Sentimental Journey -11/11

11/11/05. Five years already?! Wow. Five years ago today I was waiting to see Paul in the emergency room. I know I will never forget how I felt that evening. I remember how my heart was thumping wildly in my chest, how I could not get my leg to quit shaking. My mind was literally racing back and forth, over years of memories of my son and what life might be without him. I could not control my thoughts, I really could not focus. I tried to calm everything inside of me by saying the Hail Mary over and over and over and then would just break into “no, dear God, no dear God, no dear God.”

Today, just as I do everyday, I drive past the accident scene on my way to work. Everyday, I thank God for holding me very close to His heart and for helping me put one foot in front of another. Everyday, I thank my dearest Blessed Mary for her walk along side of me. I never forget to do that, because everyday, I get to talk to Paul and hear his wonderful and loving voice. Everyday, he stops by or calls to say good morning. How joyous the gift of life.

I thought about all my sons today and reflected on the strength they brought to me and continue to do so. I thought about my husband and how he has been a rock throughout these years. I am surrounded by these strong men and I can’t believe my blessings. I thought about my brothers and sisters and how they raced into town to share their prayers and love with all of us. I thought about how friends came to be with us and how so many, near and far began a prayer vigil for Paul, which continues to this day. How joyous the gift of these lives.

Paul has come a great distance. Have we reached California? I would have to say we have crossed over the state line! He is able to drive within a 25 mile radius of our home. He is working 35 hours a week at DTSi. He went back to college for 2 semesters and did very well, albeit with some support from Jon and me. He can play his guitar very well again. He can comprehend anything, with complex issues taking more explanation or time. He has been able to get his eyes to work in unison, which took lots of therapy and exercise. He was so blessed when he got that referral to an eye clinic in Roswell, GA. He will have to continue this therapy for life so that his eye muscles will stay strong. Paul should be able to do anything he sets his heart on doing. It will take hard work, but it can be done.

So, what are the remaining issues? He has been left with a few permanent disabilities that cause him some problems. He is still paralyzed on the left side of his face. He can’t blink his eye and has to manually blink it with his finger. He has to put eye drops in every hour or so. His eye still has to be taped down at night. He has some trouble annunciating words due to the paralysis of his cheek. He will sometimes hold the left side of his mouth to pronounce words more quickly, if he is in a hurry. He can’t always hear very well and has to lean in to a conversation or has to ask for things to be repeated, even though he is using hearing aids. He has a loud ringing in his ears which bothers him greatly. We learned recently from a specialist that the doctors should have replaced the 7th cranial nerve when they did the first surgery to repair his facial bones. Had the replacement of that nerve been done in the first year, Paul would not have suffered permanent paralysis. It caused us great sadness to learn this. We were so preoccupied with solving his hydrocephalus that no one considered this other major issue. That first year was one of unbearable headaches and uncontrolled fluid on the brain, along with a number of emergency surgeries. There were so many serious problems that had to be solved and the paralysis was not #1 on the chart. Whether the doctors even had the knowledge about the time frame of replacing the nerve is anyone’s guess. And so, today, it is what it is. We prayed fervently for guidance and we have to trust that God was with us through it all. We have to move forward with great hope and trust. Heaven is in front of us. Heaven is the end of the journey, not California.

Paul’s faith has remained strong. It remains his most blessed gift from God. I cannot count the times when Paul has helped Jon and me in our own faith/life lessons. We have gone through very tough times emotionally and it was Paul who had the comforting words for us! I cannot count the times I have been in tears, crying over the suffering Paul has endured. It was Paul who had the reassuring and faith-filled words to lift me up. He has a wonderful inner strength that he is able to draw on. There have been many moments when Paul realizes what he has lost. He is very sad at what is going on in his life now - that others will always see him as handicapped. He sees how they look at him and automatically assume he is brain damaged. He knows that he had a brain injury, but also knows he is quite capable of being taught anything. He has had some very rude and condescending things said to him, even by some he considers friends. When he has spoken of it, I have asked him why he doesn’t ‘let them have it’! I get very defensive about anyone hurting him in any way. I have seen what he has had to go through all these years. But he will remind me that it would not serve any purpose to get into a verbal battle with anyone because nothing would be won that way. I have watched him silently endure some very harsh behaviors and let me tell you – it takes every ounce of my self control to keep from calling the offending person to ‘let them have it’. They take his silence as stupidity.

