I Survived : A Long Time Gone by Mike Stevens |
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The following true story is one that I've told before, but that was years, decades ago, so if you're familiar with my tale of, "whoa!" My apologies:
A spur-of-the-moment decision, seemingly inconsequential at the time, can change the whole trajectory of your life, not to mention your life itself. Faced with two options I chose to go up to the main office of my credit union to cash my paycheck from The post office where I worked as a letter carrier. Had I chose to go to the closer satellite branch office, I wouldn't have been on the highway where I was hit head on by a woman in a hurry to get where she was going, failing to notice the Ford Ranger pickup truck in the oncoming lane, and turned left into my lane. They tell me I was airlifted to a hospital in the big city, but I have no memory of it. Ironically, I don't enjoy flying and get extremely apprehensive, preferring to drive, true, it is dangerous, but at least I controlled my own fate. Ha! They tell me I was in a coma for 13 days, but to tell you the truth, waking up to my new situation made me wish I'd just have gotten the dying over with. At least I wouldn't know I was dead. What I did know was I was messed up. I couldn't walk, or talk, afflictions which still are affecting me 24 years later, come October 30th. On that day in 1998, my life was changed forever, some positive, but most negative. I remember being told by the doctor in charge of head injury patients that most of the healing takes place within the first two years. Two years! I couldn't wait that long. I was a bit nieve of my reality, two years is nothing. It's almost twenty four years and I'm still messed up. Years ago I was told by a doctor, who undoubtedly figured I needed some tough love, that I was going to have to accept that I've gotten back all there was to get back. But I won't accept that, refuse to accept that, I still notice minute changes toward a full recovery, and yes, I admit that that is highly unlikely to happen, it's my goal. What a long, strange trip it's been. That's the understatement of all understatements. I won't get into the hours of physical therapy, the frustration of being trapped in a body that doesn't respond to the orders I give it, and all the time that's gone by, time I'll never get back. Ironically, I can see my life direction clearly now, the things that will make me happy. Can't do much to make them a reality, but...
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Mike Stevens
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