The Car Accident That Changed My Life - Day 5

Today was a great day for me. My husband and I got up this morning and went for a long drive and even went into a store. To some of you this may not seem like a big deal but for me it was HUGE. Imagine for a moment drinking alcohol to the point of being passed the drunk stage. The point where dizziness sets in, the room spins, your head feels too heavy for your body and that awful sick feeling in the pit of your stomach with any movement and doing everything you possibly can to hold yourself up and not get sick. This is what I experience daily. Some days are better than others and I never know when it will come on.

I have what is called Vestibular Nerve Damage, Meniere's Disease, Nerve Damage, Aura Migraines, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Basically saying my sense of balance is off, my ears ring with a high pitch constantly and feel full as if I have swimmers ear, I don't sense hot or cold until it has passed the point of extreme. I have headaches but I am lucky enough not to have the pain associated with it. But the down side is I do get the neurological effects such as sensitivity to light, sound, smells, nausea and dots or flashes of lights in my eyes. The hard part in all of this is from the outside I look completely normal but all of this internal junk is enough to drive me crazy.

Before my accident my girls and I were constantly on the go and only home long enough to shower and sleep. From school activities, the beach, out of town NASCAR races, out of town NFL games, MLB games, concerts, Gator Nationals and weekend trips. We were always on the go and always traveling. Today my life does not include any of those things.

Let me explain the day that changed my life forever. It was a little over 11 years ago... a bright beautiful sunny day in December, a Wednesday December 13th. I woke up like any other morning got the girls dressed and off to school. Headed to work and around lunch time my boyfriend at the time called and asked if I wanted to go to lunch. We were busy at work and I felt a little nudge to say no but knew I had to eat and ignored that little warning "no" and said yes to him anyway.

He picked me up around noon and we headed to get something to eat. I still remember to this day how blue, clear and sunny the Florida sky was. As we approached the traffic light to make a right I noticed two people I knew from work. One was a Paramedic that had been asking me to go on a date for a few months and the other was his partner and EMT. They were standing by their ambulance as we passed them. Little did I know in a couple of minutes a mile or so down the road they would be dispatched to rescue me from my car accident. A car accident that has forever changed my life.

I was a passenger in a Ford Thunderbird driven by my boyfriend at the time. He had stopped in the left hand lane, of a main street in our city, along with a line of cars for a car making a u-turn. The only vehicle that didn't stop was a Ford F350 truck traveling at 50+ mph in a 40 mph zone. This truck switched from the right lane to the left lane never once applying the brakes as he slammed into the rear passenger side of  the car I was in. The force was so great that the backseat of the car was now even with the front seat. The seat I was sitting in due to the force of the impact broke the bolts loose and my seat just moved around.

I was told I was thrown into the front windshield with my head, cracked the glass and then busted out the passenger window also with my head. You see the only memeory I have to this day is seeing my ambulance friends at the corner when we turned and then the seeing the Paramedic, (that five years later became my husband), I knew standing at my window holding my hand telling me with the sun shining brightly behind him to stay still and calm they had to use the jaws of life to cut me out but he would stand there and hold my hand the whole time. The next memory I have was waking up in the hospital.

I spent three months doing test after test and physical therapy only to be told I needed surgery on my cervical spine to fuse it together because there was a piece of bone as sharp as a knife showing on an MRI that was pressing on my spine. I was told that I needed a plate screwed in my neck and to remove the sharp piece and without surgery I could be paralyzed from the neck down with the slightest jolt of my body. Well to me I would rather take the risk then to go under anesthesia for three to four hours and risk not waking up. My kids would be left without their mother and I knew that feeling all too well and didn't want them to experience it.

So I put my surgery off for a full year all the while experiencing strange and weird feelings with my health. Being a single parent trying to raise my kids and living that year in fear that if I fell, missed my footing, had a fender bender or even played too hard with the girls I could be paralyzed. After visiting Doctor after Doctor, EKG, EEG, MRI's, CT's, X-Ray's and Specialist after Specialist it was determined that I had no choice but to do the surgery. My health was getting worse, more damage was being done and finally I gave in and had to have the surgery done.

