'I suffered a severe traumatic brain injury that affected nearly every aspect of my body.'
Guest WriterThe author in a coma at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center after her fall from a tree in August 2015.All of my medical records list different heights since no one knew the precise distance — that detail feels important to me. The person I had been climbing with said we were near the top of a redwood on the’s campus when I turned to her and said, “I have to get down. Now.” Then, without waiting for a response, I scrambled downward until I was out of sight.
Comas aren’t what Hollywood would have you think they’re like. The media glosses over two main things when it comes to comas: the consciousness of a coma — you’re dead to the world — and the immediacy of your uselessness upon waking. Every inactive day causes your muscles to atrophy. Your vocal cords may be paralyzed because of intubation , and you can’t swallow without aspirating .
A medical social worker, at this point, staged an intervention about my drinking. She asked my mom to show me a picture of me in my coma, hooked up to machines. When I saw the photo and started laughing, the social worker told my mom, “This is just her injury.” She turned to me and said, “You almost died, and your drinking contributed to it — don’t you care?” When I didn’t stop laughing, my mom told the therapist, “She’s always been like this.
My occupational therapist showed me how to navigate a kitchen, accompanied me into the shower to explain how to safely bathe myself in a precarious environment and went over strategies to remember if I had completed a task or not. After two and a half months, I was only required to attend three days a week. I could walk without a crutch or a gait belt . After four months, I was discharged and finished the last units for my bachelor’s degree at UC San Diego while I awaited my eye muscle surgery .During the summer of 2016, a year out from my accident, I was told this was the most I would recover. The tacit addition was that it was all downhill from there.
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