An open letter to Mr. M:

Dear Mr. M-:

1000s of pills.

33 screws & 4 plates.

11 pins/rods through my leg for 3 months.

 Roughly 24 hours total spent in surgery.
Roughly 50 stitches/staples.

7 surgeries.
11 incision sites- some opened multiple times.

7 weeks off work.
12 weeks of pic line meds.
5 teams of doctors.
3 months of wound clinic visits.
6 months therapy.

15 months spent in a wheelchair/walker/crutches.
1 amputation.
1 new leg.


Those are the solid numbers. Not included are: countless nightmares, immeasurable tear drops, numerous sleepless nights, multiple days of depression, more office visits than I care to think about, and many, MANY, more things that I can go on to name.

I know my struggle is minimal compared to many others, but I am still a survivor.

 I have battled an infection that ravaged my body.

I have (tried to) smile in the face of adversity.

For heaven’s sake, I completed my first year of teaching with metal sticking out of my leg and had 4 surgeries in 4 months during that one school year.

The physical damage has been immense, and the mental damage has been considerable. I cannot drive without shuddering at every intersection. I quadruple check for unseen vehicles at every push of the brake and at every sound of a siren. Loud noises terrify me because, well, airbags are really loud when they hit your face.  These things haunt me every single day.

Then there's this prosthetic leg thing. Every morning and every evening when I put on and take off this leg, I'm reminded of what happened. Some days are harder than others. For instance, when I'm sitting on the edge of my bed at 2am staring at my bathroom door debating on using the wheelchair next to my bed, or hopping that distance, those moments are hard. In the times I actually forget I have a pseudo leg and get an itch on my calf, I reach down to scratch but hit plastic: Those moments are hard.

You don’t know that I was headed home to prep for a funeral that day, and one the next day too, when you almost made me attend my own. Another thing you don’t know, all of those above numbers are incomparable to this one fact: hundreds, possible thousands, of prayers have been sent up on my behalf in the past 2 years. I'm not sure why my God saw it best to keep me here, but he did. And you can never possibly know how terrified I was thinking I took your life that day – there are no words that can express that terror.  I STILL have nightmares about that possibility.

There are days when I wish I could speak with you (although it's probably best that we never meet because my family probably isn’t as readily to forgive as I am). I don't want to hear an apology, I just want to talk because you are a person who made a mistake. You are a person whose sins were paid for at Calvary and I'm not sure if you know that or not. So, Mr. M, I hope that wherever you are, you are doing well. I do say, however, I hope you think about being a more careful driver now. I hope at every intersection, you look twice because of the girl in the gray impala that you didn't see. I truly hold no bitterness in my heart, and forgiveness was done almost immediately (It was probably on day 3 because of being out of my head with drugs and medication reactions from day 1-2). I have the occasional sadness and mourning of what I've lost, but that sadness is small compared to the peace that God has given me in this battle. Philippians 4:7 says that there is a peace of God that passeth all understanding; I cannot begin to explain how incredibly true that has been. There are literally no words in my vocabulary that I can use to tell you how that peace has gotten me through – how that peace made me able to smile about not having a leg any more, and how that peace doesn’t make me bitter. There are no words, and if I tried to explain it, I’d probably just end up crying while thinking of that undeserved grace.

I am a survivor who will forever have fear and panic imbedded in me because of your lack of attention; I am the consequence of your actions. Thankfully, 2 years later, I am finally getting back to who I was before. I’ll be getting a new leg soon, which is pretty exciting, and I’ve been thinking of some positive things about having 1 full leg:

-          Less to shave

-          Only 5 toes to paint/manicure

-          Not having to wear a sock on my prosthetic, which makes a pair of socks good for two days

-          New shoes make blisters only on one foot

-          Only one leg gets cold during the winter

-          More covers at night for my other leg

-          The ability to walk into a teacher meeting and say “sorry guys, my leg is squeaking today”

-          Being able to fix your leg with WD40

-          Less toes to stub on things

-          People can step on my “toes”, or kick my leg, and I can’t feel it

-          Pretty good conversation starter

-          Completely mortifying students by making a leg joke in class

-          Having a new body part created just for you every so often

So there’s some good things in light of the bad. I’m 3 weeks shy of turning 26, and I have the rest of my life to enjoy.

Sincerely,
Andrea Myers, the girl in the gray impala who now drives a red SUV.

P.S. I didn't include your whole name because you still deserve some anonymity.  

Helping You Understand

You just don’t understand.

 
So, let me try to help you…

That first sentence has slipped though my lips more times than I can count. The second sentence usually does not; mostly because after the original sentence, I am trying to hold back tears and a sense of failure. So let me try to explain, in what way that I can…

The word “understand” means this: to be thoroughly familiar with; grasp the idea of; grasp the importance of.  I don’t think that anyone can fully understand something unless they’ve a) been through the situation, or b) discuss the “thing” in depth and detail with a living, breathing person. In application to my situation, you cannot understand the panic, guilt, and sorrow that accompany a car wreck victim unless you are one, or you talk to one for more than 15 minutes about the event.

Here are the things that I think you need to know if I am riding with you:

-       1) PTSD is real and it’s real scary: When it comes to reactions to things in the car, I’m not in control of how my body reacts.  I cannot “calm down” no matter how forcefully, or how many times, you say it. Trust me, you DO NOT want to go through 5 panic attacks in one car ride. It’s not pleasant. I don’t want to feel like I’m suffocating, that I’m going to pass out; I like oxygen, truly.

-       2)  When I close my eyes, it’s usually because something I just saw reminded me of what I saw .5 seconds before my car was obliterated (not because I want to take a nap).  Whether it is the color of a vehicle, the make/model of a vehicle, the surroundings, the weather, the way the road turns, the way the vehicle ahead is turning, what is coming in my peripheral vision – something in my vision field has reminded me of the car wreck.  The best way to get rid of that bad memory is to remove it from sight and take a deep breath. Yes, there may even be a physical response: a shudder or attempting to shake the memory out of my brain (it doesn’t work, unfortunately), or putting my hands over my eyes. 98% of the time, I am not closing my eyes because you are scaring me; I will tell you if you are a scary driver, trust me.

-     3) Certain sounds make me nervous and need to take a deep breath. Ambulances and fire trucks are big in this category, especially since I was injured and needed those services.  Sirens trigger a response that takes me back to the moments of “ouch”, and “I can’t move my legs/arms/neck”. Also, things like squealing tires and loud noises can make my heart rate jump to 180. It’s a Pavlov response thing: If the last thing you heard before being bruised from head to toe was squealing tires and had something large hit you, that sound will instantly remind you of ouchies again. 

-       4) Just like sounds, certain smells can have a bad effect on me. Squealing tires usually give a burnt rubber smell. I could hardly stand to be in a parking garage after my highway crash. It’s a signal to my brain to want to panic. I need to breathe through this situation. The first month after my 2^nd wreck, I dissolved into tears and shook from head to toe at the sight of emergency vehicles…so really, I’m better than I was.

-       5) This one is hard to explain…accelerations/decelerations can absolutely make me panic. You know Newton’s first and third laws of motion, right? That every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it; and for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? Yeah, so when a car pushed me into an at-eye-level semi trailer (all of us traveling at 70ish mph), I spun out and was sent in the opposite direction, and 3 months later when I was traveling 40mph downhill, and a 2,000 lb work van hit me head on, I stopped. VERY quickly, and VERY forcefully, and VERY painfully. The rapid deceleration (aka, brakes) that you may apply makes my heart want to explode. When you take off quickly, we are naturally pushed back into the seat a bit, but when you are tossed around a car and forcefully stopped by seat belts, airbags and steering wheels, it’s not a cool feeling like it was when you were 5.

-       6) Bad hospital stays make things worse. The first night was a nightmare because of a bad IV not getting any pain meds to me. The second night, my nightmares became living monsters because of a bad reaction to muscle relaxers. During that time, it was hard for me to distinguish between what was real and what was dreams. If you had to recollect a wreck (that was amplified in the dream because of drugs) every 10 minutes for 6+ hours, you just become naturally jumpy and shaky. It’s just a fact of life now. When you don’t feel safe in your dreams, it’s hard to feel safe in real life sometimes (talk about Nightmare on Elm street...)

-       7) Being jostled can also be a trigger for panic. When you are hit from any side in a car, you feel it in every bone, muscle, tendon, and cell in your body.  We know that drunks survive more crashes because they are loose and limber, whereas sober people tense up and brace themselves – sustaining more injuries and higher probability of death. Having an air bag deploy (read: explode) in your face does not tickle. I remember checking for my front teeth and touching my nose after the airbags because my face and head hurt so badly. My chest hurt from impact with air bag, steering wheel, and seatbelt straps, and my knees hurt from collisions with the dash board. Therefore, sudden turns, stops, and whatever else, still bother me. My ambulance driver also went over a pair of very rough RR tracks at 40mph…also not a fun feeling.  My gurney was bouncing and the EMT with me had to hold on to keep upright – He who was whole and healthy was holding on and then there’s me with bones sticking out, body bruised & bleeding. Long story short, RR tracks still make me tense up.

When you put all these factors together over the course of one car ride, sometimes even going through all of this in a matter of seconds, being in a car can be terrifying. It doesn’t matter how long ago the accident was, or how much you say you're “over it”, your body is still reacting to the stimuli around you and trying to avoid the feelings it felt on Day Zero.