I went to the hospital that morning kicking, screaming, crying and trying to do everything I could to get out of it. The thought of them cutting my neck and moving everything around to screw a plate into my cervical spine and the fear of not waking up from the anesthesia did not make me happy. I couldn't control, (there is that word again from a previous post), a truck hitting the car but I could control not going under anesthesia...that was my thought process. Death...aftraid of dying. Afraid of leaving my girls without their mother. FEAR, FEAR, FEAR...fear of the unknown.

Waking up and the healing process was even more painful. For a year after my surgery I experienced dizziness, nausea, motion sickness and the worst of all food allergies. Never before did I have food allergies and now here I was allergic to peanuts, dairy and chocolate...all my favorite foods. It took me about six months to a year after my surgery to discover the allergies and boy were those feelings in my chest and breathing problems scary.

Doctor visit after Doctor visit being told that I had anxiety and depression all the while fighting back knowing something wasn't right created alot of anxiety. I could not go into stores because the dizziness was so bad that I would get confused. I couldn't drive on busy main roads due to confusion. Two and half years later I ended up in bed unable to do anything from the dizziness. Unable to read, watch TV and I couldn't sleep for the constant motion. I felt like I was on a tea cup ride at Disney World or laying on a waterbed at night. Finally, I ended up at an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist in another city that ran some extensive tests and made the diagnosis. It was such a relief to finally have a name, Vestibular Nerve Damage, tests to prove and someone to believe me after all the fighting I did. He also explained that when the visual stimulation occurs from looking at something it is like a traffic jam. The information gets losts with the never damage and causes the confusion and dizziness. I spent the next six months doing everything he told me several times a day and digging deep to fight to have some type of new functioning normal in my life. To be able to drive, go out to eat and enjoy the things I used to do. March of 2004 I went back to work and two months after that I started to drive. Luckily I worked close enough to home that I could drive on residential streets more than on main busy roads.

I had many struggles over the past eight years but I was able to find a new way to function. Until two and a half years ago...I found myself back at home with an increased dizziness, (above what I was used to), muscle stiffness, confusion and weakness. After a couple of Doctors visits I was told I had the flu and take it easy and rest. Then to be at work weeks later and have everything go black and end up on the floor and  taken to the E.R. by ambulance only to be told that it has to do with the nerve damage in my ear.

My mind started racing back to having to fight with all the Doctors again to listen to me, tests to run to determine why the increase in symptoms... I just didn't have it in me anymore. I was extremely tired from only sleeping a couple of hours a night, I didn't have the strength to fight, I didn't have the will to fight anymore... I was begging for help but no one knew what to do...it was a daily struggle with the dizziness over the years to do normal tasks that I took for granted before my car accident. Things like bending over and unloading the dishwasher without falling, going into a store and not being confused because of too much visual stimulation and eating what I wanted and not worrying about being allergic to that food are just a couple of the things that have been hard for me. My whole life and lifestyle changed.

In all this there was one person that heard me and heard my cries...God. He is real and I have experienced His love, grace and mercy in my life. In the beginning of last year I went back to the Doctor only to have more work done and over a series of months was told that I had Hypokalemia. So now I monitor my potassium intake each day to make sure it stays at the level they want.

I am on my way back with a renewed fight and I am trying to reach that level of being able to function with all the health issues. It could be worse and I am thankful for this fight that I have and the ability each day to get up and push myself a little further. It has not been an easy road for myself or my family. It has been a huge strain. But I am so thankful to get up each day and be able to love on my husband, daughters and granddaughter.

Through this the one constant has been God. He has been there each step of the way. Reaching for me when I was not following Him and now guiding me that I am following Him on my new journey.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11