Tomorrow the gas company will be here to install our corner fireplace, and my living room will be complete. That means two rooms down, only six more to go. We remodeled the bathroom first, because it was a mess, and that took us most of last summer. The dining room is next, but most of the work is done there. Hopefully we can do our bedroom after that, I am tired of looking up at nasty corners. The crown molding has to be put up, and I hope to get some sort of heating device to sit inside the fireplace so we can eliminate the ugly baseboard heater. But that is next spring...
I titled this post The Healing Power of Stitching, because I wanted to talk a little of my experiences with this. In an earlier post I believe I mentioned that I had been in an accident. I will, as briefly as possible, summarize it here.
In 2002, I had just turned 40. I had received a promotion to department head of Infection Control at the State Hospital I had worked in for 20 years. My son was stationed in Germany with the Air Force, and I had just received my passport in hopes of flying to visit him. My life was finally falling into place after being a single mom for so long, working two and three jobs, and putting myself through RN school in the mornings and evenings while I worked night shift.
On Sunday, March 17th I went out with a friend to a local auction house to enjoy the day and maybe buy a prize or two; you never know where that unappreciated sampler will show up. I had not given any thought to it be St. Patrick's Day, as I was not much of a drinker, and my running around days were behind me. About 7:30 that evening, I decided it was time to head home. As I left the auction house, there was a light drizzle falling, and I made a mental note to drive carefully, the temperature was just hovering above freezing.
As I was driving down the highway, I don't remember seeing too many people on the roads. As I approached an "S" curve in the road, one minute the road was empty, the next there were headlights coming straight at me. I had time to hit the clutch and the brake, I remember hearing the sound of the collision, but I do not remember any pain. I was in and out of consciousness while the paramedics cut me out of the car. I had been driving a small two door Toyota, the drunk driver that hit me was in a Lincoln Navigator, one of the largest SUVs on the road, so my car was a mess. I have no memory of them getting me out of the car. In fact, I have no memories for the next four weeks or so.
From what I have been told, as the drunk driver rounded the first curve in the road, a truck that was farther ahead of me saw him crossing the center line, and swerved to miss him. The SUV clipped the back of the truck, which spun the SUV a full 360 degrees, and straight into me as I rounded the second part of the S. I feel that had he not lost some of his momentum from the first collision, his impact with my car would have been much, much worse. There was a woman following the SUV, and she was already on the phone with 911 reporting the man's dangerous driving, so help arrived quickly. It turns out she was head of Patient Relations at University of MD's Shock Trauma, which is where I ended up that evening.
According to my mother, also an RN, the first night they took me in to surgery for almost 8 hours. Even though I was wearing a seatbelt, the steering wheel had crushed the right side of my chest, and I ended up losing the upper right lobe of my lung. At this point, they had me in a drug induced coma, because the pain of just breathing would have been too much. On Friday they took me in for surgery to repair my broken and dislocated right hip. After surgery, mom said I could respond a little, the meds kept me from opening my eyes, and I was intubated for breathing because my lungs kept collapsing, but I could raise and lower my eyebrows in response to questions. The next day when she came in, I was totally non-responsive, and after several hours she got the nurse. It seems that sometime during the night I threw an embolus and had a stroke. I was in a real coma.
It was April 17th when I have my first real memory of being in the hospital. I came out of the coma, but because off the area of the stroke, I was blind and I had no use of either arm or hand. (Not good for an avid reader and stitcher.) My other injuries included: a fracture at the base of my skull, fractures at C-7 and T-1 in my neck, my right knee had a laceration across it about six inches long, my right ankle was broken and both heel bones had been crushed. At some point my heart went bad, and it was days before they finally got it regulated again. Then my kidneys began to shut down, but the power of prayer is a wonderful thing, and I did not end up dialysis.
