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Deborah Ellen Schneider (page 1 of 4) Page 1 of 4
Chapter One: The Wind of Change
On November 7, 1995, my husband Daniel and I took our son James to buy new shoes. We stopped at a red light on Hempstead Turnpike, a busy, four-lane road in Franklin Square, New York. As our station wagon idled at the light, a large New York Phone Company truck plowed into us at fifty miles per hour.
The truck’s twenty-four inch bumper crushed the entire rear of the station wagon. The force of the impact was so great we were pushed through the intersection. Had our son been sitting in the third-row seat, he would have been killed.
“Oh, my God!” someone shouted. “There’s a kid in the car!”
“Get out!” Daniel yelled. “The gas tank’s in the rear. The car might explode.”
I managed to crawl out. I have a vague recollection of feeling the cold drizzle that misted the air. A tightness in my chest made it hurt to breathe but I gasped for air between uncontrolled sobs. I was petrified, caught in a whirlwind of vertigo so severe I couldn’t even move my head, and I couldn’t see my son.
My calls for him became frantic. I was sure he was trapped. As the sky spun sickeningly, I searched for God and prayed for James.
Daniel took him to a nearby car dealership to keep him away from the chaos and the crowd. By the time he came back, the police had arrived. He tried to approach the other driver but the officers wouldn’t let the men talk. They could see each other, though. The truck driver was scruffy with ruddy cheeks, and he told the police he hadn’t seen us. Daniel suspected the man had been drinking.
That day changed my life forever yet most of it’s a blur. I remember shivering on the curb with broken glass strewn everywhere. Although my head hurt, initially I wasn’t in very much pain. James eventually joined me so I assumed everything was going to be OK. Even as my vision blurred and the world slowly began to disappear, I kept thinking, We are going to be fine. We’re all OK. It was itself a prayer, pleas I hoped God would hear.
The ambulance arrived. As the technicians looked for glass in my hair, the touch of their hands frightened me. There were sirens, ambulances, flashing lights and a lot of people talking. I couldn’t keep up with all the action and cried out. “I hit my head,” I kept saying, “I hit my head.”
In fact, when the seatbelt caught me, I had rebounded back into the seat with such force the headrest broke. The emergency workers pleaded with me to go to the hospital. Although I knew I was in shock, I had to make sure James was all right. A friend drove us to the pediatrician’s office while Daniel wrapped up things at the accident.
By that time the pain had started. As the doctor put my son through a series of tests, the throbbing in my head was so severe I became nauseous. James carefully walked a straight line but the room was spinning too quickly for me to watch. He touched a finger to his nose and I hid my fear when I couldn’t find my nose using both hands.
Nothing is wrong, I kept thinking. James is OK and I will be, too.
My old life had already ended.
* * *
After returning home, James and I rested together until his bedtime at 8:00 p.m. Although my body felt achy and strange, I was sure that prayers to God and a good night’s sleep would make me better.
Not until James was in bed did I collapse. Pain surged through me with such intensity it was almost unbearable. My head felt like it was being beaten with a sledgehammer and my neck burned as if knives were being thrust into it. My right leg and arm were limp. I slumped over the dining room table and completely lost my ability to see, speak or ambulate.
The minute Daniel found me; he called my friend Donna Devlin, who was a nurse at a local hospital. Daniel stayed home to monitor James while Donna took me to the emergency room. The doctors rushed me through triage and ordered a CT scan of my head and neck.
Hoping to make me more comfortable, a nurse gave me a shot for pain. “You’ll feel a pinch,” she said as she swabbed my buttock.
Although she had warned me, I jumped when the needle went in. In the few seconds between her speaking and the injection, I had forgotten what was going to happen. The sudden pinch of the needle was a frightening surprise, and the burning as the medication entered the tissues prolonged the terror. Further offers of pain medication registered as something agonizing and dangerous, so I refused any more shots.
I had suffered a closed head injury. When my head struck the seat, my body stopped moving but my brain slammed against the inside of my skull. The concussion was accompanied by further bruising as my brain continued moving back and forth like water in a bowl that’s been pushed across a table.
During all this movement, the opposite side of my brain suffered a different type of trauma. The organ moved so much that tissues across from the impact site tore, severely damaging the nerve cells there.
The entire brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. They function by sending chemical signals across the tiny gaps between them. Sudden twisting or torquing of the tissues can damage the nerve cells’ ability to function properly. It’s a form of whiplash specific to the brain. Both this whiplash and damage to nearby blood vessels added to my injury.
The accident had been bad enough. My refusal to seek immediate medical treatment ensured that the swelling, a natural part of the body’s attempt to heal, created further problems. However, at the time, there was very little doctors could have done to alleviate inflammation in the brain. Even if I had been treated immediately, it’s not clear exactly how much or little it might have helped.
Of course, the rest of my body suffered as well. The medical exam added severe whiplash and cervical and lumbar ridiculopathies (nerve disorders of the neck and low back) to the list. The vertigo also never stopped. In the hospital, I became lost in a storm of chaos, confusion and fear.
My children weren’t even in my thoughts any more. I had already lost nearly all memory of the accident and didn’t know why I was in the hospital. I lay frozen in bed praying in desperation to God for the agony to end.
But the pain grew. I didn’t eat, drink, speak, move or even utter a cry. As my cognitive abilities deteriorated, I became more dependent and vulnerable. Within hours, I was functioning in a child-like state.
From Wind Dancing: The Gift of Healing Traumatic Brain Injury by Deborah Ellen Schneider. Copyright © 2009 by Deborah Ellen Schneider. Reprinted with permission from Wind Dancing, New Beginnings, Inc. For more information on Deborah Ellen Schneider, go to http://winddancing.com.
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