My Miracle Story

It was a dark and stormy night. Really! That's how my miracle story starts out!

We were driving towards the Oregon border that December 21, 1988 evening. The plan was to drive to Medford or Ashland, motel it, and drive the rest of the way to California the next day. We were taking our daughter, almost 9 months old, for her first Christmas at Grandpa and Grandma's house. Reg was driving, and we'd just passed Canyonville. We were talking about stopping at the next rest area so I could nurse Laura, then Reg says I was dozing. He was following a semi-truck, going up an easy slope and around a curve. He was passing the truck, when suddenly he saw one headlight, then two, and nowhere to go! It was a head-on collision at freeway speeds.

Reg says he could feel the car rising up on the guard rail, and he prayed that we wouldn't roll. We didn't. When everything stopped, Laura was crying from her car seat (that's good), but when Reg looked over at me, he says my eyes rolled back in my head. The trucks along the way had spotted the drunk driver going the wrong way on the freeway, and help had already been called.

The firemen took Laura, carseat and all, and headed to their warm truck cab. They had to cut me out of the car, and the driver who hit us out of his car. Things were messy. They loaded us into ambulances, and we were taken to Mercy (Hospital? Med Ctr?) in Roseburg.

My injuries were severe: left leg had a crushed big toe, and crushed ankle, and a broken tibia. Something from the other car's engine had smashed through the window and hit me in the face, causing me to be in a coma. There was 3rd nerve damage, and lots of cuts that needed stitching. My left elbow had been jammed into Reg's ribs.

Reg's injuries were mainly the broken ribs (that he didn't notice right away) and lot of smaller cuts. Laura had some cuts, but we thank God that the car seat worked the way they are supposed to, and she had no other physical injuries.

Since I was comatose, all the stitching and stuff they did with no anaesthesia. Anything to try to stimulate my brain. They did not do any orthopedic surgery -- they did not know if I would live.

Reg's parents had come down and taken Laura back up to my cousin-in-law in Salem, who was nursing her infant son. Laura had never had to have a bottle, and wasn't happy -- Beth was able to nurse her, and taught her to bottle feed in a not-so-sudden way.

December 24 -- I was still comatose, and there was pressure building in my brain. It got to the point where the doctor sent me for CT scans to determine points to drill in my skull. When the CT results came back, Reg says the doctor was upset; he was sure a technician messed up the procedure. So the sent me back in for another CT scan -- this time the doctor was observing. And instead of finding drilling points on my skull, they found out that sure enough, the pressure was receding in my brain. Now that's a Christmas gift!

And during the week after Christmas, I started coming out of the coma. Mind you, my mind was not really connected to the real world yet -- it would still be over a week before I started making sense of things. But they decided that I was going to live, and so would need followup orthopedic surgery, and longer care. So they sent me to Portland Adventist Medical Center, where Laura had been born.

The neurosurgeon at Mercy chose the neurosurgeon at PAMC to work with. Their goal was to get familiar things to my senses. Reg got music that I liked, had people make phone calls to me, even if I wasn't recognizing voices or knowing what I was saying yet.

For my leg, the broken tibia was still in line, so the most important thing was rebuilding my ankle joint. I still have 2 long pins in the ankle. They didn't address the toe joint, for that was going to have to be after ankle recovery. No cast or wrapping on the ankle, other than bandages. Even though I would not be allowed to put weight on it, it was left mobile for physical therapy and flexibility.

My short term memory started working again the day I was transferred to Rehab. It was not all there right away, I just remember being taken by wheelchair to my new room on the 7th floor, and having things start to be familiar. Rehab was set up so that twice a day, every day, was physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. Evenings were when family could visit, and there was a larger, open area in the center section with a big table for games. The nurses became more familiar to me there.

And one night, shortly after starting rehab, I realized that this wasn't just a never-ending bad dream -- the hospital was real, the time was real, and the calendar on the wall said January. What had I missed? Why was I there?

Of course I tried to call Reg at home, but there was no answer. I later found out that my mom had made him stay in the nurses' dorm room with her and Laura, for he was too tired to be driving home to Newberg. I called Reg's mom next, and late as it was, she was the one who told me what had happened and why I was in the hospital.

Wow. I so appreciate breathing and walking and talking!

I was in rehab for only 3 weeks. My brain connections were making rapid comeback. Speech therapy had a special moment. One of the speech therapy training was that I'd be shown pictures on cards. I was to name the pictures. Before my brain started working again, I'd say whatever word came to my head, even if it was not the picture on the card. One day I was naming cards, and the one that came up was a picture of a diaper pin. I knew that I knew what it was, but did not have the name for the picture in my head. And I said so, instead of saying "clock" or some filler kind of word. That night, I remembered "diaper pin" and told the speech therapist the next morning. Even though I couldn't remember the word for the picture, it was good to communicate that in a normal way. (I had been told by lots of people that while I was speaking in mostly complete sentences, they didn't all make sense.)

Rehab sent me out for a day as a test, for Reg and I to see how it would go. We ended up visiting my orthodontist. I had been wearing braces at the time of the car wreck, and my lips had smashed onto them. Several days in ICU, when they finally got my lips untangled from the metal, the front brackets had all come loose. So the orthodontist fixed the brackets and wires. Then we stopped by where I worked (as a contractor at home, since Laura was born). Everyone was so glad to see me, and it didn't bother me that I looked like a stroke victim (from the nerve damage, the right side of my face sagged). I was out of the hospital, on crutches, and free that day! Reg took me out to eat, then back to rehab. They sent me home that weekend.

My parents stayed with us after they sent me home. I was on crutches now, until the next ankle follow up visit. We had Christmas a month late -- that was OK. My sister and brother-in-law had come up while we were in Roseburg, and Sherrie finished the baby dress I had started for Laura before we left home. Reg had left the scraps alongside the sewing machine, but I have absolutely no memory of purchasing the pattern or fabric or sewing the dress.

So, I'm a walking, talking miracle. The pins in my ankle are still there, and I've completed 25 marathons since then (with two more planned for 2007). And I'm talking -- turns out, from where the scar on my brain is, had I been right-handed, it's where communication would probably still be impossible. Praise God, He made me left-handed 30 years before!