CHAPTER 8

Support from Friends

As soon as I regained my voice a few days into my hospital stay, I was cracking jokes. There was one extremely happy and hilarious moment when Samantha brought my first McDonald’s meal during my stay—it was such a treat. It’s funny that having that burger and fries is one of my greatest memories, but it thrilled me to no end and I was grateful she had smuggled it in. It’s so memorable because we laughed pretty hard about how excited I was about fast food.

There were a lot of little laughs, mostly because I didn’t want to live in a somber, stressful environment. I know my upbeat attitude and ability to laugh off a lot of things was a concern for some people, because they thought I was burying my pain. But when I said I wasn’t hiding anything, I wasn’t. It wasn’t as if I sat there thinking, I’m not going to share my feelings with anyone. I truly wasn’t able to cry and I was finding humor in my day-to-day, even in the hospital. Crying is what people expect, I guess—the reaction that reveals to others what’s in your head. Maybe I didn’t process it all, but I didn’t have the ability to cry or scream out; that hadn’t come to me yet in those early hospital days. I just didn’t have the urge to do that. I was obviously scared and sad, but when you’re in that kind of situation, you’re simply not thinking about five or six months down the road; you’re in the hospital and you’re just sick. I was in that moment, trying to get through that day. I wasn’t thinking about not being able to walk; I was just trying to cope with the challenges of that particular day.

I was told that there were never fewer than fifteen people in the waiting room at any given time. The girls fastened together little pieces of purple and gold ribbon and handed them out to my visitors to pin onto themselves and wear as they arrived. My grandparents came with doughnuts every morning, and on some days other people brought food, too. I couldn’t join in, but the Monday after my accident, everyone tailgated out in back of the hospital, consuming all the food they’d had ready for my bridal shower. They got in trouble from security for lighting up a barbecue grill in the parking lot. It was nice, having all these friends. Everyone popped into my room that day and read notes to me, and the support made me feel really good.

Although it was lovely to have so many people around me and to notice improvement daily, I had grown increasingly aware that there would be no wedding anytime soon. I knew, of course, there would be one eventually, but not for a long time.

People slowly started spreading the word that our big day was postponed until further notice. Each relative took the time to contact the people they knew who were invited to let them know what was happening and advise them to cancel their travel plans. On CaringBridge.com, my mom and Samantha posted updates on my recovery and said that the wedding was on hold. My paternal grandmother, Bubbie, and grandfather, Zadie, were paying for the wedding originally, so she ended up cancelling a lot of the food orders and other arrangements. While many brides might have sobbed at the thought of their wedding being postponed, I was just so focused on getting through my injuries and figuring out where my life was going to end up that the wedding wasn’t even a blip. I was excited about it, but I knew it would happen anyway someday. I focused more on healing and rehabbing.

Understandably, all of the energy and concern was directed toward me. Chris, my parents and relatives, everyone put their vibes toward my healing, sometimes at the expense of their own. No one put his or her own health aside more than my mother. Her friend Margie had fortunately come to town to provide my mom with some needed support. One night at midnight the two of them dashed out to get some items they needed at Kmart (and probably Margie wanted to give her a break from the hospital), and they jumped on the carousel there as a release. She said they barely fit, but it was nice to laugh and enjoy a bit of a distraction during an intense time.

Despite tiny reprieves like that, the stress of constantly being on-call for me took its toll. One day, toward the end of my stay in the ICU, my mom left to take a quick shower in Margie’s hotel near the hospital. Out of nowhere, half of my mom’s left eye went dark. She said later she thought it was because her own blood pressure had increased (she’d been monitoring mine). But it wasn’t; it was because of exhaustion, and she wound up being admitted to the hospital for three days herself. She was in a wheelchair, but at the time I had no idea. She’d get wheeled to my room from her room, which I didn’t even know existed, and she’d stand up outside and then come into my room as if nothing had happened. She would leave at a certain time to return to her room, and although I never asked why I knew she didn’t want me to see her sick like that. She didn’t want anyone to worry about her, not me and not friends who had been coming and going during my stay in the ICU.

At around the ten-day mark, my dad asked the doctors often how long I’d be in the hospital. We never were given a solid idea of just how long it would be, and my parents and Chris began discussing rehab and trying to figure out where I’d go next. They were trying to develop a plan for that. The woman at the hospital who handled the rehab process came rushing in one day when only my mother was there with me and said a spot had opened up at a facility in Greenville. She said if we didn’t take that spot, it would be given to someone else. We literally had thirty minutes to figure this all out, and my mother was the only one available to decide. It was incredibly stressful for her, and we were frustrated that we had gotten so few answers on all the days we had asked, then all of a sudden it was, “Take this, or who knows.” We took the spot in Greenville, unsure if we were making the right decision. The next day, I was whisked off.