The Story of Channon Rose: Lessons between the Lines (11 page)

It was not easy living with 40 different girls in one house and having to go to school with them. When you are with that many different girls you have a lot of different personalities and people fight. When you spend 24 hours a day with them, 7 days a week, it gets rough to say the least. I have to admit I absolutely HATED that place when I first got there, and for the first few months I still hated it. But I came to realize that even though I hated my parents for putting me there and felt betrayed by them, it was probably one of the best places they could have put me. Excelsior saved my life. It is not a pleasant place to be but it was the right place for me to be at that time in my life. I probably would have ended up dead in a ditch somewhere if my mother hadn’t sent me there. I just didn’t feel that way most of the time I was there. I was doing much better though. I worked really hard. I made some friends while I was there that I am still friends with today.

Let me give you an idea of what it was like being in EYC. There were a bunch of cottages that girls were assigned to. I was in a cottage that was off campus. It was called Columbine; it was the only cottage at the time that was off campus. We had two vans that would drive us to school each day, the rock van and the rap van. I would alternate between the two each day when we went to school. It was kind of fun driving to school because we got to listen to music and all the girls would sing along with the radio on the way to school.

At school we were with all the girls from all the different cottages on campus. The girls were from either broken homes or had traumas in their lives as well. They were drug addicts, suicidal, had anger management problems and the list goes on. There was one girl I always saw at school that had cutting scars all over her face and body. The cuts were made so deep that she had keloid scars so they were raised really bad and very noticeable. I always felt so bad for her. There was another girl who always pulled her hair and eyelashes out and that always gave me the willies. A lot of other girls had mental illnesses. It was a rough place but we all had one thing in common, we all needed serious help.

I wrote a lot of letters home because that was really the only way to communicate with my family. My mom saved one of my letters that I sent to her so I am going to share what I wrote in response to a letter she wrote me:

That was just one of hundreds of letters I sent while I was living at EYC.

A lot of things were new to me during my stay at Excelsior, one of which was living with a new girl every few months. We changed roommates frequently, I guess to encourage social interaction or something. I don’t really know why to be honest. I had one roommate named Aura, she was a very interesting person. She was also from California. She was pretty crazy though and she always kept me entertained. We had goldfish in our cottage and one day she took one out of the tank and ate it. I was like holy sh*t you just ate that fish, GROSS! Aura ate a lot of weird sh*t. She ate gluesticks, crayons, paper, and anything else that you aren’t supposed to eat, she ate it. She was very creative and I liked that about her, she made cool art and was always nice to me. One day Aura had been acting weird, I mean she was a total weirdo but she was acting weirder than usual. She was really quiet which was unlike her and kept to herself most of the day. I just figured she was having a bad day so I let her be. Then I was woken up in the middle of the night by one of the staff that had worked there. She asked me to go upstairs with her because she needed to ask me some questions. When I walked into the office they made me aware that Aura had been sent in an ambulance to the emergency room because she drank a bottle of Windex. She tried to kill herself with a bottle of Windex! I was shocked, I had no idea, she was my roommate and I didn’t even know she wasn’t in her bed when they asked me to go upstairs. I never even heard her leave our room that night. They asked me a bunch of questions and I just told them I had no idea about anything and that all I noticed is that she was acting strange that day. They sent me back to my room but I obviously couldn’t sleep, I was worried about Aura. A few days later Aura was sent back to our cottage and she seemed like she was back to her normal self. I was upset that she didn’t talk to me or even let me know she was upset, but she was acting normal again and back to eating weird stuff. After that incident all of our household supplies we used for chores had to be locked up and checked out and checked back in as soon as we were done using them.

