I also had permission to work my upper body and lightly exercise my right leg from a seated position, so I got straight on that. Lucky me that I had a perfect place nearby for rehab and strength training: The local gym had great equipment and great trainers.
As soon as I could, I got back on a bike—a handcycle one. I also signed up for my first “wheelchair 5K.” But before I could get there, I had another ER visit: After wound care at Yale, I bled so much that I awoke in bed at home with pools of blood all over the sheets. That triggered my PTSD and the panic attacks were unrelenting.
Sean took me to the hospital, where they told me it was “old blood” from a surgical hematoma, and that as long as it was brown, I needed to let it keep coming out. For sixteen hours I watched cups and cups of blood pour out of my leg until it finally slowed down. They gave me IV fluids and antibiotics and sent me home, where we would continue to do wound care six times a day.
Just a few days after that, I was scheduled to give the keynote speech at a Women in Cable Telecommunications event called Propel Yourself: Overcoming Challenges to Propel You to a Better Future. I gave my speech from a chair, and at the end of it, during the Q&A session that always followed, I noticed that my leg was bleeding through my bandages. Luckily, they had placed a towel under me for just this scenario, so I managed not to ruin the Marriott Hotel chair. Sean and my friend and coordinator Michelle Peters whisked me into my wheelchair and off into a room for a quick wound dressing change, and then I was back in a flash to continue talking to the people and thanking them for coming.
Luckily, I was still able to do my next marathon in Rhode Island on a low-to-the-ground hand-crank bike borrowed from Gaylord—one of the bikes they bought with the money from the cycling tour fundraiser. Hand-crank bikes allow riders to keep their legs straight, safe, and buckled in. It was exhilarating to find out what it felt like to lead the pack in a run! For seven miles, I was out front by myself before the elite athletes caught up to me. Then it was a game: I’d get ahead of them on downhills, then they’d zip past me on inclines. Little did I know I got a flat tire about halfway through the race.
It was humbling to watch the perfect form, consistent stride rate, and strength of these phenomenal athletes from my ground-level vantage point. Using my arms to pedal for three hours was super challenging, but it was also a great honor to be able to do it. I knew how sore I was going to be the next day, but the good kind of sore. The kind of sore that reminded me I was still alive and still moving.
I had found by then that every new setback I faced made me stronger in the end, even when it was hard to see it at the time. Fighting for my life made me appreciate my life more. Fighting for mobility meant I’d never take my body for granted again. Fighting off infections and anxiety and PTSD and pain all meant that I was strong enough to handle all of it and still had a purpose.
I was a change maker. Not only was I a product of heroes, but I was becoming one of my own heroes, too. That’s what I hoped to convey at all of my talks: We all have that power. We are all change makers.
Being in a wheelchair was no fun, but I enjoyed the effect it had on other people. When I got up in front of an audience with my leg still wrapped up like a mummy, and told them I had just hand-cycled a marathon, I could see the excuses in their minds fade away. I’m out of shape. I’ve never been athletic. I have a bad knee. I don’t have time.
Life is precious!
If you’re alive, there’s a purpose. Find a way.
My body slowed me down during the expansion process. I just couldn’t seem to stop bleeding, and the doctors eventually told me that every time my blood pressure was raised, it was causing blood loss. I had to stop long hand-cycling and wheelchair sessions and limit myself to just chair yoga and strict upper body training for a while. Eventually, once the bleeding stopped, the restrictions were lifted a bit. But by then, the pain was bad enough that even I wasn’t ready to push it. It felt like I was being ripped from the inside out. I learned the beauty of naps and sweatpants, and the only marathoning I did was binge-watching television. After each expansion, I would go home in so much pain that I would take Valium and sleep for hours. My muscles would twitch as the skin stretched and burned.
A little girl was getting expanders filled in her forehead at the same time I was getting mine done, and I’d often hear her screaming in pain a couple of rooms away as they did her fills. It was bad enough for me, but I couldn’t imagine how confusing it must have been for a child.
This is temporary, I reminded myself. At the end of this, I’ll get to keep my leg, and it’ll be better than before. What amazing things our bodies can do!
And no matter what life threw our way, we always had the best people around us to step up and help us get through it. After an angry neighbor complained about the weeds on our property, our friends showed up to help Sean with the yardwork while I stayed in bed. A not-angry neighbor scheduled a cleaning service to come in toward the end of my treatments so I wouldn’t have to bend over to clean the floors.
The expanders caused me to look bulbous and deformed as they were filled; the one on my thigh looked suspiciously like I was concealing a football under it, so I drew a football on my skin to make the surgeon laugh. My butt, on the other hand—I have never had such a badonkadonk in my life! The hip expander made it so enormous on one side that Sean and I found it endlessly entertaining. I was shakin’ my groove thang and “Baby Got Back”-ing it all over the place. It caused some practical issues, though: I could no longer fit in my wheelchair, or in my normal clothes.