The other major event was my right hip developed an infection that turned out to be MRSA, a highly drug resistant form of Staph that can be deadly. The infection was treated, only to recur time and time again. The last time it recurred, the surgeon removed the metal hardware he had installed to support the bone graft to my acetabulum (the socket where the thigh bone fits at the hip). Once the metal was removed things settled down. I still have to approach any kind of surgery to my hip with caution, because even though it has been years, the potential of reactivating the bacteria is a factor. Because I ended up losing so much muscle mass because of the infection, I have a really weak hip, and the injury left me with a bad limp.
I spent six and a half months between Shock Trauma and Kernan Rehab Hospital. Over the weeks, as swelling was reduced around the optic nerves, small pieces of my vision began to return. With extensive physical therapy, I also regained use of both arms and hands, with only a little residual weakness and tingling in my left hand. I am still legally blind; my vision never fully returned, and what I do have is spotty and not continuous, meaning as I look around a room, things come in and out of my vision field. I do not have enough vision to drive, and I still walk into things, or knock things over, but I can read, and best of all, I can stitch. I just have to be careful where I place my stitches. I have been happily stitching on one area, stopped to change threads, and began stitching again, only to realized I was in the wrong area. It has been a challenge, but a welcome one. I would rather face this challenge than not be able to stitch at all.
I finally left the hospital on October 1, 2002, but that didn't mean I was finished with hospitals. I still had many surgeries ahead of me, most of them reconstructive in some way. Being admitted for surgery became routine. One surgery, I was in the recovery room after an operation on my vocal chords(they were damaged because of being intubated for so long before they did a tracheostomy). There were no available beds on the units, and I was only being kept overnight for observation, so they just kept me in recovery for the night. After I had gotten something to eat, I asked for my bag and pulled out my stitching. The nurses looked at me like I was crazy LOL. I just smiled, and told them it was how I kept my sanity. It was the one normal thing in my life I could count on at that time.
When I left the hospital in October, I returned to my apt. My son had been sent home for a few weeks right after the accident, but he had returned to Germany, so I was living on my own. My mom was already living in TN by then, and she made trips back and forth when she could, but I figured out how to survive. I had always been independent, but now how I had to LEARN how to be truly independent. I used cabs to get me where I needed to go, and I discovered Pea Pod, a program from Giant Foods where I could have my groceries delivered. The pharmacy delivered my meds, and other than social interactions, I was set.
One of the part time jobs I had at the time of my accident was working Saturdays at a local needlework shop. That was a dream job. The women of The Stitching Post, in Catonsville, MD, where so supportive of me. They would pick me up and take me to stitcher's night, or out to dinner with them if they were going out as a group. Over time I ended up moving closer to the shop, and I would get a cab to take me to visit, and one of the girls would give me a ride home after she got off from work.
There is only so much TV you can watch in a day, and when you have to plan every outing, you don't go out that often, so I spent a lot of time alone. I tell people as long as I have books to read and needlework to complete, I am very happy to entertain myself.
My first large project I tried was a chart I found in an Australian magazine from the late 1990s.. It is a Celtic alphabet that was charted to be done on 32 county linen. Before my accident, I had bought material and threads, but had not started it. Because it was such a large piece, I had bought 40 count linen to work it on. So here was my first challenge, working on such a small count with my vision as bad as it was. Each letter had backstitched boarders, and tiny quarter stitches to make the curves more flowing. It took me a long time to finally finish it, but I think it turned out pretty good for a blind chick LOL I know the photo isn't the best, but I will try to get a better one once it goes back up on my wall.
So, there is my healing story. I met my husband about seven years ago, online of all thing, (that is a story for another day) and I am happily married, and happily stitching. He supports my needlework, and takes me wherever I want to go. Living in Greeneville, TN, the stitching shops are a distance away, but once every other month or so he takes me over to Pigeon Forge to visit Dixie Darling and get my stitching fix. The problem is, instead of sitting on the porch with the other husbands, he comes inside with me. He then finds two or three charts he wants me to stitch for him, and trust me, they usually are not small charts. So I spend a lot of my stitching time making things for him. I love him, so it is ok. If you have seen the Sleep Hollow chart that came out last year, you know what I am talking about when I say he doesn't chose small projects. Here is a picture of the chart.
Wish me luck!
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