I had another experience I will never forget with a different roommate who was severely depressed all the time. I ended up becoming close with her and we would write music together on her guitar and come up with fun songs. One morning I had opened my closet to get ready for school and I found her hanging in it. She was dead when I found her. She had hung herself in the middle of the night with one of her belts. I was pretty traumatized by that. I screamed when I found her and immediately dropped to the ground. I covered my face and my eyes and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to look at her and I didn’t want it to be real. I was so sad and mad that I couldn’t have helped her. I kept crying and I felt like it was my fault because I was her roommate. I thought maybe I should have talked to her or maybe there was something I could have done to have changed her mind. It was too late though. She was gone. Our cottage had held a debriefing to help us mourn our loss. It was one of the most awful things I had ever seen. It took months for me to get over the initial shock. It is still something I haven’t gotten over and probably never will.

Towards the end of my stay there was another time I was bunked with this girl named Cami. She was kind of boyish like a tomboy, and I was pretty sure she was a lesbian. She came on to me one day and we started kissing and touching each other and one thing led to another and we ended up having sex. Girl sex, lesbian sex, whatever you want to call it, it was pretty hot and exciting until we got caught. We got in a lot of trouble for inappropriate behavior and it set me back quite a bit for getting out of the facility early so I never did it again. For awhile I thought I liked girls and thought I was a lesbian until later when I got out and remembered boys existed in the world. It might be hard to explain but being in a facility with all girls for a year with nobody else around, the only intimacy you have is other girls. The incident with my roommate set me back a little but I stayed focused and worked my ass off to get out of there as soon as I could.

During my stay I got a phone call from my mother telling me that Misty had my dad arrested and put in jail. I couldn’t believe it, I got so angry. My mother and father were going to try to sort things out between them and try and get back together, but Misty found out. She told my dad that if she couldn’t have him, no one could. Misty had her own daughter lie and say that my dad had sexually molested her. She went to every extent possible to make everyone believe her lies. She went to the newspaper, all the sports teams my dad coached, and anyone else that she could try and influence her story upon. It was a huge messy ordeal and my dad sat in jail until his trial. Misty is very lucky that I was locked away at the time because I would have killed her myself. Hatred is not a strong enough word for my feelings about that woman. All these accusations about my dad emotionally destroyed him. He was in jail, stressed, and his reputation was ruined and everyone thought my dad was a child molester! Thankfully, my dad was found not guilty and was released from jail but that wasn’t until months later. Misty had now stole months from my dad’s life and put him through hell just as she had done with me years earlier. When the trial was over and my dad was finally released, my mom and dad ended up moving back in together. Shortly after all that happened, my year was up in the Excelsior lockdown facility and because of my good behavior and good grades and I was released after my one-year stay. Thank God!

Chapter 8

O
nce I had arrived home from Excelsior Youth Center, my mom decided that since I had been doing so well, she would put me back in a private school again. She thought it would be good for me. So I was enrolled into Los Angeles Baptist at the beginning of my junior year. I was doing well back in a normal school. I enjoyed being back at a private school, I made new friends, and I was staying out of trouble until one day when I found out there was a party that all of my friends were going to. This kid’s parents were out of town so he was throwing a party and coincidentally, my parents were also out of town. My mom and dad were away on a houseboat trip, so they would never even know I had gone to a party and I wouldn’t be able to get in trouble. I got ready at my house and my friend Jess picked me up. She was a friend from school, and one of the few of our friends who had a car, so she drove a few of us to the party.

I ended up getting really drunk at the party. Clearly, that was not my intention but everyone else was drinking and I wanted to have fun too. I was locked up for so long I needed to have fun, and besides it wasn’t like I was smoking meth or anything. I had lost my tolerance for alcohol though, I thought I could drink as much as I used to so I got pretty drunk fast. Nothing out of the ordinary really happened at the party, but I must have lost track of time, or not been paying attention because at the end of the night when the party was being broken up by the cops (us private school kids sure know how to party) I couldn’t find Jess to take me home. I think she ended up leaving early but I didn’t know. Maybe she told me she was leaving, but I don’t remember her saying goodbye. I looked around for her for awhile, but she was nowhere to be found. So I lost my ride home and needed to find another one. I saw one of my math tutors from school at the party and assumed that since he was kind of a dorky kid he wouldn’t be drunk and could drive me home safely. I asked him for a ride, and he agreed to take me home.