So, this past weekend, he came over to the house quite happy and told us he had just been to confession with his brother Michael. He was really excited that he had been able to talk to the priest about the hurtful behavior he has experienced lately. Do you know what he was most happy about? That he was able to confess the sin of thinking badly about these people who have been cruel to him and how good he felt inside about being forgiven. He said that they just didn’t understand and that it was more important that he stayed kind towards them. I felt so humbled and contrite about my very unholy response to these situations and I burst into tears as I ran over to hug him. Of course, my response pretty much shocked him and he wanted to know what could possibly have caused me to cry. I looked up at his beautiful face and said I realized why God had not taken him home to heaven that day 5 years ago. God needed him to stay here to help save his mother’s soul! I am impulsive and can have a bad temper, which is not a great combination. I cannot bear to see my family be the target of other people’s bad actions and then I totally forget how to respond with patience or Christ-like words or even an ounce of wisdom. While I have learned a lot from Paul, I have a long way to go since I started from so low a point! My Paul is truly a gentle and loving soul. (Well, except when we talk about him needing to eat more nutritional foods. We pretty much ignore that topic altogether! )

Paul will be going back to college in the Spring. He had stopped going a year ago and he did not want to listen to us talk about the importance of graduating from college. (Another topic we learned to avoid.) He just wanted to find a job where he could make decent money. He also wanted desperately to meet a Catholic girl and get married and have children. This, most especially, has been his desire for the last year. He has come to realize on his own, that the chances of his finding a job that would pay well enough are not going to happen without his finishing college. It is going to be a real challenge for him, but what has changed is that it is now Paul’s desire to finish college. We have great hope that he will succeed too!

He went back to college the first time because we pretty much forced it on him. It was really difficult because he was not able to drive and had to depend so heavily on us to go anywhere. Because of this, he didn’t try to make friends with anyone he met because he didn’t have much freedom to make his own schedule. Another problem was that he still had to get more recovery in his eyesight. He had a lot of problems focusing due to his eyes not moving together in unison. Given his disabilities, he needed to gain more confidence too. Most importantly, he needed to understand that things were going to be different for him and accept it. The burden of all these issues caused him to become very negative regarding school and so he quit and said he just wanted to work and try to gain experience that way. That plan has not worked out and he has accepted the fact that maybe God is closing that door to force him towards the pathway God has had in mind all along. We pray daily for Paul to know that path and to have the courage to follow it. We pray for the wisdom and understanding to help him.

Paul continues to work with the therapist at Shepherd Center to excel at driving on the freeway and at night. He hopes to achieve this goal by the end of the year. The woman he works with is a great blessing indeed. When she first tested Paul 3 years ago, she pretty much indicated that he would probably not be able to drive again. There were so many negatives – his eyesight, his depth perception, his peripheral vision, slow reaction time, inability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, bad judgements/decisions in response to other drivers’ actions. At the time, I was relieved that Paul was not going to be driving so soon. My nerves were still too raw. But as time went on, I started to think she wasn’t judging Paul fairly. One day though, she spoke boldly and truthfully with us. She said that she was not just making sure Paul could drive as well as before. He would have to drive better than everyone on the road because she never wanted to see him back there as a patient. He had to have excellent driving skills because his life really did depend on it. The next accident would impair him for life or would end his life. Her duty to Paul was far greater than just a driving instructor teaching a first time driver. The fact that she was spending this much time with Paul was because she came to realize he could do it. But he would have to have perfect driving skills. We learned that less than 50% of brain injured patients ever drive again and she was one of only a few therapists who have even tried to help brain injured patients, because the odds were not in their favor.

What happened next was incredible. The director of this department that helped the severely physically disabled drive again, was encouraged by Paul’s progress and he decided to work on a system that would address the problems associated with getting brain injured people back on the road again. He and Paul’s therapist decided Paul would be a great candidate to be part of the pilot program and with Paul’s permission, would use him as a case study to further advance this instrument they had developed. Paul needed coaching as he drove, which meant that he might have difficulty in transitioning to driving alone. The instrument had recorded prompts that Paul would hear as he drove. It was interactive in that Paul had to press a particular button after certain occurrences; like noticing the speed limit signs and checking his own speed limit, or keeping good spacing around his car, or using his signals. When he was aware of these things, he had to press the related button on the device. If he did not press a button after 2 minutes, the recorder would play automatically, encouraging him to remember to notice what was going on around him. One of the benefits of this was to keep Paul’s attention in case he became distracted. It brought his thoughts back to his driving. It is common for someone with TBI (traumatic brain injury) to ‘zone out’ if their brain becomes fatigued. After a few months of using this device, it was evident that Paul did not suffer from this while driving. This was a huge advantage for Paul. He is able to drive for long periods of time and he does not suffer from brain fatigue. This past month, we learned that Georgia Tech engineers have become involved with the technology of this mechanism and there is a patent pending, along with a huge national interest in the medical field. Paul is mentioned in the case study by number only, not name. He was part of the initial stages and was very instrumental in helping them move the program further along. Years ago I had asked “to what point and purpose, God? To what point and purpose?” God has occassionally graced us with answers.

In these five years we have changed in many ways and have created some good habits. We pray the rosary together almost daily. Jon and I try to go daily to the 6:30 AM Mass and we have our scheduled hour of adoration once a week at 5 AM. And, logically, we have taken a more vocal and active part in the Pro-Life movement. We have become prayer warriors and feel a strong calling to become more and more involved. We thank God for helping us see how large a battle we have before us. Silence is no longer acceptable for us. