I was in a room by myself, the TV was rarely turned on, I couldn’t sit up, speak, or do anything, and I had few visitors other than Melissa. Therefore, I began to lose track of time. My time in the hospital seemed endless. I could have been there for weeks, or I could have been there for months. I just didn’t know, and I had no way to ask.
I eventually did gain some mobility, and that meant that the correct diagnosis for me wasn’t Locked-In. I wasn’t locked-in in a clinical sense, but I certainly was locked-in physically and emotionally. It was a huge, huge effort for me to get into a wheelchair just so I could use the bathroom. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk, so that was plenty locked-in enough. The only other thing I was able to do was to feed myself, but even that was a tremendous challenge because my arms were so weak.
The doctors couldn’t figure me out. They were amazed that I could get myself in and out of the wheelchair (even if I fell half of the time and it took forever), and they were surprised that I hadn’t regained any speech. I was unable to write because my fingers were like pieces of string cheese. They were worthless, and I barely had any feeling in them.
Using blinking motions to answer yes or no questions, it did seem that my memory was eventually intact. I even remembered more of the accident. It was terrifying. Those few seconds of tires skidding and screeching on the road seemed to last an eternity before the inevitable impact.
My will to live was no stronger than it had been when I first opened my eyes. How could I live? Where could I live? And who would take care of me? Probably a perfect stranger, from what I gathered.
Because I was now disabled in such an extreme way with no one to help me, I had a social worker assigned to me who dealt with disabled or displaced adults. I was officially as displaced as I was disabled. The state had to provide enough for me to live on, but even if the house I’d remained in after divorcing Kieran was all paid for, I would need to be in the care of someone who could give me near-constant supervision.
The house had to go. I was grateful to my niece for helping me take care of that much.
The money in my account would be managed by my social worker, and I would live in a home that I guess would be somewhat hospital-ish, with others that were also disabled. So basically my life would consist of just sitting there motionless but fully aware. I would be alive, but I wouldn’t be living. Instead, I would simply be looking at life from the outside in. I’d watch TV and see people do things I could never again do. Books would be read to me about places I would never visit. I would eat whatever food they served me, with no way to tell them what I disliked unless asked to “blink” an answer. I would go to bed when they decided I should go to bed. I would get up when they woke me up.
Most days I would have physical therapy, where my arms and legs would be rotated, bent, pulled, and pushed to my therapist’s choosing, whether it hurt or not. Or maybe they would be kind enough to ask me to blink if it did. I just didn’t know. Being a stranger to them and not someone that they personally cared for, I guess I had to assume the worst.
And then there was Melissa. For every visit I got from a neighbor or someone else, she visited twice. She made a habit of stopping by almost every day after work since the hospital, according to her, was on the way home.
I still couldn’t figure out why she visited me or what she wanted from me. A small part of her seemed truly sorry for me, while the vast majority of her took immense delight in my predicament.
What was that saying about how it was often those working in the mental health field who had more issues than those they treated?
ns216.73.216.133da2
and then Add to home screen.