Life Changer
This is my first time joining a survivors group, so I’ll try my best to attempt to explain how my life went from fully geared to stalled. First of all I’ve survived a lo of trauma I’m life already from various abuses. So every happy able successful moment in my life was a great feat in itself. I’m the mother of two children who I raised as a single mom most of their lives. I once had a great relationship with someone who I loved very dearly with plans to be married. I was a business major and made money day trading stocks and also the occasional construction work here and there. I was fairly fit, very active and involved in my community via the schools my children attended and volunteer work for the needy. In early September of 2018 months after losing my terminally ill father to suicide, I laid down to take a nap and awoke to my former fiance and a roomful of paramedics and police telling me that I had about 7 seizures and had passed away once in my bed. I was quite disoriented and argumentive. I declined ambulatory transportation to the hospital, stating that “I’m too tired to keep living, just get out of here and let me die.” After another hour or so passed I was convinced by my children and mother to allow my fiance to take me to the hospital to be checked out. Once there I began having seizures again, including one in the CT machine and another where they restrained me. They attempted for several hours to get the seizures to stop using massive amounts of anti convulsant drugs. I coded at the hospital and was revived. Spinal tap testing showed that I had contracted viral meningitis causing encephalitis and encephalphy in my brain. The cause of the meningitis was likely a cold I failed to seek treatment for. The encephalitis and encephalphy from both treating the meningitis soon enough. The former of the diagnosis left me with epilepsy and brain damage which I would find out later on down the road. When I went home after a 2 day coma I could not eat solid foods or hardly walk. It took me two months to begin to recover. I did not have anti epileptic drugs or even a diagnosis of epilepsy at that time. In the 3rd month I began having horrible seizures anytime that I went to sleep. Testing done at Emory a year after that showed right temporal lobe epileptic activity discharges in my sleep. CT imaging showed a damaged area with a ventricle narrowed. Blah blah blah I started medications and they made me sick. I had one that did not but the brain damage and the medication changed my behavior so majorly that my fiance broke up with me. I became irritated and during fights would have what felt like rage seizures but to him was violence. Nobody really told me what to expect from myself and my behavior is not really linked closely with my condition. So I truly try to do my best in dealing with others but mostly, I stay isolated. It’s a fairly depressing existance. With my brain not functioning the way it once did, I began to not be able to work, which was even more depressing. I got into working out, photography, swimming, crafts ECT, but nothing too heavy as increased stressors cause seizures for me. Fast forward to March of 2020, I was leaving to get food after an argument with my former fiance and was traveling our residential road at am increased rate of speed and came room a sharp curve causing me to slow the vehicle. When I did the vehicle crashed into a rock flipped into a water resevor which had a meter in it still and flipped two more times. Amazingly that day my vehicle was totaled but I was fine. Very shook up taken to a hospital and left where I did not get treatment after being checked in as a wreck/seizure patient…. Amazingly enough this was the same hospital that diagnosed me with meningtis. After sitting for almost an hour I left and returned home where I discovered after a few days my foot and neck were injured. I had also been hit by the airbag and hit the left side of my head on the window during the flipping so head injury was also a possiblity. Thankfully by this time my two children were staying with their father so they weren’t with me or around me as my behavior became increasingly alarming. Then in June on the 27th I was returning from a improptu road trip to the North Carolinas with a friend. I dropped him off and made my way home. I had been reported as missing by my fiance to the local sheriff’s office and was fully prepared to speak to them and for the argument with my fiance the trip was going to cost me. I was driving down the road where his grandparents and other family members lived. His grandmother’s husband was terminal stage with lung cancer so I was going by to say a prayer for him as I frequently did during covid-19. The road in question is very curvy and narrow, there are new developments all along it in the front of the road, as residents had to rebuild from a tornado. I attempted to slow my vehicle to go around sharp curves and discovered my brakes did not work. After attempting to get the car to stop with no success I seen what I thought was a ditch. I tried to slide the vehicle