Dreams turn into nightmares
Where to start?...When I was born, the Dr. used the forcepts and held them a little too hard, a little too long, causing scar tissue to build up over 4 years. At age 4, I started having..”Funny Feelings” as they were called for years. My mother would have to write a note to the teacher each new school year to let them know to just hold me and I would be ok in a bit and would go back and sit down in my chair. Well, time marches on, ALL I had ever known was seizures and it was normal and about the last 10 years I started getting worse with blackouts. They did tests and then ask if I would consider surgery? Told them yes, if it would stop the seizures. Well…I now would give anything for them back and swap them for what I now have as I would be able to go back to work, powerwalk, travel, work part time and love life and snowski, snowshoe, jump rope 350-400 jumps every other night in autumn and winter like I had done for 11 years with seizures. I was one of the first lobectomy surgeries they had performed and it went well, after having seizures 40 of 44 years. Then, finally feeling really wonderful about my newfound life, my first REAL life and healthy than ever…for a year and a half, I had been hired to draw a business front as they had seen my artwok I had drawn of a two story Victorian home and took 20 hours as am very detail oriented. Had people wanting me to draw their homes and I was 3 weeks from moving to Colorado Springs where my heart and soul still remain. Wide open spaces, no big city full of concrete, Other artists and potters, etc. So on April 24th, 2001 at 2:57p.m. I had just powerwalked from McD’s to have them save me newspaper and boxes as I had already sold even my dishes because I could not wait to get to Colorado and make or buy my own with other potters, find a job, start my life new. Even my mother was so very supportive. I walked down a block and was standing at a pedestrian crosswalk waiting on the light to change and looking both ways as I knew the EMS, Police and Firemen from driving teenage girls around to do litter patrol on Saturdays. I had been hired by the Juvenile Probation Officer snce they needed a female to take care of the girls and I could use the driving one day a week, but I loved my powerwalking. But, that April 24th, in an instant, my life has changed FOREVER! I looked back up at the light and had my art pad in my hand and new backpack from Colorado on my back (thank goodness) and heard a LOUD crash and looked down from the light and over and all I remember is..”Oh my God! ..Left or right?” The red van was coming to my left so I turned to the right and when I looked back all I remember is red at the end of my nose. My frontal lobe went through the windshield and broke my clavical-pushed it up and over into my neck, nerve damage, 3 broken ribs, punctured lung, and PULVERIZED left knee. When I came to, I thought I was still on the sidewalk and people i knew over me, police, ems and fire and I landed 50-FIFTY feet in a Taco-Bell parking lot just inches from hitting parked cars in the center strip and my head taking yet another blow to concrete! It took them two days to get the blood up. I now have TBI-Traumatic Brain Injury, but even worse..Complex PTSD -Post Traumatic Stress Disorder like the Vietnam Vets I volunteered with in Tampa, FL. in the mid to late 80”s. I NOW KNOW what they were and are still going through. The nightmares, flashbacks, triggers, a sudden loud noise and THAT is MY incoming. Then to land 50 feet away and hitting my head on pavement.When I found out it was a hit and run after being in ICU a long time, they brought the paper to show me and I just screamed and cried. It was a hit & run 20 year old ILLEGAL Mexican with NO license, NO ins, NO Social Security and making better money than me, paying NO taxes and found out later that they let him go! The asst. D.A. and an atty. rushed it through a speedy trial and I got nothing and took a year and a half to get my life long disability. Prior to that, I preached to people, make the most of your life, as it can change in a instant,.the only thing we are guaranteed is THIS very moment and to do some things in life you want to NOW. You can make plans, but it can change so fast. I lost one of my little twin sisters in a crash that was not her fault 5 years before I was hit. The day before I was hit, my Cocker had to be put to sleep then 1 year after I was hit, I saw a 200 car pile up on tv and called my mother in Chattanooga and she ask me to hold and I was having a bad panic attack and she never came back to the phone. I could not hold, called uncle here and calmed me down. Unplugged my phone and slept only to wake up to see my uncle and other sister had called and before I could call back, the phone rang. My mother’s friend called to tell me that my mother died that night. The V.A. Hospital is the ONLY place I can go and feel I belong. Even thought I am not a veteran, I know what they are going through, a LOT of them.I am fighting my own battle alone. The Vets get help and support groups but nothing for a living human. A lady tried to talk to a lot of soldiers last week and they yelled, Lady, you don’t have a clue what we are living through until you have been through it and the nightmares and flashbacks. Wish i had been there for the meeting. I sit and look out the window and hate to see the concrete city. I long for the mountains and woods and nature. The leaves gently flowing back and forth yet I cannot open my window for the LOUD sirens constantly and LifeFlights makes it like an active war zone.So I escape through my art a lot. Cell phones, texting and eating while you are driving, just taking you eyes off te road is SO VERY dangerous. I have been in three different vehicles since hit that day 8 years ago and we were at a light stopped and rearended!!! And once on the interstate and a car came up the ramp and was not looking BUT I WAS and hit my friends car on my side but the door right behind me. So I stay inside now. Drivers will run the red light three at a time just simply because they are impatient and in a hurry. They say that the research for PTSD is just in it’s infancy stage. Due to me having my left amygadala and part of the hippocampus and scar tissue removed, they did the Amygdala Project on me and said that they are now focusing on the right Amygdala as I was STILL able to develope Complex PTSD.
