Five years. 2/25 has become more important to me than most days, even my birthday or thanksgiving. It's the day that I can trace back to an actual pinpoint time in history when God clearly intervened, told Satan it wasn't my time to go home yet, and though I'm only physically left with 2 dents & 3 scars, what I've been through emotionally, spiritually, and physically since, cannot be articulated in words. I'm actually writing most of this post from the very room that the stroke happened in. Something happens you are faced with the thoughts "I should have died" and being told that fact by medical professionals. It's a sobering reality to know you are not here by chance anymore. That there was something that happened that should have caused your life to end 2/25/2009 BUT YOU ARE STILL HERE. I don't often talk openly about what happened. Not that I'm not proud to be God's miracle (and for that matter, we all are) but there were things that "lined up" 5 years ago that didn't cause me to die in my sleep like COULD have happened.
I can't even express how grateful I am for those things to have happened, and how often I do think of that reality now... If Brianna hasn't been home on maternity leave with 4 week old Chase; If the paramedics hadn't believed her insistence to take me to the hospital for this "migraine"; If I hadn't fallen down at the hospital and a doctor saw me & admitted me for testing; If Dr. Markey hadn't just stopped by on his day off; If the receptionist hadn't mentioned my case to him; If he hadn't taken a chance on both of my brain surgeries; If Ashlyn's wedding had been in Houston a month later; If I had been overseas as was my plan a year before; If I had been anywhere other than down the street from one of the best rehab hospitals in the country; If my mom had any other career where she could just take the rest of the school year off to be with me for 3.5 months in hospitals; If I didn't have incredible friends from all over the world praying for drastic healing and intervention... I mean, you don't have to be a believer in miracles to see that all of that "just couldn't happen", but it makes a pretty compelling argument to me that something greater was going on.
If you've entered my life in the last 5 years, here's a recap of some of the "highlights" from 5 years ago. Stroke presented as a migraine headache, only I had no control of my body, was vomiting blood, acting drunk at noon, and had no vision out of my left eye. Brianna and Aura Leigh called the paramedics for me and insisted that they at least take me to Littleton Adventist Hospital. Now my memory from 2/25 to the end of March (5 weeks) is blank because of the medically induced coma. I get flashes of things as though it were a dream and my family can fill in the holes. I barely remember beginning to talk again while at Porter Adventist. It was while at Porter that my family received the news that I would never return to school again (apparently that doctor didn't know that I was stubborn and what God was about to do). There were doubts if I would ever walk again, swallow, or talk. Those I fairly "easily" surpassed, though now I cannot articulate HOW they were done. I was discharged from Craig Hospital at the end of May, did outpatient rehab for a few weeks and then wet back to Michigan with my family for the summer. My sister got married 5 months to the day of my stroke, and I was able walk down the aisle for her as her maid-of-honor. My bestie Hilary joined me as my beautiful assistant all day to make sure that I had the stamina for the ceremony et al.
I returned to Denver that all for classes back in my graduate program at Denver Seminary and was welcomed back to work by my family at Starbucks. I moved in with good friends the Swansons, and attempted to grasp unto straws from the life I had known and led just 6 months before, but everything was different now with my brain injury and no drivers license. I had to learn to navigate this independent life I had once made for myself, now with VERY LITTLE voice or way to know how to advocate and navigate this post-TBI world. I had to relearn how to learn, at a graduate level no less. All without much support of really anyone who could understand how frightening the world had now become to me. With the support of some faithful and understanding people & professors, I finished my degree and graduated just 1 year after I had originally planned on doing so. I found a great community of support in the Downing House, and learned how to navigate the convouluted systems of government assistance almost on my own. I made a cross-country move after grad school, and then back to Denver after almost two years once my health declined severely in the Midwest. Denver is home, I feel safe here, as though I can thrive again. I think I needed to separate myself from the belief (probably most falsely assumed) that I was just "the stroke girl". Now that I have separated myself from that title, I refuse to take that on again. I'm not her, though it is part of my past and story now. So, it's been a crazy 5 years. So many things I didn't know I could conquer, and yet, I have. A stroke. Graduate school (with constant headaches). A sexual assault that brought intense PTSD. Heartbreaks. 2 cross-country moves. Listening to dozens of doctors from around the country analyze your scans and tell you "If this had happened just half a millimeter to the right... you couldn't ______ anymore". (Gulp!) Learning to depend on Someone Greater for all of my needs. Landing a fantastic job but feeling daily inadequate. Trusting that my best will never be enough and yet, I know the One who makes up for my lack. And that at the end of the day, I'm right where I know that I need to be and He will continue to direct my path, all the days of my life, as He always has before.
As always, I'm an open book, just ask. I won't necessarily open up so all of these things can spill out, but I don't mind necessarily be asked about any of it now either. And that's been the last 5 years in a very much condensed version :)
Love,
Amy Christine
for the first year of blogging, visit here---> http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/amynixon
No comments:
Post a Comment