Feelings of guilt crop up because there is genuine guilt and shame at still feeling scared. I don’t want to be scared to drive or ride with someone.  I always LOVED the car..LOVED donuts in the snow…LOVED stomach dropping turns and hills…LOVED carefree country drives. I feel bad about feeling scared, and feel bad that you may be upset at me for getting scared…

I cannot control the panic and bile that rises within me when these things happen. My only solution is to breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe slowly and deeply. I cannot help that my voice shakes, and trust me when I say I despise the tears that want to squeeze out. No matter how much I will them away, they come because my body is re-living what happened – this time without the adrenaline to sedate the nerves and suppress my senses. These times my feelings are raw and uninhibited, and I am still learning how to manage them, and how to manipulate them so that I can enjoy being in a vehicle again. I don’t want to be tense from point A to point B every time I sit inside one. 

No matter how much you sigh; no matter how many times you tell me to “calm down” or “you’re overreacting”; no matter how much you think I’m okay and back to normal...I’m not – but I am learning to be okay again. All I need you to do is try to understand.  I don’t expect you to fully comprehend my experience, just be patient and willing to understand.

One day I will be okay. I’m better than I was yesterday, and tomorrow I will be better than today. 

One day at a time.  

One Year Later...

A year ago today, I was hit head on by a loaded down work van that ran a stop sign.  I was going 40 and he was going between 20-30, so that puts impact somewhere between 60 and 70 mph. Let’s just say it wasn’t a happy camper day.  

It was supposed to be a busy day: I was out running errands for church & my kiddos there, then I was supposed to deliver food for a funeral, and prepare for another funeral the next day where I would be singing with 2 others. It all came to a screeching halt (quite literally) around 10:30 that Friday morning though. The way that he pulled out and hit me, I just knew he would be dead. I was terrified that I killed him. No, it wouldn’t have technically been my fault, but that was something I wasn’t prepared to deal with. And when I say terrified, I mean I was absolutely freaking out about the welfare of that man. 

The problem was though, that I couldn’t move from behind the wheel. My left wrist wasn’t working correctly and it was crazy swollen, my ankle wasn’t working – it wouldn't lay flat on the floor, it just kept turning over – my face hurt like I just got beat up, my whole body felt stiff, and I felt so disoriented.  But it just so happened that a police officer was driving up the road at that exact moment, and the fire/EMS station was right up the road, so help was there quickly. The medics wouldn’t tell me how badly I was hurt, and with that, I knew it wasn’t good.  Surprisingly, and thanks to the adrenaline coursing through me, I managed to stay calm and collected – I was even making jokes with the firemen who were with me trying to get me out of the car. 

From that moment on, everything changed. My ankle was bent inward at 61 degrees, and everything shattered inside my ankle – I had bone missing, for goodness sake, the impact to my lower body was so forceful it disintegrated bone. Plus, both bones in my wrist were broken. I  have gone through incredible pain; pain that I didn’t know I could go through.  I was without pain meds for nearly 12 hours after the initial surgery, I went through an allergic reaction to muscle relaxers that sent me into hallucinations and flashbacks of the accident. It was horrific to put in the least. 

So where am I one year later..

- 4 surgeries

- 23 screws, 3 plates inserted AND taken out

- 1 staph infection

- 18 pins via Halo fixator

- 6 weeks total off work

- 6 weeks worth of PICC line antibiotics

- Thousands of pills (over 1000 just in Percocet)

- 1 fused ankle

- And 365 nights of nightmares.

But there is a however. The however in my case is that I still stand SO blessed. It’s not been easy, and the only thing that has gotten me through it all is my Savior. One of the reasons I was so scared that the other man might have died is that What if he wasn’t a Christian, wasn’t saved, wasn’t on his way to heaven? It may sound self righteous and fake, but I am honestly thankful it was me who was seriously hurt, rather than him. He was able to walk away and hopefully be more careful while driving. 

It’s been a long year. I’ve cried, I’ve laughed, and I have a wonderful place of employment. They have been so considerate, and so understanding of my situation. My principal has prayed with me, my students have prayed for me, and my administration has prayed for me. I am so undeserving of these blessings. 

Like I said, it’s been a crazy year.  I still get anxious at intersections, traffic still makes my heart race, I still have panic attacks, and I still need to cry about it sometimes.  But I am great. I am healing, and will be (read: should be) walking and mostly back to normal by summer. 

I have a wonderful family, great (very small circle of) friends, a great place to move into this coming spring, and best of all, Christ in my heart. What more do I need other than Christ? I can only hope that someday someone will say of me: She was happy even in her darkest time because of Christ in her heart. 

I don’t want to praise Him in my happy times only, I want to praise Him even more in my valleys, because that’s when I need Him most.