Into the Great Unknown…Part 3

The Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) had swelled her head to the size of a soccer ball. Her abdomen was wrapped with some type plastic because she was still open! They’d performed as much surgery as they felt she could tolerate and would have to ‘go back in’ for further surgeries. There was a bar going the length of her left leg that was screwed into the bones, holding them together. Then, there was her right foot. It looked like a blown up doctor’s glove! I know this must sound exaggerated, but unfortunately, it was the honest truth. She had been put into a Medically Induced Coma to ‘help’ with the TBI. I have worked in the Medical field my whole life, yet had never seen (much less heard of) most of her injuries. I had so many questions, I basically ‘puked’ them out to the Nurses. We had just arrived, yet after 10 minutes were told we had to leave as ICU patients had very restricted visiting hours. I thought to myself, ‘Okay, everyone except ME, her mother, you have to go because I’ll be right here’…No, it was everyone with no exceptions…I panicked and looked for a place to kiss my angel, but where? She was injured head to toe, bruised and bloody everywhere! I chose to kiss the first place I’d kissed her after she was born, the top of her head. My lips felt small pieces of glass. I told the Nurse as I left, “Please take the glass out…” and was interrupted. “I’m sorry, but that’s the least of her problems”, she said as she gave me a paper listing all her injuries, her Doctors, her number, etc. I don’t feel she was rude or anything, it was a fact. Now, I felt so silly…

We met with one of the three Surgeons working on her that night. The ‘how’s and why’s’ were still a mystery, but what he knew… It was a head-on collision at a high speed (a highway). She had to be cut out her car. The engine had come through the car, landing in her abdomen. Her internal injuries from that were massive. She was Air-Lifted there. A Liver laceration (cut) caused her to ‘bleed out’ (you lose all your blood almost as fast as they transfuse new blood in). Her bowels would require another surgery (thus the ‘plastic wrap’). She was cut from under her chest to the pelvis. The impact hitting the left side, crushing her leg in multiple areas (thus, the bar holding it together, temporarily). Her TBI was a ‘Coup-Contrecoup’ (the brain is shaken side to side, or front to back) thus, the drug induced coma.Her pelvis was in multiple pieces, but this could ‘wait’. Then there was her right foot (that resembled a blown up glove, NOT a foot!)…It was front to back crushed injury, with almost every bone broken in it. These are seen in accidents where the person is attempting to stop a car (her foot was trapped under the brake). About this time, another Surgeon entered, a big ‘teddy bear’ of a man. He was the Surgeon that said, “No, I won’t amputate this foot. It’s viable, I can save it”. I felt myself take a gasp! It felt as if I hadn’t taken a breath since we entered that room. I somehow felt a glimmer of hope over his statement.

I was exhausted, but it would be hours before we’d find sleep. We stayed and waited for the next ‘visiting’ time, over 3 hours away. Her husband was despondent, repeating, “She just dropped me off at work”. My body was running on nervous energy, not requiring or desiring food. We stayed for 2 more visits, which felt more like a ‘viewing’…Our beautiful angel lay motionless, tubes and wires everywhere, a machine breathing for her. Was she really still ‘in’ there? As we left, I realized the glass bridge was ahead! A moment of panic was replaced with, “I have to do this! If she can survive all she’s been through, oh my gosh! I got this, and I did! Back into blackness, yet somehow ‘seeing the light at the end of this tunnel’, we began this journey together. We would need each other to make it through, and we did know, we are stronger together than apart! How long ago had I gone on my ‘Walk’? Although it felt like months, it had been one week; 7 days; 168 hours; 25,200 seconds since I’d felt a ‘weight’ lifted…Had the ‘weight’ been lifted for me to handle this?

https://vestibular.org/