My math tutor was with one of his friends, so the three of us got into his old four-door Bronco and started driving. The guys asked if I wanted to go to the beach for a little bit before we went home, which was cool with me, I was still drunk so it sounded like fun. So we headed to the beach and hung out there for a few hours. The guys drank beer while we were there, but I was so drunk I really didn’t think much about it or pay attention to how much they were actually drinking. We all started to get pretty tired and it was really late, or I should say it was really early morning at that point but it was still dark out. We decided to head home for the night. We got into the car and I jumped in the backseat behind the driver and put my seatbelt on. I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep so I ended up taking the top strap of the seatbelt and pulled it over my head and pushed it behind my back, but still leaving the waist belt on so I was able to lay down sideways on the backseat while still having my seatbelt on. Shortly thereafter I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I faintly looked around, and realized our car wasn’t moving. We were stopped in the middle of the freeway. Completely dead stopped on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles in the middle of the night. The glass was missing from all the windows in our car, everything was dead quiet, and it felt as if I were in a dream. A nightmare would have been a better description.

I barely managed to look up at the guy sitting in the passenger seat. He stared back at me with a blank terrified look on his face. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His face said it all. I immediately tried to get up and when I did, I must have quickly gone into shock. I have no memory from that moment on except for a really loud noise and people around me sounding like they were in a hurry. It was an emergency helicopter landing on the 405 Freeway. There had been a horrific accident on the freeway, and I was in the middle of it. The helicopter was there for me. One of the biggest, if not the biggest freeway in Los Angeles California was completely shut down for the emergency rescue helicopter to airlift me to a hospital.

On September 5th of 2001, the driver of our car, my math tutor, was drunk and fell asleep at the wheel while driving. We were traveling at 60mph when we hit a stopped MTA bus. Our car was completely demolished. The fire department had to cut the car open to get all three of us out. My injuries were so bad that I had to be airlifted to UCLA hospital because they did not think I was going to make it. I didn’t know it when they loaded me onto the helicopter, but I had broken my back in three different places; I had shattered L1–L3 in my vertebrae and was paralyzed from the waist down. I had also lacerated my spleen and kidney and sustained severe internal bleeding. I urinated myself when I went into shock. I suffered life-threatening injuries and the odds of surviving the crash were not in my favor.

My math tutor broke his jaw on the steering wheel, had a lacerated spleen and kidney, and sustained severe internal injuries as well. The passenger had some internal bleeding, but he walked away from the crash. Both boys were taken in an ambulance to Northridge Hospital, and they both had to have emergency surgeries performed to stop their internal bleeding. The guy that was in the passenger seat told me months after the accident that when he looked back at me, I was screaming. I have no recollection at all of ever screaming. I think the trauma was too severe and your body and mind go into another place.

It’s crazy how one stupid decision can change your entire life. When I finally arrived at the hospital, the medical staff needed to somehow reach my family and let them know I was there. It took the staff awhile to get my parents’ correct phone numbers, but they finally reached my mother and told her I had been in an accident. She was furious because she thought that I had gotten into trouble again. She had no idea how hurt I was. When a hospital calls a family member or loved one, they always make it seem like the accident or incident was not that bad, because they don’t want people rushing to the hospital and causing additional harm to themselves or others.

When my mom arrived at the hospital and saw me lying in the hospital bed hooked up to machines and in a neck brace, she passed out, and they had to put her in the bed next to me in the emergency room. When she came to, she called my dad and told him to get the rest of the family to the hospital because I was not in good shape.

