anymore. I mentally crawled out from what ever black hole I had unintentionally tumbled into, as I started to hear voices around me. It was then that I realized the extent of the damage. My car had been hit on a diagonal. The head on collision was just right of center and my car had been crushed in on the passenger side seat, pushing the rear drivers side, up onto the 3 foot cement barricade that divided the highway. The steering wheel was 2-3 inches from my rib cage, and the head rest of what was left of the passenger side seat had been pushed over landing where my head had been a few seconds before. It forced me to keep my head pushed to the left, which didn't bother me because I had no desire to move. The voices became louder, and I could make out a young couple frantically calling the police. The girl took off her jacket, on a very cold night, and threaded it through the wreckage in order to place it on me.

Once the police arrived the motions and noises became a blur, with the exception of one officer. He stayed with me asking me questions, keeping me focused on his voice as they worked to clear out enough of the wreckage to reach me. Minutes before the ambulance arrived he got become very solemn and said "I know this isn't the best time to tell you this, but I don't know if I'll get another chance. I have been working car accident scenes for 25 years and I have never seen a car that looked like this with somebody alive inside of it. So, I don't know if you believe in God or Buddha or whatever, but when this is all over and you have a moment you need to go to church or something and thank someone for keeping you alive." Those words are as clear to me now as they were that night.

The price paid for surviving that night has a daily impact on me as I have spent the last 8 years wading through a multitude of doctors, tests, diagnoses and recovery. Some injuries I have fully recovered from, and some I will likely live with for the rest of my life. My primary diagnoses consist of a TBI (traumatic brain injury), PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), SCI (Spinal Cord Injury), Central Nervous System Hypersensitivity, Myofascial Pain, and a severe cervical spine instability that requires me to wear a cervical collar when riding in the car. My cervical instability is due to the rupture of 2 our of the 3 ligaments that attach the base of the skull to the spinal column. The smallest and weakest ligament of the three is all that I have now to keep the two connected, with the likelihood of death should a minor fall or whiplash ever rupture that remaining ligament. As a result of the rupture to the ligaments where my head and spine attach, my head was allowed to move much further than normal. This caused a great deal of spinal cord damage. I was later told by my doctors that it was a miracle that I was alive let alone not paralyzed.

I was very fortunate, despite spending months in a wheelchair unable to walk due to a fractured ankle and severe nerve damage in my legs. I went through vision therapy to learn how to read again, physical therapy to learn how walk again. I went through Biofeedback and EMDR therapy, and just about every other kind of mental and physical therapy you can think of. The number of treatments and medication I have been on is mind boggling at best. Every single day I weight the risk of liver damage against the effects of living with chronic pain. When I learned a few years back that chronic pain depletes the grey matter of the brain, I started to fear the consequences of both, taking and not taking the medication. And then three years ago the already prickly life that I had started to come to grips with, got complicated.

In the spring of 2006, after many doctors, tests and misdiagnoses, I was diagnosed with Endometriosis (an autoimmune disease affecting the reproductive organs in women) And then in the Fall of 2007, I became wheelchair bound over the course of 24 hours. I went from doctor to doctor being told that I was depressed and that it was all in my head. Finally, after 4 months I was able to see a specialist and received a diagnosis of Palindromic Rheumatism, which is an atypical onset of RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis).

Along with discovering about all of my health problems over the last 8 years, I have also been on a path of self discovery. At 27, I have much more in life to experience and certainly this journey is not over, but I have accepted who I am. A little unconventional and stubborn, but full of enthusiasm and passionate. I want to spend the rest of my life living, rather than watching it go by because I have allowed my poor health to keep me prisoner. I want to live a full life, and if I am going to do that then it means that I have to make a commitment to the process of getting healthy. In the past few weeks I have watched my arthritis getting worse, and this has lead to several revelations about my future if my health continues on it's current path. I need to take an active role in my health, and even though it won't be easy I am determined to exhaust all avenues of alternative, holistic, and eastern medicines, along with exercise, diet change, supplements etc. And because I know how difficult and lonely this path can be, I am going to be writing about all of my experiences with different treatments past and present. Please join me on my journey to better living and a healthier body, mind and spirit.