You know how the last posts have been about a writing contests and the ideas for it? And how I mentioned that usually when I write on a topic, I write it because I have agreed to write with a friend to both write on that very topic? And how that practice gave me the idea for this blog? Well, now I have the great pleasure to post one of the writings of that very dear friend of mine:
Trapped
by Alexandra (TooCloseToTheEdge)
“I am here! Look at ME!
Stop talking to this body! I am here!” I keep shouting at my sister while she
is talking to me. She will not. She cannot hear me. Little did she know about
the girl in front of her, the one she is calling Anaïs. It is my name. It is
me. We are the same; the body and me. Yet so different. I have not been myself
since the accident.
It
happened almost 4 years ago, only a few days apart from Christmas. We were
getting home, my sister and I, after a great funny evening spent in search for
the perfect presents for our parents, my boyfriend and several relatives that
we usually get to see only once a year, as well as the friends that we were
going to spend the Christmas with. Almost home, with all the presents packed
and neatly arranged on the back seat, singing along with Frank Sinatra and Bing
Crosby’s carols hearing from the old radio, only a moment was needed for
Brigitte to look away. It felt almost like a flashback; a bright intense light
hurt my eyes, then the loud sound of the truck’s honk warning us that we are
way too close to it and then blank. I vaguely remember hearing my sister
shouting for help and a man running to our car.
As
I understood later, the accident must have been terrible, for my body was very
close to shutting itself down. The day I was aware of what was happening around
was the happiest in my life, even though the realization that I may never be
able to walk again scared me to death. Ironic, isn’t it? From what I knew, it
was 24 December. I will remember this day for the rest of my life. The first
thing that I hear after waking up is the sweet terribly worried voice of my
mom. I understand that we are in a hospital, as many medical terms flow and
fill the space in the room, until they reach my ears. It seems that they do not
know that I am able to hear them. The term paralysis hits me. As the doctor
explains further, I feel lighter and lighter, my chest squeezing, slowly
loosing the connection with my body. I feel like I am backing off, going in the
depth of my brain, a dark silent place where nothing and no one was present. I
am even more scared. I feel my heart pumping more blood, faster and faster
trying to make its way to my brain. Everything is spinning. The dark space
extends and then contracts itself at the same time with the rapid irregular
beats. I cannot breathe. The doctor’s fast precise reactions save my life. She
puts an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose and starts counting. At first, the
counting seems repeatedly chaotic, but soon enough I understand that she is
only trying to save my life, pressing on my chest in order to make my heart
beat again. As she does so a few times, the monitor to which I am connected
starts to beep regularly, making the annoying prolonged sound disappear. I see
myself waking up. What was happening, though? It does not make sense. I wake
up, yet I am standing here alone, in this dark somber place from where I cannot
come out. After a few tries, I did it. My eyes are wide-open and the panic
starts to vanish as I start to get used to the diffuse light in the room.
“Welcome
back”, the doctor says and as I slowly open my eyes, I hear myself speaking
with a scared precipitated voice that I do not recognize as myself:
“Where
am I? What had happened to me?”
“Let’s
send her to a CT scan”, they announce after a moment of silence that seemed
incredibly long. My bed is being moved, slowly, to the CT room. I am terrified.
In the end, what can go wrong? Many people have to go through this many times
while they are hospitalized. Why would my experience be different? Then, I
black out. Again. But this time, it is different. Instead of that huge black
space, I find myself standing in the middle of an astonishingly beautiful
glade. I can hear the thrills of the birds, as well as smell the perfume of
hundreds of all sorts of flowers; from the tiny blue forget-me-not, to a lane
of poppy flowers, my senses are flooded with an amalgam of smells and colors
that started mixing, making me believe for what I thought was only a blink of
an eye, that I am a synesthete.
“Anaïs !
Anaïs ! What is wrong? Please, somebody call a doctor!” my sister shouts
in despair while pressing the emergency button. It is only then that I see the
tube coming out of my trachea, and by the time the doctors came in a rush to
take it out, I was having a seizure.
The
doctors started talking to my sister as I was starting to breathe on my own. I
was mistaken. They did not take it out. What they did do actually was to change
the medication that was now going to float in my blood, through my veins,
making me fall asleep again. The next minute, my sense of hearing felt
distorted and the speech sounded muffled, but I was able to understand what
they were talking, as I was lip-reading.
