I was, according to my dad, a "nutrition and exercise Nazi" (thanks dad ;) who refused to touch anything that didn't consist of fruits, vegetables or protein. Every day after dinner I ran six and half miles on the treadmill in the gym, then saved an extra half hour for weights and sit-ups. Yeah, I guess you could say I was a bit over the top...just a bit. I was 126 pounds, 100% muscle, physically strong in every possible way you could imagine...and yet one day in my seemingly "perfect" life that I had attempted to control completely, I found myself waking up from a concussion with my spine being held together on a board, too in shock to feel the pain- yet.
I think it would be useful to note that waking up from an accident with four random strangers holding your body together on a cold hard wooden board with a blanket over everything but your toes isn't exactly an ideal situation to assume you can even move at all. I began to beg-mutter "Am I paralyzed? Am I paralyzed?" which probably sounded a lot quieter in the ambulance than it did to me. Nobody would answer, so I gave up and started shifting every single gear in my brain to prepare to live my life paralyzed. Why else would nobody answer me when I asked? I felt a prickly wave of fear shower itself through my innards, and started rambling off cries for help to God in my head.
Please be with me. I can't live this life without your help. Please give me the peace to accept that I'm paralyzed. Please, God!
I swear I had never felt so desperately hopeless in my entire life. My whole entire body began to reevaluate how to live, and I felt like I had reached the ultimate rock bottom, preparing to live my life paralyzed from there on out. I considered that moment what I like to call a "Gethsemone moment" (totally coined that term by the way :D I mean when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemone, He cried out to the Lord to spare Him from His purpose the Lord gave Him to fulfill here on earth. All His friends abandoned Him, asleep in the garden even when Jesus specifically told them to stay awake. His family wasn't with Him. His own race, the Jews despised His guts and planned to kill Him. If that isn't the most despairing, exasperating situation then I don't know what is. But the reason I call moments like that "Gethsemone moments" is because when Jesus cried out to the Lord in sorrow, He told the Lord "Not my will be done, but yours". It was a moment where He was on His knees, at complete rock bottom, knowing His purpose but begging not to have to endure it. And then the Lord gave Him the peace to accept it. On that board, believing I would be paralyzed for the rest of my life, I felt like I had hit one of the lowest points of my entire existence. And that's why I began to silently beg the Lord for the peace to accept that this must have been what the Lord planned for my life here on earth...or so I thought.
But amidst all the crazy and wild feelings that seemed to go explosively ballistic throughout my quivering body, I instantly felt a sense of tranquil serenity. It wasn't that I heard God's voice whisper into my ear or anything. That's not how it worked. I just remember feeling a beautifully calming voice in my heart telling me to simply Be still.
All of a sudden, a short stocky man with glasses and a thick accent from somewhere in Eastern Europe asked "Can you move your toes? Listen to me. Can you try to move your feet? Focus on where I'm touching."
He gently pressed the balls of my feet, then let go. I felt his cold hands on my cold feet, trying to sense where the feeling was coming from, and after closing my eyes in concentration.....I began to wiggle my feet back and forth. I can't really try to explain the feeling I had when I moved my feet on that board in the ambulance, but it was probably the most incredible feeling I've ever felt in my entire life. I could feel the Holy Spirit pulsating through my inner being, and I swear I could feel every organ in my body smiling and laughing and crying, all out of thanks to the Lord. I may have even shed a few tears, but how could I know?
I don't remember much else about that ambulance ride except that there were lots of people surrounding me on the floor of the vehicle, holding my spine together on the board all the way to the hospital. I don't even remember feeling any pain yet from my injury, that's how badly my body was in shock from the trauma! Which freaks me out now that I think about it..I always knew the human body went into shock when it experiences a traumatic accident, but this was the first time I had ever experienced it myself...and it was on a whole new level of anything I'd ever imagined about traumas.
We finally reached a hospital in Maryland where there were surgeons ranked fourth in the entire country. In the emergency room, I laid on the board with a blanket covering me and they placed the board on the stretcher with three different square blankets laid in a row so that once I was laying on them the nurses could pull different sections of my spine in order to be sure that it was always aligned. The transfer was not comfortable, let me tell you....that's one thing I've developed a threshold for, besides the pain. Feeling UNCOMFORTABLE. I've learned not to expect to be able to feel comfortable anywhere I sit or lay unless I really get lucky. But usually I'm not. Not with an injury like mine...
I was wheeled to the emergency room, still unable to feel any pain anywhere in my body out of shock. My coworkers stayed with me in the room, praying over me unceasingly as we waited for my surgeon to come in. I still had no idea what was wrong with me...all I knew was that I had begun to feel fire all over my body. It was shooting down my spine and spidering into the backs and front of both my legs... I wanted to cry out in shock, but random nurses had already entered the room on cue, poking holes in both my arms and hooking me up to countless IV stands that began to pump several intense, heavy narcotic fluids into my body that eventually calmed the pain to a manageable degree.
When my surgeon came, the first thing I instantly asked was "Will I ever be able to run again?" Running had become such a huge part of me. It was the most amazing way for me to let my energy out, and I'd taken up running about six and a half miles a day last semester in college. I ran every single day of my second semester off, and took my training seriously. Without running, I had no idea what I was going to do with myself. The thought of losing something so close to my heart literally made me want to cry.
Lucky for me, Doctor Karuso reassured me that eventually I would be running again. BUT (of course these reassurances are always conditional...) it would take time. He told me I would be okay, and that he was going to do everything he could to make sure I'd be healthy and happy again. But TIME was going to become my biggest battle yet. And that it would take a full year for a healthy recovery, but I was lucky to be so young and healthy when this happened. Youth was on my side, and I was lucky for that.
When my parents finally got to the hospital which was a two hour drive from our apartment in DC, I literally started crying the moment they walked in. I can't even explain why....I just broke down. There's something comforting about having your parents with you after almost dying on a ski slope.
But the moment lasted only for a bit before my surgeon began describing the details of my injury after evaluating some of the X-rays that had been done in the emergency room....and I wanted to break down and cry all over again, not out of thankfulness that my parents had made it all the way to Maryland while I lay in the emergency room with an out of tact spine, but because I finally knew what had happened to my body. And it made whatever functioning organs that existed in my body want to churn inside and out.
This is right after the surgery, my first time transferring from the bed to the chair! Sounds super unimportant, I know. But it was a huge jump for me ;)
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