Living with Traumatic Brain Injury

November 14, 2001 I was involved in an accidential gunshot accident. I live in a very rural community and was rushed to our local hospital with injuries to my left breast and stomach.

The hospital was a level IV unit, with instructions to “stabilize and ship” to a trauma unit in a larger city. That did not happen. The local surgeon decided to take the bullet out, which he did and proclaimed to my family that I was the luckiest woman alive that there was no damage and would be out of the hospital in three days.

Three days in ICU and after I crashed for the second time, A full trauma unit was flown in by a black hawk helicopter (sure with I could have seen that)….to try to stabilize me so they could take me to the trauma unit over 200 miles away. (side note: only took 24 minutes by helo).

Once I was there they preformed an eight hour exploratory surgery, literatly taking my guts out and placing them on a table next to me and slowly examining everything before going back in. I had a through and through gunshot in my doudeoum, and my vena cava, nicked my bladder and had a bruised pancreaus, kidneys and splean.

I was in a drug induced coma for four weeks and stayed in the trauma unit for three and a half months.

I died three times, was given less than a 20% chance to live, was given my last rites and my poor family had to say goodbye to me several times to many.

When I woke up enough to have any kind of memory at all in the end of January I was unable to even move my legs or roll over as I my belly was still open as they were still trying to figh infection. I had spepeceima, pancreatitis along the way oh,and a stroke I couldn’t even have any ice chips.

The teaching trauma team nicknamed me “the project”… nice huh? Eventually, I became the “miracle child” even though I was 42.

My sister was being had already prepared the nursing home I was to move into. BUT, I said no, I’m not going.

I had to learn to breathe,swallow, drink, eat, talk, walk all over again. The docs told me that I couldn’t do it in time before I was to be released. I told him I would. He finally made me a deal that because my sister was an RN, that if I could walk even with a walker before it was time to go that I could go to her house, not very far away.

I was determined not to go because I was afraid I’d have to live there forever. I worked really hard and just told myself that I could and would do it. Not an easy feat with a Wound Vac attached to my stomach that was attached to (essentially) a car battery to make it work.

I begged anyone who would come visit me or even walking by my room to help me up and push the wheelchair behind me toting the battery. It was really slow going as even being sitting up in bed made me dizzy, when I put my feet on the ground and tried to stand the first time, I crumpled to the ground. But I did it.

No one ever told me I had a brain injury until I was at my sisters place and even then I didn’t know what that meant.

I no longer work but do get SSD. I have a severe brain injury and it has been a long and hard journey that I have been delighted to take. If not, I’d be dead. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been hard and hard to deal with, many crying days, still even. But I am so happy when I wake up each day and say: Yeah… Thank you God, I get another day.

I still stay that the “accident” was the best and worst thing in my life. I met the love of my life a few months out of the hospital and we just celebrated our sixth anniversary. My personality changed so much, but like he says, he didn’t know the other me, he fell in love with this one.