I’m sitting here thinking. Deep in thought, but the thoughts in my head are racing, and jumbled together and very confusing. It was 2 yrs ago today. Right around this time that I woke up with TM.

On the evening Oct. 3, 2004 I wasn’t “right”. I thought I was getting a cold (how ironic that I have a cold right now), or that a uti that I had had , had come back. (Is that even the propper way to say that? Too many had’s). I decided to go to bed early that night. Well early for me anyway. I took some blankets and settled in on the couch and watched some tv. I was very uneasy, but I didn’t knwo why. I got up a lot that night before I finally went to sleep. I remember getting up to go to the bathroom, get something to drink, and just to walk around the apt. I just felt very “restless”.

I finally managed to get to sleep sometime after 1am. I remember that because the tv chanel I was watching stops at that hour. I turned off the tv and snuggled under the blankets and thought about sleeping in the next day. I just knew I was going to wake up with a sore throat, or runny nose. I thought I’d get up, go to the drug store and get something for “my cold” that I didn’t have yet, and just have a day relaxing at home with my guide dog.

Sometime later I woke up, and noticed that my legs were “asleep”. I thought that it was because I was sleeping on the couch, and had been laying “the wrong way” or something. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to this because it happend sometimes when my guide dog decided to use my legs as a pillow while she slept. I really didn’t feel “right”, and knew for sure I was in for a couple of “hoirrible” days. Stupid colds…. I drifted off back to sleep….

Around 3am I woke up to the sharpest, most intense pain I had ever felt in my life. It felt like someone had a very hot metal spike and was stabbing it through my neck, up my sipine and into my head. I yelled out, and bit my lip so I woudln’t wake my neighbours. I felt like someone had put a huge rubber band around me under my arms and was pulling it tight. When I came to my senses more I really began to panic. I realized that I couldn’t feel my feet, or legs, or most of the way up my chest!

My first reaction was omg this is a nightmare, ok I’ll just wake up. No problem, this couldn’t be real. It was all just too freaky. I felt like I was drowning, only there was no water. I’d try to take a deep breath, but it was like my lugs were filled with something besides air. There was no room left for the air I needed to breathe in.

Lucky for me, I always hated having to get up once I went to bed to answer the phone. Because I had my own apt.and was barely ever actually home, I hadn’t bothered to get a phone hooked up when I had moved. I just used my cell phone. I always kept it next to me when I slept because I had always told my friends that if they were at a party or out drinking and were too drunk to drive to call me. I couldn’t drive to where they were to pick them up, but they were welcome to get a cab and stay at my apt. for the night. I was use to 3am phone calls. In fact on a few occasions I’d wake up and not even realized I had let a friend into my apt. the night before! It was something I could practically do in my sleep!

I managed to fumble with my cell phone. It was laying on the floor next to the couch, and call 911. I could feel my arms, but they felt heavy and tingled. I coulnd’t get my fingers to work to dial the numbers, but again lucky for me all I had to do with my cell phone was flip it open and say “call (whoever)” or “dial 9 1 1″, and my phone would dial the number for me. You have to love technology!

I don’t remember talking to the 911 operator much. I remember trying to remember my address and the relief I felt when I was told an ambulance was on it’s way. I remember worrying about where I had left Sophie’s harness, (although I always hung it on the inside handle of my apt. door). I kept worrying that no one would be able to find it and she wouldn’t be able to come with me. I remember hearing sirens off in the distance and the 911 operator saying that the ambulance would soon be there….

