Tag Archives: Health

A Drunk Driver’s Legacy: Part Two

Posted on by under Common Sense

Lateral view of the right hip bone. Acetabular...

Lateral view of the right hip bone. Acetabular fossa is at centre, inside the lunate surface. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

State fruit - Tomato

State fruit – Tomato (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dolly Parton at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Dolly Parton at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I awoke in the hospital, my mother was standing over me. I remembered hearing her voice while I was unconscious. She and the doctor were talking about my probably brain damage. I thought I had been dreaming. Since I could not remember the accident, I had to be told what happened. My first question upon learning there had been a car accident was, “Oh, my God, did I hurt anybody?”

I was told that a man who had just been released from a mental institute, without driver’s license, stole his mother’s car and went to a bar to get drunk. He caused the accident and the only injury to him was a broken nose. He spent one night in jail. He was told that, if I should lose my unborn child, he would be charged with manslaughter. His mother and sister prayed outside my door day and night that I would not lose my baby. Not because they had compassion for me, but rather, they did not want Larry to go to prison.

I was not allowed visitors in ICU except for immediate family. My pelvis had been crushed. I could not be put in a cast because I was pregnant. My left hip had been broken by the door handle that was twisted, leaving a sharp, hard metal spike to break my hip bone.

My left ankle had been crushed. Surgery was performed to remove the shards of bone and what remained was glued and screwed together in an attempt to keep the foot attached to my leg. It was cosmetic, not meant for walking on. I wore the cast on my ankle, up to my knee for the rest of my pregnancy. I knew that six months was too long to wear a cast, but my doctor told me it was because I was pregnant and it was taking longer. They did not want to tell me that I would never walk on that leg again.

My right arm was broken. Because I could not sit up, surgery was performed to place a sleeve over the broken bones and my arm was in a sling. Both arms were at 90 degree angles for several months. The left arm had nerve damage. I had to have physical therapy every day to eventually straighten both arms. I can still remember how painful it was. I cried and begged them to stop pulling on my arms. The PT specialists would ask, “Don’t you want to hold your baby one day?” I would try harder.

I had hairline fractures all over my body, a severe concussion, lacerations on my left arm and face. The stitches were removed too soon from my right arm, leaving a seven-inch scar that was an inch wide in some places. My left ear had to be sown back in place.

When I first conceived my daughter, my body tried to reject her. This is known as morning sickness. For a very small number of women, the body reacts violently to expel the foreign invader. I could not keep water down, much less any food. Nothing helped ease the nausea. By the time I was three months pregnant, I had lost ten pounds. I weighed 110 pounds at the time of the accident. I was on drip and still could not keep food down. The doctors were desperate.

They would come into my room with cheeseburgers bought from fast food restaurants to tempt me to eat. I would try, but it always came back up. One day, a doctor asked me if I was craving anything. I said I would like a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich. It had to be a fresh, vine-ripened tomato. It was around the first of May and tomatoes would not be ready in South Mississippi for another four to six weeks. A nurse offered, “There is a vine-ripened tomato somewhere in the US. We will find it.”

The call went out for a ripe tomato. It wasn’t long before a trucker heard about me and brought a bushel of vine-ripened tomatoes to the hospital. The cafeteria sliced the tomato and sent the mayo and fresh bread to my room, where the doctor prepared the sandwich and cut it into four equal pieces. I ate the first quarter of the sandwich with three doctors and four nurses cheering me on. It was the first thing I had eaten in almost four months. I was down to 99 pounds.

I had been given a shot for nausea before I attempted to eat the sandwich. I managed to eat half of it without throwing it back up. There were cheers of success heard throughout the hospital. I was able to keep one sandwich in my stomach each day. If I pushed the issue by adding sandwich meat or tried to eat more than one, up it all would come.

I was weak, I was in pain and my legs were wasting away. I did not consider at the time that I was losing muscle from both legs. I had always been a skinny kid. I had Dolly Parton breasts (mine were natural) and Olive Oil legs. I was not told that I would never get back the muscle that I had lost. So much had been kept from me. The doctors had been afraid that the truth would be too much for me to handle.

I was bed-ridden for months, my baby grew restless, kicking me without mercy because she had to lie in one position day after day. I was taken to the doctor’s office, after I had been released from the hospital, by my Mother-in-Law for checkups. Each visit, I was promised the cast would come off my leg. They would take x-rays and give me the bad news. “It isn’t healing correctly because the baby is using all the calcium in your body. Give it some more time.” I cried every time. How was I going to take care of my baby if I was stuck in a wheelchair.

I promise, if you come back for part three, you will witness a miracle.

 

 

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A Drunk Drivers Legacy: Part One

Posted on by under Common Sense

McLain Leaf River Bridge

McLain Leaf River Bridge (Photo credit: cmh2315fl)

Fetus at 18 weeks after fertilization 3D Pregn...

