A girlfriend made me a beautiful prayer shawl that Sean would tuck around my body when he went to work in the morning. He would also put drops of the essential oils on my pillow or around the room. Nurses would always tell me I had the nicest-smelling room in the place.
Friends would drop off organic juices and kombucha tea, which they knew I loved and used to brew at home. Thank God for that, to counteract the trays of beige hospital food. They’d bring big photos of nature—a strawberry field, my favorite hiking spots—so I could look and stay connected with the outdoors even when I couldn’t get out and feel the grass under my feet. Really thoughtful stuff.
PeaceJam sent me a care package that contained candles and fuzzy blue socks. That seemed really nice until I saw the logo on the side: LIFE IS GOOD.
Ugh.
Sean learned that a reporter from Madison Patch wanted to do an article about me because Madison was where I was run over, so he coordinated a time with her to come visit Gaylord and speak to my family and me. The reporter’s name was Pem McNerney, and I liked her immediately.
After she learned all the details, she asked if there was anything people could do for me.
“I really want prayers and positive energy,” I said. “My wounds are huge and it’s going to take a long time to heal. I’m trying hard not to get depressed.”
“Is there any kind of lesson you want to pass along to readers from this?” she asked.
“It’s just that it doesn’t matter how careful you are sometimes. Every day is such a huge gift. You have to be ready, vigilant, and aware it could change. No matter how safe and careful you are, things can happen. I’m sitting here in a bed in a rehab facility and I’m scared. I don’t know when I’m going to be normal again.”
That was about as much positivity as I could muster.
The article went online a day or two later, on November 10, and because of a miscommunication with my dad, it said that I had lost my job after the crash. People were writing angry comments on the article—“How could her employer DO this?!” I wrote a letter to Pem to defend my boss and to assure readers that I hadn’t been fired, that I was just taking a break while I was healing. I felt bad that my boss might read these comments and see how people were badmouthing him without cause.
In fact, I couldn’t wait to get back to work. I knew I wouldn’t be back in the office anytime soon, but I tried to figure out what I could handle from my bed. Sean brought me an iPad so I could write. I updated my blog to let people know that I was alive and improving, and I tried writing to the people whose connections were important at work.
At the very least, I wanted to write thank-you notes to all the donors who had supported the Cycling for Peace trip. My boss had come to visit a couple of times while I was at Yale, and had kept in touch by email since then. I told him that I was going to be back as soon as possible, but every time I asked for addresses or information about the donors for the thank-you cards, he didn’t respond.
Just three days after the article came out, I was busy composing more thank-you notes when my boss wrote, “Before you send out any more emails, let me come by.”
It wasn’t the best day for visitors—I was spiking a fever and they had started an IV again. I was too weak to move much, but I was hoping he might have some good news for me, so I didn’t argue. Maybe it was my new contract?
He showed up soon after and had trouble making eye contact with me.
“Can I talk to you for a minute first?” He signaled to Sean to follow him out to the hall. Sean paused.
“You can say whatever you need to say in front of Colleen. We share everything, so anything you tell me, I’m just going to tell her anyway.”
My boss sat down next to me.
“Colleen, I’m very sorry to tell you this, but the board is phasing the program out. You no longer have a job.”
Chapter 11
Breaking Down
I DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING CLEARLY after that. I just started sobbing.
This can’t happen.
He tried to explain. The board was restructuring in a different region, and he was stepping down, too. It didn’t matter. He knew. He had known for a couple of weeks by that point and hadn’t told me; in fact he had falsely reassured me, and I had just defended him like a fool. There would be some severance pay, so sorry about this, blah, blah.
All around me were cards and letters from PeaceJam kids. A group in Seattle had sent me a huge paper quilt with inspirational quotes and letters after hearing about my story. My whole life was tied up in this work, with these kids, and now it was the youth center all over again. Blindsided. Not only did I not have a job—and my husband still had just temporary work—but they were shutting the whole thing down for the kids. Again.
They were even using the same stupid word: restructuring. That’s what they had said about the youth center, and it was bull. No one ever “restructured” anything. They shut it down and they used the money on programs for rich kids. This place was supposed to absolve me of some of the guilt over losing the youth center, and instead I lost both of them.
I can’t even tell you how angry I was. How deceived I felt. I had moved here for this, and now as I fought just to regain the ability to walk, I was supposed to figure out my next career move? It was unthinkable. I had no backup plan; this was my calling. And now how in the world was I supposed to pay for my medical care?
I’m sure my boss tried to say something consoling, but I remember none of it. Eventually Sean showed him to the door and told me we would get through this. I couldn’t speak. I was devastated, and would remain that way for days. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to cry. How was I supposed to tell the kids? I wasn’t even sure I would see any of them again. Twice in two years, the programs I had built up were being torn down. This was some kind of magic touch I had.
The more I thought it through, the more I felt personally betrayed. My heart rate shot so high that nurses had to come in to medicate me. Sean was furious. I remember him stomping around and explaining to a nurse what had happened. “We just got her leveled out. She’s been improving, and now she’s going to need to go back on a heart monitor and everything is going to be screwed up again because of this!”
