Read Online Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found by Rebecca Alexander, Sascha Alper - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rebecca Alexander, Sascha Alper
Ads: Link
had to use left me with the constant, urgent feeling of needing to pee. I cringe now, thinking of how ungrateful I must have seemed, how unreasonable and crazy, between the pain and my drug-induced delirium. I had always prided myself on being polite to a fault, but now I could barely recognize my old self. In a matter of seconds my life had changed completely, from being a babysitter chasing after little kids, so excited to go off to college and be independent and have what felt like my “real life” begin, to a patient stuck in this bed, lucky to be alive but totally incapacitated. I was completely dependent on others and in a kind of pain that I couldn’t escape no matter how many drugs they pumped into me.
I was only given one task that week, and, strangely enough, it was the only thing that made life bearable. In order to make sure that the morphine wasn’t suppressing my breathing too much, I had to blow into a small tube and make a miniature Ping-Pong ball rise in it with as much breath as I could muster, trying to get it to bob above a little blue line in the tube. It was my first challenge, and even pumped full of morphine I tried to focus everything I had on it. I was determined to make that ball rise all the way to the top, and I lay in my room blowing it as often as I had the strength, surrounded by bouquets of flowers and get-well balloons. At first I could barely get it to move, but I learned rightfrom that first week that the only way to get through this was going to be to look at it as a challenge and give it everything I had. To take my shattered, drugged body and do what I could with it. I was going to blow the shit out of that ball, and everyone was going to be proud. I was going to ace the ball test like no one ever had before. I’d be in the books, the girl who blew the ball sky-high. I had worked hard in school, on the soccer field, in school plays, but this was so far beyond anything I had faced. I had no body, I couldn’t move anything. The ball was it.
When people hear the story of my accident, the horror they feel is probably even worse than what it would be for someone else. “Oh my God, with everything else you’ve had to endure, how awful!” But I learned something integral to who I am today, who I’ve been able to become. The perseverance I would need every day of my life really began in that bed, with that little ball. The rest of the long, painful recovery would come, but I had already learned the lesson, that I had to meet it head-on, one day, one hour, one minute at a time. There was just no other way to do it. Every single thing that I have accomplished in my life that means something to me was done with really hard work, and the moment that started was there, in my hospitalbed.
16
M y first surgery lasted twelve hours. Two doctors took bone from my hip, each using some to reconstruct my left hand and foot, one starting as soon as the other had finished working on his respective appendage. I had two screws put into my left hand to hold everything together, and the bones in my left foot were shattered so far beyond recognition that it had to be completely rebuilt.
Before the surgery my parents had been told that some of the bone in my foot would have to be fused together, and that I would walk with a significant limp for the rest of my life and would probably never be able to run again. They made the wise decision not to mention this to me before my surgery.
After the surgery, as I lay in casts in the bed, the days passed by endlessly. The things that made me happy were such small ones, but I came to appreciate them so much. I would lie in the dark, generally awake before dawn, smelling the flowers that always filled my room (the nurses referred to my room as “the flower shop”). My grandma Faye gathered them from her gardenand from her friends’ gardens to bring to me when she drove up from Santa Cruz. The smell of the flowers masked many of the horrible medicinal smells
I was only given one task that week, and, strangely enough, it was the only thing that made life bearable. In order to make sure that the morphine wasn’t suppressing my breathing too much, I had to blow into a small tube and make a miniature Ping-Pong ball rise in it with as much breath as I could muster, trying to get it to bob above a little blue line in the tube. It was my first challenge, and even pumped full of morphine I tried to focus everything I had on it. I was determined to make that ball rise all the way to the top, and I lay in my room blowing it as often as I had the strength, surrounded by bouquets of flowers and get-well balloons. At first I could barely get it to move, but I learned rightfrom that first week that the only way to get through this was going to be to look at it as a challenge and give it everything I had. To take my shattered, drugged body and do what I could with it. I was going to blow the shit out of that ball, and everyone was going to be proud. I was going to ace the ball test like no one ever had before. I’d be in the books, the girl who blew the ball sky-high. I had worked hard in school, on the soccer field, in school plays, but this was so far beyond anything I had faced. I had no body, I couldn’t move anything. The ball was it.
When people hear the story of my accident, the horror they feel is probably even worse than what it would be for someone else. “Oh my God, with everything else you’ve had to endure, how awful!” But I learned something integral to who I am today, who I’ve been able to become. The perseverance I would need every day of my life really began in that bed, with that little ball. The rest of the long, painful recovery would come, but I had already learned the lesson, that I had to meet it head-on, one day, one hour, one minute at a time. There was just no other way to do it. Every single thing that I have accomplished in my life that means something to me was done with really hard work, and the moment that started was there, in my hospitalbed.
16
M y first surgery lasted twelve hours. Two doctors took bone from my hip, each using some to reconstruct my left hand and foot, one starting as soon as the other had finished working on his respective appendage. I had two screws put into my left hand to hold everything together, and the bones in my left foot were shattered so far beyond recognition that it had to be completely rebuilt.
Before the surgery my parents had been told that some of the bone in my foot would have to be fused together, and that I would walk with a significant limp for the rest of my life and would probably never be able to run again. They made the wise decision not to mention this to me before my surgery.
After the surgery, as I lay in casts in the bed, the days passed by endlessly. The things that made me happy were such small ones, but I came to appreciate them so much. I would lie in the dark, generally awake before dawn, smelling the flowers that always filled my room (the nurses referred to my room as “the flower shop”). My grandma Faye gathered them from her gardenand from her friends’ gardens to bring to me when she drove up from Santa Cruz. The smell of the flowers masked many of the horrible medicinal smells
Similar Books