Fetus at 18 weeks after fertilization 3D Pregnancy (Image from gestational age of 20 weeks). Retrieved 2007-08-28. A rotatable 3D version of this photo is available here, and a sketch is available here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This map shows the incorporated and unincorpor...

This map shows the incorporated and unincorporated areas in Forrest County, Mississippi, highlighting Petal in red. It was created with a custom script with US Census Bureau data and modified with Inkscape. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A legacy is something you leave behind after you’ve left this world.  On April 14, 1973, I met a drunk driver head-on. I had just left work for the night, watching the children as their parents worked out at the spa. It was around 9:30 that night that I approached the Leaf River Bridge in Petal, Mississippi.

I graduated from high school at the age of 16. I skipped a couple of grades, so I was always the youngest student in all of my classes. I thought I was grown and capable of making my own decisions about my life. I was in love and determined to get married. My mother pleaded with me. She knew I was too young, but my will was stronger than her will.  Mike and I got married in June 1971.

I won’t lie and say it was easy. Mike was 19 and still just a kid too. We fought, made up and fought again. We loved each other, we just needed to grow up. Mike worked with his dad building houses and I worked at the only spa in town. It was a luxury spa complete with indoor pool, saunas, work-out rooms, health food bar and nursery for the children. I worked a split shift, four hours in the early morning and four hours each night. When I left work on April 14, I was headed to the next town to meet Mike. He had been shooting in a billiard tournament all week.

I had just learned that I was three months pregnant. This was very exciting news to me because my womb was tiled downward and the likelihood of pregnancy was very slim. I had been doing exercises for a year in an attempt to prepare my womb in case I should get pregnant.

It was a starless night that Friday as I approached the bridge. I will never know if I had seen the car about to hit me head-on at 65 miles-per-hour. I don’t remember the accident. My doctors told me it was my mind’s way of protecting me. The horror of seeing a car coming straight at me on the bridge was more than I could safely deal with, so I blocked it out.

The man was traveling too fast as he approached the bridge from the opposite end. He realized he was going to hit the car in front of him, so he gunned his engine and passed the car. That is when he saw me. It was too late. He slammed into my Ford Fairlane so hard that he pushed my car 800 yards off the bridge and down an embankment. My car came to a stop, dangling over the river. I was unconscious with the car’s engine sitting in my lap, pinning me to the seat.

I have no way of knowing how long I had been there when a motorist saw the wreck from a access road parallel to where my car had come to rest. The man in the car was an off-duty policeman. He had his wife and two of his three young sons with him. They were returning home after visiting relatives that night. He told his wife he was going to pull over and walk down the embankment from his side and see if anyone was still in the wrecked cars. My mother asked him to let someone else handle the accident, but he insisted.

“It’s Barbara. Oh my God, it’s Barbara,” my dad yelled back to my mom. He got to me first after tumbling down the embankment on his side, wading the water and climbing up the embankment on my side. My five-foot, two-inch tall mother must have crawled to get to me.

There was no jaws of life back in those days. My dad flagged down another vehicle and enlisted the help of two more men to break the seat and slide me out from under the car’s motor. When the ambulance arrived, my mother rode with me. The drunk was riding in the same ambulance. At that point, no one knew whose fault the accident had been. The drunk wasn’t talking and I was not able.

My mother told me weeks later that the drunk threw up in the ambulance. That’s when they knew he had been heavily drinking. I was in intensive care for three weeks. The doctors told Mike and my parents that I had a two-percent chance of making it. My unborn daughter was given no chance at all. If I did make, they said I would most certainly have brain damage. That is still debatable.

Please come back and read part two. If you have never seen a miracle, you will want to read what happened to me.

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Why is my child depressed?

Posted on by under Natural Health

I Got Major Depressive Disorder

I Got Major Depressive Disorder (Photo credit: 囧-Jean-囧)

Sometimes, a depressed child goes unrecognized because he/she is normally quiet, shy and introverted. Other people may comment that “Joe/Mary seems depressed.” Parents dismiss this as just a natural part of the personality of the child. This is not to say that all shy, quiet children are depressed. How can parents know whether their child is actually depressed?

Everybody has periods of depression. It may last a day or two, a couple of weeks or even a few months, but there is always an understandable reason for normal depression.

Major life changes, such as parents divorcing, a parent getting married again, moving too far away from friends to continue a close relationship, death of someone loved, sexual abuse and the battering of one parent by the other are some common reasons that children become depressed.

Each child is different. What causes depression in some children, will not affect others to that degree. Depression tends to run in families. If a parent is prone to depression, a major life event will likely trigger depression in the child. The personality of the child, family support, number of close friends and general health of the child all play a role in how he handles major life changes.

If a child is a perfectionist, a few less-than-perfect grades may throw her into depression. A child who is too active in extra-curricula activities may begin to suffer health-wise due to lack of sleep and rest or an unhealthy diet. When he is no longer able to handle all these activities and his grades begin to suffer, he may become depressed.

