The First Month

I was released from the hospital on Saturday. I felt like I was floating on clouds or was having an out of body experience. Little did I know that this feeling would last for months. It was exactly like watching myself from far away and knowing it was me, but not feeling it as me. Oddly enough everything was so foggy that I didn't realize I felt weird until later. I was so busy and so focused on trying to act normal that I paid little attention to anything else. My family was in total shock. My husband was a nervous wreck and my two sons were scared to death. Six years before my accident, my stepson was in a minor traffic accident. He never lost consciousness and didn't even go to the ER. The night of the accident he acted totally normal, wasn't in any pain and anticipated being sore the next day. They found him dead the next day from a severed carotid artery. Having this previous knowledge only heightened their anxiety. My husband would follow me room to room. He would beg me to lay down and to rest. He kept telling me I was not okay as I proclaimed, but that I had a terrible accident. I was in complete denial. I'm not one to get sick often, and I certainly wasn't used to being hovered over. I'm the mom, I'm the wife... I was the one who was suppose to hover over people and even then I wasn't good at hovering. I had several visitors the first couple of days home, although I only actually remember some of the visitors. I do remember thinking how odd it was that when people saw me they were just amazed at how good I looked. I had gotten up, washed my hair and put my make-up on as I normally did. I think people expected big bruises, gashes on my face, something to indicate I had a bad accident. I did have scrapes and lots of bruises, but they weren't on my face. For lack of a better way to explain how I fell, the information people got was I had fallen down the stairs.I'm not sure how well I pulled off the "I'm fine" routine, but my family knew better and the weeks following the accident it became more clear to me that all was not right with my head. I took that Monday off work and I slept all day long. The next day I had a hair appointment at 5 o'clock so I didn't want to miss work because I didn't want to miss my hair appointment. I remember sitting at my desk and everything seemed to be in slow motion. My boss, who is also a friend and was with me at the hospital, came into my office to see how I was. I told him I was fine, a little sore and my head hurt but I was fine. In reality my head felt like a ginormous water bottle and my neck felt like a toothpick trying to hold the water bottle up. I hurt from my skull all the way down my back where stair marks were perfectly outlined in black on my back. I floated through the day and went to my hair appointment which is in the next little town. The girl who does my hair had heard about the accident and was really concerned about me being there by myself. I hadn't told anyone about the appointment because I knew a big fuss would be made about me keeping it. While I was getting my hair done my son called and wanted to know how I was feeling and where I was at. When I told him where I was, he was not happy at all. He told me that I shouldn't be driving and that I could have a seizure. My hair dresser offered to drive me home, but I wouldn't accept the offer. It never dawned on me that my stubbornness was causing my family a lot of unnecessary anxiety. The next day I stayed home from work and again I slept all day long. Overwhelming fatigue would become my most severe symptom in the beginning. It was that first full week that my husband noticed that something was different about my body temperature. I had always been very cold natured and also suffered from Reynauld's syndrome. My hands quiet often would turn blue from lack of circulation or go totally white and be numb. I was always too cold. That weekend we went to see a movie. After the movie was over he asked me if I had been cold. I told him no, which caused him to look at me like I had just stepped off the moon. He said it was so cold in the theater to him that he couldn't believe I had stayed for the entire movie. The next week I went to get my nails done.The girl who did my nails was the same one whose house the accident took place. She would often warm my hands before beginning on the manicure, but she mentioned that they were unusually warm. So there were positive changes that occurred. Everything moved in slow motion the first month. When people would speak to me it was as if the audio was off balance to a video. The time lapse between the words they spoke and the time it took my mind to comprehend what was being said threw everything off kelter. When I talked, I would stop mid-sentence to search for words. Sometimes I would forget what I was talking about in mid-sentence. When I went to the store I could be standing right in front of the item I came to get and forget why I was there. My emotional state was very out of balance. I didn't feel any emotion, but when I did it was like a dam had broken and the tears would be overwhelming. Nothing in particular would cause these episodes they just seemed to happen at unexpected and often inconvenient times. Sometimes the crying would last for hours. I floated through the first month without much conciousness of what I was experiencing. My husband, on the other hand, was on hyper alert never knowing which mental state I would be in from one moment to the next. I was hoping everything would get better once the 6 week mark had past. In some ways it was only beginning.