The Promise: A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty, and Friendship (7 page)

CHAPTER 12

Finding Peace

About a month into rehab, around the end of June, I took
my first trip out of the hospital. We went to a park I used to go to for fun and concerts. It felt nice to be outside while I was still recovering. I was turning a corner mentally and physically, and I was aware of that.

My parents, Chris, and my friend Rebecca came along, and they wheeled me to the park. We sat there and enjoyed a concert. I hadn’t been outside since my injury, so I was taking it all in. I felt a little nostalgic and maybe a little bit sad. It was my first time back in that park in a while, and I couldn’t help but look around and think back to when I had
walked
around the grounds. It was situated next to the river my mom and I had gone kayaking on when she came to visit me when I was in college there. Rehab and my college were in the same town, so I was surrounded by history. Walking history. Able-bodied history. I tried to explain how I was feeling to everyone.

“It’s so weird to be here, because I have so many good memories from this place,” I said.

My dad said, “Well, now you’ll make new memories.”

It was a simple yet profound statement.

He said, “It’s actually a really good and important philosophy to make new memories every single day, especially now that you are healing. We shouldn’t live for old ones. We should live for new ones.”

Those were some smart and powerful words, and I decided to make a daily effort during my recovery to live by them. It became my approach to all of this change. Later, my friend Rebecca, after pondering what my dad had said, wrote me an e-mail saying that she’d thought a lot about the statement and that it was true—there was so much more ahead of me. It was really nice to hear from her, knowing she’d given it as much thought as I had. That she was as moved by this simple concept: Life goes on and we make new memories every day, regardless of our situation or the hand we’ve been dealt. The note she sent made me realize something else, too: that my life and this accident had an impact on everyone around me.

Arriving at the understanding that all would be okay happened there in rehab, but it was a gradual process. It didn’t mean I was okay with my injury—obviously, given the chance to change it, of course I would have. But the reality was that I couldn’t, so I found peace instead of beating myself up over my situation. It wasn’t about complacency; it was about dealing with what I had to deal with and knowing that making peace helped.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it occurred, but in rehab I just realized, “It is what it is.” I said that to myself a lot. I had to manage myself because no one was going to do that for me. I had to
let it be.
There was never a time when I was angry, but there were definitely spurts of sadness. I would always make jokes with the therapist, and then I would break down a little bit at night, when it was quiet and I was alone and wasn’t being kept busy. And that was natural to me. Of course I’d break down. Of course I was sad, but overall I realized there was nothing I could do to change what had happened. I couldn’t go backward; I couldn’t stay where I was, so I had to move forward. I simply didn’t want to be a depressed, negative person; I wanted to be myself. So I went forward with the same personality that I’d always had for the sake of my own mental health and for the sake of Chris. It wouldn’t have been fair for him to not only part with me physically but also lose me as a person. I knew my physical condition would not be the end of us and that he deserved to have the woman he set out to marry originally.

Another woman, Frances, really defined friendship for me. She was in rehab and helped me through a lot of tough moments. She was a volunteer and a quadriplegic herself, and she would visit me often. I had a lot in common with her. She was hurt in her twenties like me and was also very active. We had both taught aerobics. We had similar functions. She gave me some pointers on how to apply makeup. I learned through Frances that I was able to do a lot with my arms. I realized that there was no horizontal line cutting off my feeling and function, but that my biceps, wrists, and shoulders had a lot of strength and could compensate for my lack of triceps, so with time, I would gain mobility. For example, when applying foundation, I learned to pour it onto the palm of my hand and wipe it on my face. I had enough strength to lift my arms to do that. With eyeliner, I squeezed the stick together with two hands and could apply it.

Frances explained to me that I could ultimately do a lot with the strength in my wrist, like feed myself and eventually drive. She had a caregiver who helped her in the mornings and evenings, but Frances did many things on her own. She cleaned her own pool at home, washed her own car, and gardened. It was so motivating and enlightening. She kept me positive in general and was someone to laugh with and even ask the personal questions that no medical professionals could really answer.

Frances had a huge part in my recovery. I wouldn’t have been as positive without her as my mentor and my friend. She was there every single day, and we spoke for hours. I asked her hundreds and hundreds of questions over the two and a half months I was there.

Laughter helped, too. Samantha had a little Chihuahua named Marley. I don’t usually like that kind of dog, but I was really missing my Lab. One day, she showed up and opened her purse.

I said, “Oh my God, you brought your dog!”

She said, “Yeah, why not? No one will care.”

I explained we had to keep it on the down-low.

She had smuggled little Marley into rehab, past everyone who might have tossed her and the doggie out. All to cheer me up. You can’t have animals in hospitals unless they’re certified therapy dogs, so this was really breaking the rules.

We had to involve the nurse on duty because she was in the room a lot. But we knew she wouldn’t tell on us. We also needed to keep the door closed and instituted a password for entry. I’m not sure why, but I decided the code word was “chicken leg.” So family and the nurse would be coming in and out, and that day they had to say “chicken leg” every single time they knocked. Sam and I laughed so hard that we cried. It was one fun afternoon for sure.

CHAPTER 13

Love and Sex

Part of rehab was getting used to real life after the
hospital.
And for me, that meant sex. So one day in late July during rehab, Chris and I were given the opportunity to stay together in a room within the hospital that was set up like a small apartment. The idea was that we were on our own that night to practice what it would be like when I went home. The nurses were a phone call away, just in case. Frances had given me a lot of information on how sex was going to be following the accident, and it was helpful for me to have my expectations in order.