I decided my three new additions needed names, so my quad expander became Buffy, my hip/butt expander became Swank (like Hilary Swank, because I’ve always had a girl crush on her), and my inner thigh expander was Marcel, like Marcel the Shell.
They got kicked out on January 2, 2015, in a six-hour surgery. When I awoke, I had two wound drains in, and a lot of pain medication that didn’t solve my pain. It was awful. I had developed a severe allergic reaction to morphine due to the excessive amounts given to me during the initial trauma and many surgeries that followed, so that go-to painkiller was off the table and I had to use less-effective ones.
Thanks to my insurance, though, I was kicked out of the hospital after just one night. I could barely move, I was in enormous pain, and no one thought I was ready to go. But that’s modern-day insurance for you.
At home, I would have Sean and my home health care nurse. I was confined to bed rest for the first few days, except for standing to use a modified urinal. Slowly—way too slowly, it felt—I improved, and found ways to make myself useful. Gail came over for a sewing session so we could make some pretty hospital gowns for Amanda (it was completely driving me crazy that she was lying there in standard-issue gowns made by the company whose driver ran me over). When we were able, Sean and I visited my family in Pennsylvania.
After not being able to run for more than seven months, I got a little stir-crazy. I would watch the runners run past my house in the mornings and cheer them on. One day I brought out a cowbell. Every time a runner went past, I would bang on that cowbell and yell out in encouragement. It was usually well received, if unexpected. Who doesn’t need more cowbell in their lives?
It was good for me, too. Being out there on the roads was great, but being someone’s support felt right, too. I thought about all the people who had encouraged me along the way, both dear friends and strangers whose faces blurred together along a race path, and I thought of how much love there was in the world. Sometimes it’s hard to see. Sometimes it’s obscured by mountains of crap. But it’s there, and I was ready to amplify it. Love always wins.
Chapter 19
Endings and Beginnings
THE FIRST TIME I came face-to-face with the man who ran me over was at his deposition in 2015. He was a Hispanic man who communicated with the court through a translator. Sean and I sat across the table from him and his attorney. He looked like a sad man. He seemed rather old, not only physically but
in spirit.
My feelings of anger were mixed with questions about where he came from, why he’d left his home country, what his family was like, and mostly, what in his spirit made him look me in the eyes and run me over and then try to continue driving onward? I wanted to understand how a fellow human detaches from another human in this way. As I listened to him answer the questions, and then heard his answers translated from Spanish to English, many times I squeezed Sean’s hand and tried not to grimace.
“Did you feel your truck go up and down as it rolled over her body?”
“Yes, like I went over two bumps.”
“Did you hear her screaming?”
“No.”
I could not stop staring at him, reading every tattoo on his arms, the lines on his face, and the hairs on his head. This was my brother, yet we were worlds apart.
When he was asked to recount that day, he did so with agony, asking, “Why am I being forced to relive such a day that’s caused me so many nightmares?”
I was furious. He had nightmares? I thought of all the letters I never sent begging him to find human compassion, begging him to acknowledge just a tiny fraction of my pain and sorrow for my body and my womb that was filled only with scar tissue. Toward the end of his questioning, I was so overcome with emotion and flashbacks that my heart raced and I feared I would pass out.
He finally said, “Please, no more questions. I can’t bear to recount any more of this.”
I had finally had it. I’d sat there so perfectly quietly, wearing a sundress that was soft upon my injured skin. I stood up and said, “You want to know what it feels like to experience panic and remember every day what the horror feels and looks like? LOOK AT ME!”
I lifted my dress to expose my scarred body. My attorney, very cool and collected, said, “Colleen, okay, he gets it. Put your dress down.”
If I’d had the opportunity, I would have stripped off my underwear and sat on the table in front of him and made them translate, “THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN SOMEONE’S LABIA ARE RIPPED OFF, and see this? THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN SOMEONE’S ASS IS GUTTED FROM INSIDE OUT.” I wanted to show him everything. I wanted him to touch the tire tracks on my abdomen. I wanted him to feel for a minute a fraction of the burning pain I felt. I wanted him to understand the agony of not being able to make love to your spouse for years because everything was pulled off, then stapled and put back on, and crooked, and nerve damaged, and full of immense pain. I wanted him to feel what it was like not to have control over your sphincters, to let out loud farts all the damn time at humiliating moments and not be able to stop it. I wanted him to know what it feels like to sneeze and urinate on yourself because you’ve been catheterized so long and have so much damage. I wanted him to feel his cartilage crackle when he rolled over while sleeping in bed and know it’s because his sternum is disconnected. I wanted him to feel what it was like to be trapped in a comatose body with a breathing machine, a feeding tube, and nurses rolling him over all day long to keep him from having bedsores. There was so much I wanted to say and do, but I simply put my dress back down and sobbed.
Sean wrapped his arms around me and walked me out of the office.
A few months later, we had a private settlement offer. In a flash, it was over. The price of all I had suffered and would suffer, all we had lost, was set on a piece of paper. It was never a human process, just a monetary figure. The legal system is adept at dehumanizing the process, with its lineup of suits and clipboards and pens clicking away.