to the side of the road and ended up going over a culvert drain into a culvert and into two trees. I knew instantly that I was not okay as soon as the vehicle stopped. I immediately began to pray for myself screaming “God, please let me be okay for my babies.” I assesed that I had feeling in my legs and neck and that I could wiggle my toes and fingers and them I reached for my phone to call 911. They had to use the jaws of life to extract me from the vehicle and a special backboard was used to lift me up out of the culvert safely. If not for the careful response of the rescue crew that might I may not be walking today. I was told that I had been taken to 2 different hospitals that night, I passed out and didn’t wake up until the next day when the brace was put on me to help heal the L1 combustion fracture. I had liquid stitches on my arm and my face had been set while I was passed out. My chest was severely impacted as well, but I managed to ask if I could walk as soon as I could talk. My attending physician actually said “well we can see”. Lol I proceeded to move so fast he looked at me like I was Jesus Christ himself. I have a little dirty secret and it’s that I do not like hospitals at all! So my next question was, can I go home now? And Dr. Amazed said that he would prefer that I stay there but that he’d release me. I’m quite persusive at times. To my credit it was a very dumb move. At home I was completely alone as my fiance decided to leave me after yet another argument. I stayed in the home we shared as I had no other place to go but he did. I had a large dog to care for and an enormous house. With an impacted chest, torn ligaments in my arm, and an L1 that was in pieces. Nobody to help me with anything at all. To further make things worse, no pt was ever set up. My follow ups consisted of two visits at the spinal specialist where I was given hydrocodone and muscle relaxers. My home was broken into and my medication stolen I was sexually assualted and my personal items and money disappeared. Local police were not of much assistance as I had no proof. I was written off as the local crazy woman basically. I was later jailed twice for behavior related issues and false accusations by am angry officer. At times I didn’t have food. The floors were crooked and the yard a mess and the dog nearly impossible to care for. At times I simply cried. I wished I was dead. I attempted suicide twice. I couldn’t have a normal conversation with my children or any family members to the point it was healthier to have no contact. I felt so lost, alone and hopeless that I became an entirely different person than who I once was. I was like a raging lunatic one moment and depressed and sobbing in the next. I had no transportation and in that mental state continued to limit contact with anyone at all. It felt like people were treating me oddly everywhere I went and I hated it and mistrusted everybody. I asked my neurologist for a referral to a counselor and was sent to a psychiatrist instead so instead of getting help I refused to see anyone. Extensive studies show long term changes to the human brain after certain kinds of medication are taken, to preserve my brains condition for as long as I can, I avoid opioids or other mind altering medications when given the choice. Psychiatrist tend to prescribe medication that I tend to avoid therefore avoiding psychiatrist all together preferring to turn to licensed counselors instead. I’ve found that I myself have terrible coping skills, and that my feelings about all of this are still very mixed. I had a seizure while my back was still not fully healed which I think might have caused more damage but can’t get to any doctor that really cares. So I can’t do many of the activities I once enjoyed due to improper healing and I’m not sure what to do. Over time my brain seems to be calming down as far as erratic behavior. But I still have flashbacks when I go by the first accident scene. I feel bad for being alive and looking normal but not being. That’s what I dislike the most. I still live in the house where I died and sleep in the same bed. It makes it difficult to sleep. Also knowing I could have a seizure and die again and not come back, hurts my heart because my relationship with my children is so broken. Not really a great outcome or current outlook, but I’ve not had a lot of help or support. So if that’s something you’ve had I would value that greatly, as it’s helped you more than you ever know, just by not being completely alone in dealing with things. I spent a lot of time reading the Bible to bring me peace, though oftentimes i felt like God did not love me. I still keep the faith that things will improve eventually as I’m 3 years out from surviving something that not many do, and only a year out from the two accidents that have near destroyed me. During the two times that I died, I had an experience and had the message that I had work still to be done on Earth. I’m not sure of that work, or how long I’ll be doing it. But I hope to get to a place one day where I can help others like myself.