My whole family came to see me, even my brother who I almost never saw. They thought I was going to die in the hospital that day, so they all wanted the chance to say goodbye to me. I was in a coma-like state and have no memory of them even being there. I would fade in and out, but I was on so much morphine I couldn’t really comprehend my situation or understand the circumstances and the reality of what happened and what had happened to me. The doctors needed to do surgery on my back and another one on my stomach to try and stop the internal bleeding. They decided to wait and see if the internal bleeding would stop on its own because they couldn’t perform both surgeries at the same time. My mom later told me that I looked 9 months pregnant when I was in the ICU because my stomach was so large from all the internal bleeding.

Eventually, after a few days in the ICU the bleeding started slowly subsiding on it’s own, but I still needed major surgery done for my back injuries. The doctors scheduled my surgery for September 11, 2001. But then the unexplainable happened. Two hijacked planes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York City. If you remember that day, it was mass panic, sorrow, and an utterly disgusting act of terrorism against the United States on our soil. Our hospital operating rooms were immediately shut down, and everyone was on high alert in case something happened in Los Angeles, not to mention the entire United States. They wanted all of the operating rooms open in case there was another attack and they were needed.

The chief spinal surgeon at UCLA had to fight against staggering odds to get me into the operating room that day to perform my surgery. He fought for my life. He had already prolonged my surgery too long. He had to convince the hospital that I was just as bad, if not worse than anyone else who would be brought into the hospital that day. He was granted permission to operate on me on the 11th but only after a meeting with the directors of the hospital. Despite the commotion of the 911 attacks that morning, and everyone having to set aside personal feelings during that terrible day, the chief surgeon and his team started to perform a difficult surgery that would take hours. When the doctors cut my back open, they were surprised at what they found. It was much worse than they could have ever expected. Usually when you cut open a person’s back for surgery, you have to cut through a lot of muscle to get to the vertebrae. However, in my case, I had no muscle to cut through; it had all been ripped apart during the impact of the crash.

The plan was to fuse together L1–L5 of my vertebrae to restore stability.

They also discovered a bone fragment that had been pushing on my spinal cord, which was most likely the cause of my paralysis. They removed it, and then they took bone from my hip and put it into my back—it was one of the worst injuries they had seen in a long time. The doctors were going to do everything they could, but my parents were devastated when they were told that I would never walk again, especially my dad. He had watched me play sports and coached me my whole life and it was the one thing I was really good at. I think we had all hoped that one day I would earn a sports scholarship to college and further my education despite my earlier behaviors.

The surgery took twelve hours to complete, and when it was done, the doctors came out of the operating room with some surprising news. Even though the damage had been much more extensive than the doctors originally thought, a miracle had happened. I now had feeling in my lower extremities again. The doctor said, “I don’t know what higher power you believe in, but whatever it is, it was with Channon today because she has feeling in her lower extremities again. It is a miracle, I have never seen anything like this before”. The doctor did warn my parents that everything wasn’t perfect though. I still had a lot of recovery and I might still have numbness in parts of my legs, but with enough physical therapy and rehab, I should be able to walk again in a few months.

I believe that my accident was a blessing in disguise as it reminded not only me, but also our entire family how precious life can be. My accident brought my parents closer together but it also brought my dad and brother back together after not talking to one another for a long time. (My brother stopped talking to my dad when Misty told him he had molested her daughter.) Knowing that my accident brought back a relationship between my brother and father meant so much to me. In fact, it brought our whole family closer together. On my sixteenth birthday (5 days after my back surgery) I was finally “waking up” and actually able to understand where I was, what had happened, and I was coherent.

I was confined to a hospital bed after my surgery for what seemed like forever and I was in a lot of physical pain. Probably the worst pain I’ve had in my life was trying to recover from that accident. But I was happy inside because I knew that one day I would be able to walk again. You may not think that I had to re-learn how to walk, but I did, and it was very upsetting because even though I knew how to walk, it felt as if I had never walked before and it took a ton of physical therapy to get me just to sit up in bed let alone be able to walk. That was a big struggle for me and was very upsetting to me day after day. Not only was it extremely hard but I was also in excruciating pain so it made it that much harder.