My days at Gaylord had been pretty consistent after the first week. After Sean left for work, I’d go back to sleep. Then around 7:15 a.m., depending on rounds, the lights in my room would flip on. Someone would take my blood pressure, draw my blood, check my catheter to see if it was clogged or if my urine looked cloudy or crystallized, and check to see if my urethra needed to be flushed out with saline. Then they’d check on my stoma for infection. Everyone would stare at my stoma, the delicate lining of my intestine sticking out through my abdomen to attach to my colostomy bag. Then they’d roll me over onto my side and I’d cry as they pulled the tape off my butt. The wounds in between my butt crack were literally the size of a dinner plate and were closing very slowly.
Often there was someone new: a doctor or nurse who hadn’t seen me yet. That’s when I’d hear the sharp intake of breath, tongue clucking, or the other sounds of surprise. They’d all seen bad wounds before, but this was nothing ordinary.
They’d eventually move on to my abdomen, which also needed to be cleaned and re-dressed. When I first came out of the coma, that area had felt pretty numb, but now some nerve endings were growing back and it burned more and more. I tried to appreciate the burn because it meant my body was trying to heal, but how much pain can one person take? It was an all-morning pain marathon.
And that’s how I woke up every day.
Afterward someone would bring in breakfast. Sometimes I could eat; sometimes I couldn’t. They’d set me up in bed and leave me be until the afternoon, when we’d get to do it all over again, usually with Sean.
By this time, I was also having full wound vac changes on my leg on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the afternoon, which was the most painful experience of all. The regular RN would come in abou
t twenty-five minutes in advance to give me a strong painkiller and an antianxiety medication, and once I was stoned and groggy enough, the head of wound care would come in and do her thing with her team. They’d start by peeling the wound vac tape off my body from above my hip down to my knee and on my abdomen around to my butt. The tape held on all the plastic “shrink wrap” on my body, and there was Tegaderm, a sealable medical wrap for large wounds, on my leg.
Just getting the tape off was agony because my skin was so raw. It took twenty minutes to peel the tape off each time. Under the plastic wrap was a ton of medical foam. They’d pull that off next and there would be a gush of nasty wound discharge. Then there was another layer with antibacterial ointment that had to be peeled away. All of it had to be changed out frequently to lower the risk of infection. Despite all these efforts, infections would creep in anyway. Just before Thanksgiving, I had an infection in my abdominal wounds that derailed me for days. It started as two separate wounds, but they tunneled into each other and I wasn’t able to get out of bed or do any rehab until it cleared up with antibiotics. It looked like a miniature gopher tunnel full of green goo. A week after that, my upper leg wound got infected, too, but at least it cleared quickly.
Once all the layers were off my leg and the wounds were open again, they would pool up with blood. Everything was gross and raw. The nurses would scrub it off with some sort of special sponge while I continued to bleed. This part of the process took close to an hour. Then they’d take big syringes filled with saline and squirt it all over.
“That’s good. It’s beefy red,” the nurse said during one of the early changes. “If a wound is beefy red, that means it’s healthy and getting good blood flow. It’s when it’s not red that it’s bad.”
I swear, I never want to hear the phrase beefy red again in my life. It nauseated me every time one of the nurses said it. I didn’t care that it was supposed to be a good thing. Hearing my wounds described the way one might describe hamburger meat was just not cool and felt like even more of an affront because I had not eaten red meat in close to fifteen years. That being said, I adored my nurses. They had become my family, and as horrid and pain-filled as my wound care was, they shared stories, paused for a hug and for me to catch my breath, and many times we even laughed.
After all that was done, it was time to start the process of putting it all back together. They’d lift up my skin and stuff new medical foam in, cutting it to fit the shape of my wounds. Despite the pain medication, it hurt desperately.
Then they’d feed a tube into the foam for the wound vac, put the skin back down, attach the Tegaderm, attach the vacuum hoses, turn the machine on, and check for leaks. More than nine out of ten times, there was a leak. Or leaks. The machine would beep like crazy and they’d have to troubleshoot to figure out where the leak was, because anytime air could get into the wound site, it added to the potential for infection. They needed to have a completely solid seal so bacteria wouldn’t grow.
Sometimes they would have to mess around for another hour to find the leak and get the machine to stop its loud, incessant beeping. By the time the entire process was done, I was exhausted. The cook knew I would need a turkey sandwich afterward. He’d prepare shaved turkey with cheddar cheese on white bread—which was funny because I never liked white bread before—with mayo and a pickle on the side. I would devour it and then sleep for a couple of hours.
One of the reasons I was placed at this facility was that the head of the wound care team was so good at what she did. That didn’t stop me from hating the sight of her, of course. Our interactions were not what one would call pleasant. They were torture from beginning to end. One day, I just had enough.
When the nurses came in early that morning to check my colostomy and start my wound care after Sean had left for work, I just pleaded for them to leave. I refused to let anyone touch me. I was not going through it again. Not having someone pull my butt cheeks apart one more time to fish around in there. Not going through the agony of being ripped apart from one end to another while holding anyone’s hand. Not doing it anymore!
