May 21

2010
3 years
exactly
where i need to be.

san francisco.
challenges.
growth.
learning.
family.
life. aging. health.
yoga.
strength.
friends.
freedom.
laughing.
the ocean.
the sun.
love.

we fall

we walk

Don’t forget

• Paramedics putting the bone back in my ankle

• Strapped to a stretcher, ER lights over head. Alone.

• Waking up from the first surgery, alone.
  

• Breathing tube, catheter, IV drip - Dilaudid (5x stronger than morphine)

• Laying on my broken back with a consistent view of my two shattered ankles

• An x-ray tech not realizing my back was broken too
  

• Laying in Stanford fighting the nurses to keep the oxygen tube in my nose even though it was making my nose bloody.

• Living with an oxygen machine that beeped loudly every time I breathed slower than normal. Every time it beeped I thought I was on the verge of dying from being on too much pain medicine.
  

• Unable to sit up in bed for two entire weeks – not really knowing where I was because I couldn’t sit up to see where I was being rolled to.

• Having to breathe deep and concentrate to endure the pain after sitting up for 5 minutes.

• Counting down the minutes to prove I could sit up for longer than 30 minutes.

• Being so freaked out and confused the first week that my dad had to cover the orange-lit arrow buttons on the side of my bed.

• Anti anxiety medicine making it worse.

• Staying awake all night – SO disoriented.

• Asking my dad to explain the dimensions of my room and bed because none of it made any sense to me.

• Thinking “well that would be good for someone who couldn’t get out of bed… wait, I didn’t get out of bed. I haven’t been out of this bed for a week straight.” Constant mental readjustment to remind myself what my life had become.
  

• Thinking I’d been in several different rooms depending on how sunny the room was, how many people were in the room, or what was on the tv.

• People crying at the sight of me
  

• Waking up to see my brother sitting in my room with me.
  

• Saying I was sorry to Amy when she grabbed my hand, her crying, shaking her head, “I’m just glad you’re still here.”

• Seeing my parents hug each other like they never do.

• Being in so much pain that the nurses increased the pain medication twice after they said I was getting the maximum amount.

• Being the pre-op room, off the pain button, freaking out because of the back pain. LAYING on my back, unable to switch positions.

• Going in to the operating room before I was unconscious, seeing the table they were going to put me on, the contraptions they were going to use to hold my body in position, and the lights that were going to be shining on me, saying “I don’t like it in here.” My anesthesiologist saying “yeah I wouldn’t either if I were you.”

• Waking up after surgery with no idea where I was or what happened to me, in so much pain, convinced they balled me up and threw me in the corner of the bed.

• Brittany and Lea unfortunately coming up in the elevator right as they rolled me past as I moaned in pain (a noise my mom said she'd never heard come out of a person). Brittany and Lea holding each other crying as the elevator door shut with them still in it.
  

• Saying it felt like I had shards of sharp metal in every inch of my ankles that crunched, stabbed and sliced every time I even took a breath. My mom pointing out that was actually what was happening.

• Being in the recovery room for 6 hours because they couldn’t stabilize my pain.

• Being on a “pain button” with medicine stronger than morphine that could be pushed every 10 minutes, then going to every 6, and needing my dad to watch the clock so he could reassure me that I only had three, two, one minutes left.

• Not being able to eat any food for a week because the IV medicine made my tongue sensitive and everything tasted like it was covered in salt.

• Consuming more pills than food – throwing up all over myself, unable to do anything about it because of my physical limitations.

• Unable to wash or brush my own hair.

• So much hair falling out
  

• My IV going wrong and my hand blowing up like a balloon.

• My ankles swelling so bad they had to cut open the casts and pull apart.

• Being so knocked out from the medication they had to call in extra nurses to wake me up, and once they finally did, me having the urge to just get up and get out of bed… “What am I doing laying here?”

• Stupid nurses making me take the wrong medicine and getting mad at me for not wanting to.

• Blood drawn every morning.

• Bruises covering my arms

• 45-minute painful ambulance ride to a different hospital
  

• Unable to sit up and talk to people when they visited. Being the injured girl in the hospital around my friends who were still living their lives.
  

• Trying desperately to look more normal by wearing whatever clothes my mom brought me from the boy work-out section of target.

• Idiot putting an IV in the side of my hand.

• Two words: bed pan.

• Left ankle hit with the cast-removing tool.

• Nursing home, occupational therapy.

• Rolling around in the wheelchair with a physical therapist, catching a sight of myself in a glass door reflection, falling apart at what I saw.

• Sitting outside my hospital room at a table while my mom and dad were inside. Running my fingers through my hair slowly trying to remember what it felt like to be me. Not being able to remember.

• Using a transfer board to get in and out of the car, wheelchair and bed.
  

• When the casts first came off, my little feet just hanging there off the wheelchair; green, lifeless, bruised, disgusting.

• Sleeping with two moon boots on.

• Sleeping without the moon boots on and my ankles painfully falling to either side because I had built no muscle yet. Like a painful CLICK anytime I moved.
  

• Feet hanging off the end of my legs because my ankles were useless to hold them up

• Giving myself a shot in the stomach every day for two weeks.

• Going to dinner in a wheelchair.

• Being pushed by my friends in a wheelchair.

• Little kids staring at me in a wheelchair.

• Two hard casts and a back brace.

• Seeing a spider on my ceiling, it falling on my bed, being unable to even sit up to get it off.

• Having to put a back brace on just to reach down and scratch my own foot.

• Peeling the LAYERS of dead skin of my feet.

• Having to ask people to put socks over my toes.

• Having my mom paint my toes.

• Showering by sitting naked in the wheelchair, back brace on, with my mom handing me wet wash cloths.

• Physical therapy every day, 3 times a day for 5 months.

• My mom having to wash my hair outside.

• Buying a new purse that I could wear with crutches

• 26th birthday on crutches
  

• Fainting in the bathroom, crutches falling

• My nephew seeing a handicap placard and saying, "It's auntie Sarah" (wanted to end this on a funny note).
  

I'm sure there's even more I'm not remembering right now.

Sunshine in my eyes

...let it in...