We were finally alone for the first time in two months in this tiny room that looked like a nice hotel room, complete with floral comforter and small TV. I was simply happy to lie beside him, wrapped up in his arms. I can’t describe how painful it was to have to endure months without being able to lie in bed cuddling and embracing the one you love, but instead having to be in a hospital bed alone. We hadn’t been intimate in months, and we were previously an extremely sexual couple. I longed to share that with him again, but I knew it would be different. I could no longer feel below my chest, so I wasn’t sure this was even going to be enjoyable. But I quickly realized that it wasn’t about having an orgasm. It was about being with him. Before, sex was all about the final result, and now it was more intimate, more personal, passionate, and loving. This time, we didn’t totally know what we were doing. It was a lot like losing my virginity again.

It was my first time sleeping in a real bed since the accident. I still wore a neck brace, which wasn’t very sexy, but we worked with it. I was no longer able to move all around, but I laid flat on my back and I was able to wrap my arms around him. I was told that the parts of your body that you can feel, particularly your neck, become more sensitive, and it was true. I learned where I was sensitive and where I hadn’t acknowledged being sensitive before. That night was incredibly intense, more intense than the physical sex we’d had before the accident. This time it was emotional; it was making love. It certainly wasn’t better than the physical relationship we’d shared, which I was sad to have lost, but at least I knew there was hope and that we would still be able to find a way to remain physically connected.

Chris was my first and only. We dated for a few months, and in October 2005 I lost my virginity to him. It was an emotional experience for me, because I had waited a long time to find the right person. It was my sophomore year of college, about a week after my twentieth birthday, and it was one of those things that was perfectly set up. By now I had moved into a house with two of my friends and they weren’t going to be there; it was our only opportunity to be by ourselves, so it had to be that night. We both knew it was going to happen, so I was very nervous. I was thinking,
I am not going to be a virgin anymore.
How many twenty-year-olds do you know who are virgins? The poor guy had a lot of pressure on him. But I had no expectations at the time—I just wanted to be with the man I had fallen in love with.

I felt at that moment in time that Chris really was the one. With the lights out we made love and he told me he loved me. It was beautiful. It was great, being with him and knowing he’d be the only man I’d ever sleep with. I didn’t cry, but I got misty-eyed sharing that moment with him.

The first time Chris told me he loved me was two weeks after we’d started dating. We had made out on my grandma’s couch. He whispered something in my ear. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard correctly, that he’d said, “I love you,” so I couldn’t say it back. But then I sat up and looked at him and asked, “Did you just say ‘I love you’?” He nodded. I said, “I love you, too.”

My mother and father weren’t strict with me at all, but there was always a mutual respect and an open line of communication. My mother always said, “Don’t have sex until you find someone who is worth it. Wait until you meet someone you care for and who cares for you.” I listened to that. I believed she was sharing the best advice with me, and I was glad I listened. I had waited until I found someone who loved me, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Obviously sex had become different for me after the accident, and it was also one of the things that I had taken for granted. We were a sexual couple before the accident; we connected deeply in that sense, and to have an orgasm taken away from me was incredibly hard, but we compensated. It just wasn’t natural to not be able to do that. Honestly, I still enjoyed sex and I still got excited. Even though I couldn’t feel sex, my brain still received signals of pleasure. I got a tingling feeling all over, but it wasn’t like a peak and a finish. It was not an orgasm, followed by the type of release an able-bodied person might feel. But at times I felt my body and mind were more relaxed when we’d finished.

Rehab at the hospital was a really important element to my recovery—sex was only one aspect of that recovery. There were so many layers to getting better. I knew I wouldn’t walk, but that’s not the only thing to recover. I didn’t want my spirit broken, too. I didn’t want to be a different person than I was before the accident. I wasn’t Superwoman, and I certainly still had my low moments, but rehab gave me some time to gradually grow more and more at peace with what I was dealing with. Also, I made a promise to myself that I was going to be fine.

I felt obligated to make sure everyone else was okay. I could see how the injury was affecting everyone around me. I wanted to lift them up in the same way I was working to lift myself up. Like a group project, almost, that I would lead. I convinced myself that it would all be fine. In going through that process in my head, I definitely put on a happy face for everyone else, I think because I needed to sort through it all. By being happy all the time, by telling jokes and laughing with other people, it helped me convince myself. It made it okay to believe because life felt normal. I think I had more support than many people have, but I also learned I was the most important support I’d need. I needed to know I could survive. I needed to know I was strong enough to get through. I needed to figure out in my head that, yes, this would all be okay.

In rehab Chris and I would always talk about how awesome my friends were and how lucky I was to have them in my life. We discussed how friends sometimes leave your side in these kinds of situations because they simply don’t know how to handle them, and you often find out exactly who your real friends are. This was the case for me—it became clear to me what friendship stood for and what it meant. Suddenly, I knew I had true friends. There was no doubt in my mind that they would be there for me. Without them during those long months, it would have been harder to make it through. But they wouldn’t have made it without me either; they told me that many times. We comforted each other and learned to be there for each other, and we started to really understand the impact that night had had on us as a group.

I had to heal. That was clear. But even more, I had to step up. I had to really be there for this girl, this friend who had pushed me in a simple, playful gesture. We laughed a lot, but I could see through our laughter. She hadn’t even reached the low point of her despair during my rehab stint, though my friends and I didn’t know this at the time. It was just an unspoken promise at this point that we all protected her instinctually. We acknowledged that the accident at the pool had happened but almost pretended that the push itself hadn’t. Maybe we were in denial; maybe we weren’t ready to open that can of worms just yet. It wasn’t spoken, but it wasn’t too far out of all of our minds. We focused on the recovery for sure. As I think back, it’s almost like we refused to confront it. Whenever the thought of how I got where I was entered my mind, I’d push it out. If I didn’t think about how the accident happened, then I didn’t have to worry that our friendship would be different. But still waters run deep, and denial wasn’t enough.