CHAPTER 12

Finding Peace

About a month into rehab, around the end of June, I took my first trip out of the hospital. We went to a park I used to go to for fun and concerts. It felt nice to be outside while I was still recovering. I was turning a corner mentally and physically, and I was aware of that.

My parents, Chris, and my friend Rebecca came along, and they wheeled me to the park. We sat there and enjoyed a concert. I hadn’t been outside since my injury, so I was taking it all in. I felt a little nostalgic and maybe a little bit sad. It was my first time back in that park in a while, and I couldn’t help but look around and think back to when I had walked around the grounds. It was situated next to the river my mom and I had gone kayaking on when she came to visit me when I was in college there. Rehab and my college were in the same town, so I was surrounded by history. Walking history. Able-bodied history. I tried to explain how I was feeling to everyone.

“It’s so weird to be here, because I have so many good memories from this place,” I said.

My dad said, “Well, now you’ll make new memories.”

It was a simple yet profound statement.

He said, “It’s actually a really good and important philosophy to make new memories every single day, especially now that you are healing. We shouldn’t live for old ones. We should live for new ones.”

Those were some smart and powerful words, and I decided to make a daily effort during my recovery to live by them. It became my approach to all of this change. Later, my friend Rebecca, after pondering what my dad had said, wrote me an e-mail saying that she’d thought a lot about the statement and that it was true—there was so much more ahead of me. It was really nice to hear from her, knowing she’d given it as much thought as I had. That she was as moved by this simple concept: Life goes on and we make new memories every day, regardless of our situation or the hand we’ve been dealt. The note she sent made me realize something else, too: that my life and this accident had an impact on everyone around me.

Arriving at the understanding that all would be okay happened there in rehab, but it was a gradual process. It didn’t mean I was okay with my injury—obviously, given the chance to change it, of course I would have. But the reality was that I couldn’t, so I found peace instead of beating myself up over my situation. It wasn’t about complacency; it was about dealing with what I had to deal with and knowing that making peace helped.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it occurred, but in rehab I just realized, “It is what it is.” I said that to myself a lot. I had to manage myself because no one was going to do that for me. I had to let it be. There was never a time when I was angry, but there were definitely spurts of sadness. I would always make jokes with the therapist, and then I would break down a little bit at night, when it was quiet and I was alone and wasn’t being kept busy. And that was natural to me. Of course I’d break down. Of course I was sad, but overall I realized there was nothing I could do to change what had happened. I couldn’t go backward; I couldn’t stay where I was, so I had to move forward. I simply didn’t want to be a depressed, negative person; I wanted to be myself. So I went forward with the same personality that I’d always had for the sake of my own mental health and for the sake of Chris. It wouldn’t have been fair for him to not only part with me physically but also lose me as a person. I knew my physical condition would not be the end of us and that he deserved to have the woman he set out to marry originally.

Another woman, Frances, really defined friendship for me. She was in rehab and helped me through a lot of tough moments. She was a volunteer and a quadriplegic herself, and she would visit me often. I had a lot in common with her. She was hurt in her twenties like me and was also very active. We had both taught aerobics. We had similar functions. She gave me some pointers on how to apply makeup. I learned through Frances that I was able to do a lot with my arms. I realized that there was no horizontal line cutting off my feeling and function, but that my biceps, wrists, and shoulders had a lot of strength and could compensate for my lack of triceps, so with time, I would gain mobility. For example, when applying foundation, I learned to pour it onto the palm of my hand and wipe it on my face. I had enough strength to lift my arms to do that. With eyeliner, I squeezed the stick together with two hands and could apply it.

Frances explained to me that I could ultimately do a lot with the strength in my wrist, like feed myself and eventually drive. She had a caregiver who helped her in the mornings and evenings, but Frances did many things on her own. She cleaned her own pool at home, washed her own car, and gardened. It was so motivating and enlightening. She kept me positive in general and was someone to laugh with and even ask the personal questions that no medical professionals could really answer.

Frances had a huge part in my recovery. I wouldn’t have been as positive without her as my mentor and my friend. She was there every single day, and we spoke for hours. I asked her hundreds and hundreds of questions over the two and a half months I was there.

Laughter helped, too. Samantha had a little Chihuahua named Marley. I don’t usually like that kind of dog, but I was really missing my Lab. One day, she showed up and opened her purse.

I said, “Oh my God, you brought your dog!”

She said, “Yeah, why not? No one will care.”

I explained we had to keep it on the down-low.

She had smuggled little Marley into rehab, past everyone who might have tossed her and the doggie out. All to cheer me up. You can’t have animals in hospitals unless they’re certified therapy dogs, so this was really breaking the rules.

We had to involve the nurse on duty because she was in the room a lot. But we knew she wouldn’t tell on us. We also needed to keep the door closed and instituted a password for entry. I’m not sure why, but I decided the code word was “chicken leg.” So family and the nurse would be coming in and out, and that day they had to say “chicken leg” every single time they knocked. Sam and I laughed so hard that we cried. It was one fun afternoon for sure.