“Mademoiselle,
I am afraid that your sister will not be able to move anymore.”
She turned to her left, where my
mother was sitting, to wake her up. Then, they showed a scan. The CT scan I had
only a few hours ago, I think. “As you can see here, the doctor was pointing
the right side of the brain; the hemorrhaging was greater than on the other
side. Now, if we take a look on this, you can see the extension of the
hemorrhage to the inferior midbrain and into the left side.” My sister was
crying. So was my mother. I wanted to talk, but no word would come out. Then,
it hit me. Not able to move, literally meant that I was not able to move. But
it was worse than I was thinking. I was paralyzed below the neck, unable to
speak, move or feel anything. Locked-in-Syndrome was the final diagnosis the
doctors gave me and it described the situation and the way that I was feeling,
better than anything else. I was trapped in my own body and petrified
that no one would realize I could understand.
A few minutes later, they saw that I
had my eyes opened. I want to shut them so I seem asleep, but the tall blonde
doctor was faster than I was. He shone his flashlight into my eyes probably to
see what the pupils’ reaction to light is and that it’s not only an involuntary
reaction due to the stimuli.
I was terrified. My dreams started
to become nightmares. I thought that I am delusional, only to find out that I
was asleep. What if they decided that I was not going to wake again and I was
brain-dead? All these “what ifs” scared me to death. It was not only the fact
that I wouldn’t ever be able to move ever again in case they realized that I
was aware of what was going on around me, but also the thought of being a
burden for everyone if I was lucky enough, and they stopped sedating me.
One day, it must have been late January
by than, Sébastien came in the afternoon, to visit me, as he had usually done.
His perfume tickled my nostrils, and as it entered my lungs, I inhaled. Wrong
move. Or not? I started coughing, thinking that I can suffocate every second
that passed. He had the brilliant idea to remove the oxygen mask off my face
and let me breathe. Then, he called my doctor and the nurses, who were
astonished to see me breathing on my own. This was the day when I can say that
I was reborn, just like a Phoenix .
It was the most important day of my life. Everything has changed since.
“She is fully conscious”, Sébastien
kept telling the doctors, but they seemed to be too blind and self-confident to
listen to what a slightly immature boy had to say. Nevertheless, the kind and perseverant
boy that I so deeply felt in love with, would not give up on me. I may have
fallen asleep, while he was humming a lullaby, my lullaby, because when I woke
up a few hours later, he was gone. Stunned as I was, I thought that he left me,
only to realize it was the middle of the night, and as every person should do
once in awhile, he went home to sleep.
The very next day, he and my parents
came at the first hour of the morning with daffodils, and many cards. It seemed
that they have talked to the doctors and that those flashcards were going to
help me recover, or, even better, communicate.
My birthday arrived, and as I was
going to spend it on the hospital bed, I was quite down, and the inability of
expressing myself, of moving, made everything even worse. As months passed, I
learned how to use my eyes to replace the voice that I lost.
Everyone was so kind to me and
almost all the time nearby to help me with whatever I might have needed. I
think that they were wearing gloves with me, so nothing could ever hurt me
again. Careful is the right word when trying to describe my family’s attitude
towards me. They thought they were doing their best, and who am I to contradict
this statement? Yet, deep inside, I felt left apart. As if all that everyone could
see was only the shadow of the girl that I used to be.
“Look at me!” I try sending her the
telepathic message once again. “Why can’t you see through this flesh and blood
and realise that I am
inside here? A prisoner of my own self.” It is pointless and I stop staring at
her as if I were a lunatic.
“It is time for your afternoon walk,
Anaïs”, I hear my mom calling from the other room. I think that I am choking.
How I miss walking, running in the first hours of the morning, feeling the sun
warming my limbs. Now I have to watch others move and walk me everywhere. I
feel the air touching my face as my mom is pushing me outside the garden on the
road now covered with rusty leaves.
Life is passing by and I do not have the power to make it slow down only
for a split second. My sister has just got married and is waiting for a baby.
How wonderful life can be, yet, so unfair!
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