I have no idea how the emt’s got into the building, or into my apt. I must have passed out. I think I might remember being in the ambulance, but I can’t really remember. I also remember bits and pieces of the emergency room. It turned out that the emt’s did find my guide dog’s harness. And she was in the emergency room with me. I remember in the ER not being able to move anythng besides my neck, and not feeling anything. I had a pounding headache. I couldn’t remember any of the phone numbers of any of my friends. I knew I knew them, but I couldn’t think of any. The police had to go back into my apt. to get my cell phone, to get the numbers from it. I remember a nurse saying I had peed, and how I kept crying and saying I was sorry, and feeling realy embarrassed and scared. I remember hearing “surgery” and wanting to jump up and yell “no” and run away. I had had my appendix out and another minor surgery before, but nothing this big. It was really hard to breathe, and I was so dizzy. Everything sounded very distant and the room was spinning. Then I felt my head being pulled back and a tube was pushed down my throat. I wanted to pull it out but I coudln’t move. I couldn’t talk then to tell anyone anything. I couldn’t talk to my guide dog. I knew she was scared. My family was in another province and I knew they would be worried sick.

I remember the noises while I was getting an mri, and I remember getting a “spinal tap”. I knew that it would hurt really bad. I had heard people getting it done on tv, and I knew it would hurt a lot. The thing that scared me most was I was crying and thinking it’s going to really hurt, but someone said “ok we’re all done”. I hadn’t felt a thing! They couldn’t be “done”!

I don’t really remember the next few months. But I do remember these dreams I kept having. Horrible terrifying dreams. In one of the dreams that seemed to go on forever and happen often I was in a room with a huge fireplace. There was a guy there. He was bad. There was no way out of the room and there was a big armchair. I fought with him for what seemed like days. Then in the end I shot him. I never had a dream like that. I shot him, and I felt relieved, and better. Then the dream just ended, and I never had that dream again. I still haven’t forgotten about it though….

I was in the hospital for 8 months all together. I had regained some feeling and a lot of movement once the swelling went down. Now I can feel my shoulders fine, and I can feel pressure in the fronts of my upper arms and also a little bit near my thumbs. (That really comes in handy). I can’t tell what I’m touching in these places feels like, but I know I’m touching “something”. I can also move my arms now. But not my hands.

Last year at this time I was on my way to the bus stop near my apt., when all of a sudden it hit me that it was the one year anniversary of me being a quad. I had stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk. It was as if I had hit a brick wall. I just sat there under a tree, listening to the leaves rustle and thinking about everything. I had always known that I would walk out of the hospital as good as new. I kept pushing myself further than anyone said I could. I was suppose to be using a power chair, if I was lucky with an adapted joystick. There I was sitting in a manual chair, pushing myself, with help from my guide dog. I wasn’t suppose to even be able to work with her, and there we were on our way out. I was suppose to be living in a nursing home, or at the very least a group home, and there I was living in my own apt. I was suppose to have a pca, and I didn’t. I needed one for helping with certain things liek laundry, but my friends helped mw with whatever I needed help with.

Well, I ended up missing my bus that day. It seemed liek I was sitting there forever. The sound of the bus as it pulled away from the bus and Sophie tugging me forward because we were missing our bus snapped me out of it! We managed to catch the next bus, and I kept pretty busy for the rest of that day.

Here I am another year later. It’s been 2 years since that early morning. I’m still a quad. I never thought ahead this far. I knew I wouldn’t have to. Even with the neurologists telling me as time went by that the chances of me ragaining any movement or feeling were way less than 1%. I held onto that less than 1% for dare life. I’m still hanging on. I always will be hanging onto that!

I never really thought ahead before. I didn’t think I’d have another birthday, or Xmas etc. in a wheelchair. Now that I think about things more I guess reality is finally sinking in. Now when I think ahead to getting married, and having children I think maybe I might still be sitting in a wheelchair. But I guess it’s like a really great friend told me earlier today. “Even if I am sitting in a wheelchair on my child’s first day of school, I’m still me.” And nothing will change that. I’m still the same person on the inside. Actually, I’m not, I’m a much stronger person. I’m a different person than I use to be in many ways inside and out. But I think I cahnged for the better. On the inside at least. I’m not as shy now, I’m more outgoing, I want to help people more, and I actually feel pretty good about myself. Is that so wrong?