We could have pursued the matter further in trial, but it had eaten us up enough. We had millions of dollars in medical bills and loans to pay back, and we just wanted it all to be over, so we accepted the offer.
I called my chief trauma surgeon that night to tell him it was finished.
“Now what?” I asked him. “I don’t know where we go from here. How do I make a positive impact on the world from such a negative situation?”
Dr. Kaplan said, “You lived, warrior. You are alive. The case is settled. No matter your compensation amount, you’re untethered. You know what you need to do. Your passions and will have not changed. Continue the course without this hanging over you any longer. Hug your husband, get away for a while, and embrace that you are here.”
I liked what he said. Untethered. I was finally allowed to speak to David Smith, the contractor who had run out to save my life. I was able to settle the debts and exhale. As unfair as it all felt to put a dollar figure on what we’d lost, and as unsatisfying as it was never to get a real apology from the driver, it was time to move on to our next chapter.
That meant surrounding ourselves with things that water our souls, fertilize our roots, and help us grow. Sean and I became active board members for Bike Walk Connecticut, which meant that we would lead the charge on cyclist and pedestrian safety in our state. I continued my work as a board member and volunteer spokesperson for the American Red Cross. We began working to have Jamis and Coda certified as emotional support dogs so they could help us do good work with the Red Cross. I continued to expand my horizons as a motivational speaker and encourage people to donate blood and learn CPR. We grew bigger gardens. We got our friends up and moving. We showed up at blood drives. We promised never to forget or squander the second chances we both were given.
Although I wanted to go, go, go, my goal for getting myself back to training kept getting pushed back. I had a large mass on my left leg that wouldn’t shrink, so doctors had to insert a drain and break up multiple blood clots. My PTSD went into overdrive watching all the blood pour out of my leg; it felt like I was watching myself bleed out on the pavement all over again.
I slowly worked my way up to being active again, starting with walking, indoor cycling, swimming, and then a hike in the woods. Finally, by June 2015, I was back to doing triathlons with Sean and collecting medals for my heroes. My body was working again, and that was a major blessing, but there were still physical limitations that would never go away, along with a couple more ER trips when my body became septic. The surgeon was right: Warm public pools and lakes in the midst of summer really were a nightmare for me.
I had to come to a realistic conclusion: The full Ironman that Sean and I had hoped to do together just wasn’t going to happen for me.
I watched my husband become a better and better athlete, coming in first out of seventy-five people on the swim portion of a half Ironman that June. This wonderful man had been hanging in there waiting for me because we had done nearly all of our races side by side (or at least with him up front and me bringing up the rear!). This time, I had to let him know that it was okay to go on without me.
Sean loves so much and asks for so little. That November, we flew out to Florida so that he could compete in his first full Ironman race in Panama City. What’s amazing is that a neighbor from Connecticut flew out, too, so that she could see her “godson” become an Ironman. Sometimes family has nothing to do with biological relationships.
Sean completed his first full Ironman race November 7, 2015, and I got to be the proudest wife ever.
Amanda couldn’t wait to congratulate him, too.
“Keep doing all the glorious things your body can do,” she said. It was a sad reminder of all the variations between ability and disability. I had felt so sorry for myself for what I couldn’t do, and there was Amanda, refusing to fall into despair even as her entire body was paralyzed and she knew she had reached the end.
Her spirit was so strong, and I was in awe of her attitude. She stayed lucid and encouraging and active online until just days before she died, on September 21, 2016. Her body was transported to a research hospital where they would remove her central nervous system to study, according to her wishes.
The day after her death, I flipped open my Bible, hoping for an answer. This was the passage it landed on:
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you kno
w it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
—Philippians 4:6–7
As I continued to look for ways to quiet my own worries and focus outward rather than inward, I was delighted to hear from a woman named Barbara who had originally met me at the Superhero Half Marathon I did with my walker, and then heard me give a keynote speech at the Wineglass Marathon. She emailed to ask if I would be her guide at the Redding Road Race Half Marathon in the spring of 2017.
“I understand you have physical and mental limitations, but so do I,” she wrote. “You’ve become a role model to me and it would mean so much to have you be my guide and do the journey with me.”
I wrote back through tears to accept. The weekend of the race, I put on the yellow Achilles T-shirt once again, except this time it said GUIDE. Sean and I would both serve as guides in races later that month. It’s wonderful to be able to give back through an organization that has been there for me.
Throughout this journey, what I’ve learned more than anything is that we all have an expiration date on our lives, and we will all have big challenges to deal with along the way. But we also have choices in how we approach those challenges, and people who will show up for us in a big way if we let them in. We can wallow alone in our grief, or lose ourselves in anger, or we can choose to love harder and let our love for life and people grow larger than our pain.
I’ve never been a fan of the phrase “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” because it always felt wasteful to me. Just lemonade? What about the seeds?
Gratitude in Motion Page 22