Something as seemingly innocent as the death of a pet, a fight with a best friend or the break-up with a school crush can trigger depression in those who have a propensity. Anyone dealing with chronic pain has a tendency to become depressed. There is no way to protect or shield a child from every known and unknown trigger of depression.

How do you know when your child is depressed? A child who loses interest in things he normally enjoys, who withdraws from family activities and doesn’t see the humor in life the way he once did, is probably depressed about something. Eating habits will change and your child may stop caring about her appearance. He may refuse to take phone calls and begin to sleep quite a bit more than usual.

Any pronounced change in a child that lasts longer than a couple of weeks should be investigated. The longer depression goes unchecked, the more difficult and time-consuming it will be to treat. Depression can spiral out of control and reach the stage of becoming suicidal.

Depression is an illness that must be treated the same way that a diabetic must receive treatment to prevent the illness from worsening or leading to death. There is no shame in being depressed. Clinical depression can often be treated with medication and counseling.

Natural treatments include taking serotonin supplements, getting more sunshine, eating fresh foods instead of processed foods, and adding folate to the diet. “Researchers at Harvard University have found that depressed people with low folate levels don’t respond as well to antidepressants, and taking folic acid in supplement form can improve the effectiveness of antidepressants. For more information, read Low Folate and Vitamin B12 Linked to Depression.” This quote is taken from alternative medicine.

Adding omega-3 fatty acid supplements and magnesium may help, as some people with depression are deficient. Vitamin B6 is needed to help produce the necessary serotonin. Make sure there is a deficiency before adding supplements.

Telling someone who is depressed ‘to just get over it’ will not work any better than telling someone who has cancer to ‘just cure yourself’. Someone with an understandable reason for depression will generally get past it as time moves on. If, after 12 months, the person has made no progress, make an appointment with his pediatrician. Make an appointment sooner if his condition worsens at any time.

When there is no clear reason for a child to become depressed, begin by gently asking questions about her sudden change in attitude. If a child refuses to speak with a parent, find someone she trusts to intercede. Depression can rob a child of precious childhood memories by keeping him from making any. It can lead to a lifetime disability, failed marriages and poor job performance.

Why is your child depressed? Has something recently happened that has caused your child grief, sorrow, sadness, embarrassment, humiliation, anger or disappointment? Some life events may not affect adults in the same way they do children. Ask your child why he is suddenly sad, angry or withdrawn. Who knows, you may actually get an answer.

Love your child, don’t smother him. Make sure she knows she has your support, but don’t enable her depression by making excuses to others on her behalf. Don’t freak out every time your child is moody. This is just a normal child being normal.

Now That She is Older

Posted on by under Just Sayin'

Dream girl

Dream girl (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

Now that she is older,

she’s a little bolder;

turning a cold shoulder

when he played her for a fool.

She’s a little bolder,

now that she is older,

doing what she wants

instead of only what he’s told her.

She’s begun to dream again,

now that she is bolder.

She wants a man to love her

the way he said he did.

Savior and friend

Posted on by under Just Sayin'

Lord Howe

Lord Howe (Photo credit: Roberta W.B.)

With broken heart,
I came to thee.
With clouded eyes,
I could not see
the depth of your humanity.

I cried for you
in childish fear,
to fix my hurt
and dry my tears
as one who suddenly appears.

You heard me pray
for inner peace,
for conflict now
forever cease
to live a life of sweet release.

For all, you came
and gave to me
my strength, my hope,
ability
to find you for eternity.

My love, my Lord,
my hope, my all,
how glad I am
I heard your call
to come nigh you lest I should fall.

With broken heart,
I came to thee.
With opened eyes
I now can see
the height of your supremacy.

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New year’s resolutions

Posted on by under Just Sayin'

I don’t like to make resolutions. I find I soon forget them. I have decided to write down a set of goals for the year. I know that once I write a goal and the steps needed to accomplish the goal, I love checking off those steps I have completed.

I believe each person must find his or her own way in life to bring about change they desire . Some people need visual cues, others need to hear the words of inspiration spoken. Whatever you need to change or improve in your life, find your own way to accomplish it. Don’t allow those who talk about resolutions make you feel badly because you don’t make them. There is no law that says you must. Good thing, because I would probably break that law.

Besides, a resolution is simply something you resolve to do. Either there are things we know we need to change or stop doing, maybe some things we need to start doing, or we are oblivious to what we need. We will find a way to do what bugs us enough to get done. If it doesn’t bother us that much, we probably won’t stick with a plan of action anyway.

Life has its own way of working out little problems. The best thing we can resolve to do this next year is love more, argue less, give more, take less, smile more, frown less and most of all, forgive – ourselves and others. No one is perfect. Nor will we ever be. Accept that in others and life will be happier.

Have the best year possible. Happy 2013.Photo0447