Miles To Go Before I Sleep (24 page)

I took lots of baby steps on the way to becoming more independent. Going to the grocery store was very exciting for me. It gave me a feeling of independence, something I could do on my own. Before I could drive, Scott dropped me off at the grocery store.

Yet shopping was hard. Just writing a grocery list felt overwhelming. In the beginning, Scott helped me write down the items we needed, according to where they were in the grocery store.

I remember I'd ask Scott, “What comes first? The meat or the produce?”

“The produce is first,” he'd say.

So then I'd write down all the produce items I needed that week: oranges, apples, lettuce, and so on.

“What's next?” One at a time, we went through the grocery store, department by department, and listed the items we needed in an average week.

I was able to write down the name of each item, but reading what I'd written was another matter. I had to really focus on one word at a time and cover the rest of the words with my hands to make any sense out of the jumble of letters and spaces in front of me. It was like trying to read words with my head underwater; letters were floating all over the place. My brain was confused by the bits and pieces appearing on the page.

This would be really tough to do in the grocery store. I had to think of a better way. I had an idea.

After writing my list, I read each item into a tape recorder. Then I rewound the tape, slipped it in my Walkman, and headed for the grocery store. In the grocery store, I put on my headphones and listened to the tape as I repeated each item on my list one by one. As I heard myself say each item—slowly!—I'd stop the recorder and go look for the item.

Sometimes, I'd hear myself say an item on the tape and start to go get it … then forget. I'd rewind the tape and listen again and again.

Reading continued to be a problem for me long after the hijacking. Even after the swelling in my brain went down and it returned to normal size, I still had trouble reading and understanding simple sentences. It was tedious work trying to understand every word and what it meant in the context of a sentence. Though the floating eventually went away, the loss of parts of my visual field was permanent.

I went to a neuro-ophthalmologist to have my vision checked. He gave me several vision tests. In one test, he put one red ball by my right eye and one by my left eye (where I could see) and asked, “What do they look like?”

“They're red,” I said.

“Is there anything different about them?” he asked.

“Yeah, the one on the left side is awfully bright,” I said.

He took them away and then showed them to me again. They were exactly the same color. He said, “We don't know why that happens, but sometimes it does with people, like yourself, who have had some brain trauma.”

For some reason, red was a color that my brain connected with. This clicked with what the neuropsychologist had told me in Houston. The doctor suggested a technique that helps many learning disabled adults who have trouble moving their eyes from left to right while reading: take a red pen and go from left to right on a page, underlining each word, from the first letter to the last. This exercise would help my eyes to connect the letters that formed a word—and see them in the right order. He said the process might take a while, but with practice, I could do it.

I hadn't thought of it before, but I already knew how to do this exercise from my experience as a special education teacher. It was one exercise I taught kids who had problems with tracking—reading words from left to right. For some reason, red was a color that they could focus on. By following the red line under the words, they were training their eyes to move from left to right.

I might give them a list of letters like the following:

A D L H A C A P Q R

Some kids had a problem picking out a particular letter from this sequence. So I would tell them, “Every time you see the letter
A,
circle it and don't lift up your pen.” It was a tracking exercise. When they got really good at that, and that problem with their vision improved, we'd move on to another exercise.

I sat down at the kitchen table in our apartment with a newspaper and tried to read. Let's say I wanted to read a simple word like
going.

My eyes would automatically move to the end of the word and see the two letters
ng.
I knew that
ng
was not a word, so I put my fingers on the letter
g
and backed up, right to left. There was an
n.
I backed up another space and found an
i
, then
o,
and, finally, a
g.
Backing up one more time, I came to a space.

I always looked for the space, because the space marked the beginning of each new word. With my fingers, I traced over the word from left to right—
g-o-i-n-g.

After I had identified each letter in the word, I'd go to the next space—end of word—and start over. Back up, back up, back up—space. Then read left to right.

After describing my reading method once, someone said, “Jackie, why don't you just look to the left side?”

“Don't you think I tried that?” I said with frustration.

