What Can Be Said 008

Two months or so had passed between the events surrounding returning the car to its owner and when I found myself lying in a hospital bed, torn from everything that was familiar to me. Everything in my world was about to change in a way I never would have imagined.

Not too long ago I had been given an opportunity to deliver a Sunday afternoon message to a wonderful group of elderly folk who lived in a local long-term-care-center.

As I sat before them ready to deliver my message, I flashed back to the days I spent hospitalized. I began to express to them, (with a depth of compassion I had never felt before) how I could feel what they were going through. How I felt their emotion, their depression, even their sense of self loss. I told them how I understood the feeling of being torn from the lives they knew.
Their sense of freedom, their ability to make their own decisions, but especially how it felt to be plucked out of the very world they had come to know, that world they had come to rely on, that which they had felt comfort and security from. It didn’t matter if their world was in their opinion a good one or not, you can get used to most any situation after a while, even realize there was a kind of comfort, once that comfort has been removed and replaced by something completely unfamiliar.

What I remember most about the time in the hospital was the smells; you can become very used to the smells of your own little piece of the world. A type of comfort you never realized was there, like the particular brand of soap or shampoo, the way your clothing smelled fresh out of the dryer. Then to suddenly wake up to an entirely different world of smells in a controlled environment. Our senses play a big part in forming our memories and create a sense of security.

My intent that day was to express to those kindly people that God had not deserted them. Just as He had not deserted me all those years ago when I was plucked from the world I knew.

Returning to November 1980 mid-way through the month. Once I became alert and somewhat oriented with where I was, the Dr. which was caring for me as well as a team of nurses surrounded my bed. In his seemingly cold, professional way, he began filling in the blanks for me. As he told me what had happened, (and even to this day) it felt as if he was telling me about someone else. You never envision that tragic events like this could happen to you.

He gave me the highlights and my mother filled in the details. She told me how I was hit be a passing car which was heading in the same direction, that they brought me to the little hospital here in town and as they had no way of properly caring for this type of injuries they had flown me in a Coast Guard Helicopter to a much larger Hospital some fifty miles north of here.

She explained what damage was done and how it would affect my life. There were a total of seven bones broken in that incident. Both lower bones in my left leg were broken, (the tibia and fibula) the left side of my pelvis had received such an impact it was shattered into pieces. My spine, although technically had not severed, was damaged beyond modern medicine ability to repair.

I still remember how she bald her two fists up to symbolize my spine and showed me how my back had arched to a point of chipping the edges off the vertebrae, (Thoracic 5, 6&7) And last, but absolutely not lease, one of the vertebrae in my upper neck had been severed. Level, C2. (Cervical level 2) I was told had the break been another vertebrae higher it would have taken away my ability to breath.

Other than by the grace of God Himself, I never understood how the nerves in my neck had not severed and the nerves in my back had. I was left as a Paraplegic rather than as a Quadriplegic. (Para- meaning two limbs, quad- meaning four).

They also had to explain to me that because I had broken my neck I had to have my neck in traction. This consisted of two half inch bolts which they had screwed into the temple area of my head while I was still unconscious. At the other end of a cable there were two weights that kept my neck straight while it began to set and heal. And that’s where I stayed for the next month.

As I began to heal and get a little strength back and as we talked about going back to Maine, there came the problem of mobility. As another team of Doctors and nurses gathered around the bad, they sent my mom out of the room after explaining what they were going to do. They not only sent her out of the room they told her she had to leave that floor of the hospital. I remember there was one person there who was responsible for making the cast for what would be the anchors of what they called a Hallo Brace. Although this contraption is fairly well know now, in 1980 it was still knew and few who had heard of this Hallo Brace.


As they began to stick needles in four areas of my head, to (as they said) numb the area before they screwed knew bolts in, I remember holding onto the hand of the man that was standing beside me, he turned out to be the same guy who made the casting. As I grasped his hand, he held on and never let go through the whole ordeal. I realize this in it self doesn’t seem very important but this gentlemen was the first African American I had ever met, not to mention held on to. There just weren’t many African Americans in the area of Maine that I lived in. This man helped to shape and influences my opinion of a totally different race of people. I will never forget how that man stayed there with me ever moments of what was by far the most painful thing I had gone through up to that point. The amazing thing about all this is that My God even through all this was teaching me to love my neighbor. Continued…
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