I wanted to die.
I spent several hours crying and bellowing, wishing I had just died on the pavement that day. It would have been finite, not this never-ending battle just to have some semblance of…what? Normalcy? You couldn’t even call it that. My life was not going to be normal ever again, and at the moment, I couldn’t see it ever becoming even sort of okay again. It was going to be eternal torture. And why? Because I took a bike ride home from work on a day when I wasn’t even supposed to be working, only to be told the following month that it was all for nothing because I didn’t have a job anymore? What kind of ridiculous destiny was this?
I can’t even stand up to brush my teeth, I thought. I have no purpose left anymore.
I screamed and cried, and screamed and cried some more. Every time someone entered the room I screamed them right back out. I just wanted to be left alone.
Maybe if they left me alone long enough, I would just go ahead and die of my wounds. I would fall asleep and disappear. Maybe that would be better for everyone. Not only was I feeling horrible about the physical effects of my trauma and about losing my job, but I felt so guilty for what it all meant for Sean. Was he supposed to become an abstinent caretaker for the rest of his life? I hated doing that to him, and yet there was no way out I could see. Either he would leave me and I would feel horrible, or he would stay with me and I would feel horrible. Every conclusion I came to was a dead-end street. If I died, he could get remarried without guilt and live a normal life.
And what about my parents? Why did I have to be such a burden on them long after they were done raising kids?
I was so angry about everything. I was mad that God had let me be in that path—and then let me live like this. Was it something I did? Are You just trying to get my attention? Because this is not the way.
Then came the guilt about being angry with God. What right did I have to be angry with my Creator?
Why couldn’t I have just died?
I lay there in my own waste until one o’clock in the afternoon, steaming mad and sad and guilty and suicidal, wanting to make it all go away with the force of my despair. I was angry with the people who’d saved me, angry with the machines that kept me alive. Meanwhile the nurses would patiently check in on me.
And there, in the midst of all that misery, one thought popped into my mind. It was a quote from one of the PeaceJam Nobel laureates, Jody Williams: “Emotion without action is irrelevant.”
I’m being completely selfish.
It hit me that quickly. As I was sitting there moping in my misery, I wasn’t doing anything to make it better. Instead I was dragging everyone else down around me when they were just trying to help. I needed to find a path to make this better—if not physically, then at least mentally. The idea of going poof in my sleep was not productive; I was a person with worth and value, and I needed to find a new purpose. Considering how much anger I had harnessed, I could use all that energy toward something good instead of something bad.
Screw this, I thought. I’ve already been through seizures and brain surgery. Even a freight truck couldn’t kill me. There has to be a reason I’m still here. A way for me to become a light in the world again, even if it’s not how I expected to do it.
So I let the nurses do what they needed to do, and then I asked to speak to the hospital’s chaplain. He came to my room and read scripture and prayed with me.
“I’ve been feeling so angry with God, and I know that’s not right,” I confided. “I know I have no right to question God.”
To my surprise, he said, “You do have that right, and it’s very normal in a situation like this to feel angry with Him. It’s okay. God can take it.” The Gaylord chaplain was a light, full of God’s love. He was honest and full of integrity and I was so grateful to him.
“But there are so many people who have it even worse than I do. There are people right here in the hospital w
ho can’t talk, who will never get out of a wheelchair, who have severe brain damage. I know I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself when others are suffering worse than I am.”
“If you’re feeling guilty for not having it as bad as someone else, then acknowledge it for what it is. Maybe you should go to these other people’s rooms and talk to them. Try to understand what they’re going through. You don’t know if there are other people thinking the exact same things as you are—feeling like they can’t come talk to you about what they’re feeling because you have it worse than they do.”
“I don’t know what I would say.”
“You could say, ‘I feel terrible that this has happened to you. This is what happened to me,’ and start an open dialogue. Don’t be so concerned about tiptoeing around stuff, because they’re probably angry, too.”
I gave it some thought. The chaplain reminded me of Archbishop Desmond Tutu; he was so kind, so strong, and always smiling.
There was a young guy at Gaylord who had been brought to Yale the same week I had. He’d been in an accident in his pickup truck and sustained a spinal cord injury. He was also in the SICU in an induced coma at the same time I was, while doctors tried various surgeries. Sean had gotten to know his mother well during that time, since they were both waiting around a lot. It turned out the young man was a college student and musician.
Sean had told me, “I think you should meet him,” so I decided to take him up on it. A day or two after my conversation with the chaplain, I asked Sean to wheel me into the young man’s room. His mother greeted us, all smiles.
Sean wheeled me to the side of his bed and I just started crying. I tried to hold his hand, but it was immobile. He was also unable to talk.
The room was decorated with mail from his college friends, and he had an iPad set up in front of him. I wondered what he was doing with it, when his mother said she’d like to show us the music he had been working on before the trauma. She pulled up the program on the iPad.
Gratitude in Motion Page 11