My eyes wouldn't let me go over there. Before I was shot, I had the ability to go to the left side, just like anyone else. But I didn't have that ability anymore.

The exercise that really worked was the one that I used with my LD students and that had been recommended by my neuropsychologist. I took my red felt-tip pen and placed it on the first letter of a word. I made my eyes follow the pen as I underlined the first word from left to right.

My goal was not to read the newspaper, but to train my eyes to see the words from left to right. I used a newspaper instead of a book because I could throw it out every day and get a new one.

I put my red pen at the end of each word, then moved it from right to left until I found a space, the signal that I was at the beginning of the word. Once I found the beginning of the word, I underlined it from left to right.

Red was the only color my eyes could stay focused on. If I used any other color my eyes would bounce right off the page.

After a few months of practice, I was able to read a simple story in the newspaper. As I practiced more and more, however, I gained proficiency and speed. My eyes and brain were beginning to learn how to read all over again.

As my brain went down to its normal size and the floating started to disappear, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to drive again.

I wanted this so much because driving meant freedom. I wouldn't have to rely on others to shuttle me around. I thought driving would give me back a more normal life. As my memory improved, I felt ready to give it a try.

One clean, crisp Sunday morning in February 1986, Scott and I were driving through some back roads in our Ford Bronco. Since there wasn't much traffic, I thought it might be a good time to try driving.

“Are you sure about this, Jackie?” Scott asked.

“Yeah, I want to. I know I can do it. Let me just try a little.”

“Okay,” he agreed.

Scott pulled onto the shoulder so we could change places.

Scott didn't know if this was a good idea. He knew about my visual problems and thought it might be better for me to get used to sitting in the passenger seat of our truck.

It felt strange to be back in the driver's seat. I hadn't sat behind the wheel of a car or truck for nearly a year. In Cairo and Stavanger, I rarely drove. We mostly rode our bikes everywhere. The last time I'd been driving was when I was back in Houston before Scott and I got married. I felt a little like a teenager learning how to drive all over again.

I drove on the shoulder for a few feet, then stopped. It was too hard. I was too scared. “I can't do this,” I said. “I can't see right.”

I was exhausted by the effort it took to concentrate on the road and move my head back and forth and from side to side so that I could see where I was going. But I tried again.

At one point, we came to a stop sign. I thought I was very close to it—but stopped long before reaching it.

Scott didn't understand what was happening. He thought I just didn't pull up far enough. I kept going until, all of a sudden, a little boy appeared out of nowhere. In reality, I stopped quickly, before I was anywhere near the boy. But to me, he appeared very close to us. I was scared. “I can't do this anymore,” I told Scott. “I don't belong here, behind the wheel.”

My visual perception was still not healed. I was relieved to pull over and let Scott drive again.

Despite the mixed success on my first attempt, I was determined to drive again.

Scott wasn't thrilled by my continued eagerness to get behind the wheel. He saw that I sometimes had difficulty just walking without bumping into things.

Nevertheless, I wasn't going to give up. Affirmations and visualizations were important in achieving this goal. When I started praying to drive again, I didn't say, “I want to drive,” or “I hope to drive,” or “God, please let me drive.” On a piece of paper, I wrote: “I drive today. I zip in and out of traffic today.”

I stated my goal as if I had already attained it. I saw myself weaving through traffic on a busy freeway. Throughout the day, I repeated this statement to myself: “I drive today.”

It took lots of work and practice to get to the point where I felt comfortable driving again. After I got my driving permit, I spent a lot of time practicing in parking lots and on side roads. My visual impairment created huge obstacles. It was more than a year after I first started driving before I felt confident behind the wheel. Eventually, I passed my written and behind-the-wheel driver's tests and got my license.

The technique I use to drive is basically the same one I use to read and to walk. I just put the vehicle by the white or yellow line and move my eyes down, ahead, and over to the left—all the places where my visual field is gone. Down, ahead, and over to the left.

In the late spring of 1987, a cultural festival was being held at the St. Paul Civic Center that I really wanted to go to. Scott didn't want to go, so I asked Mrs. Pflug if she would come with me.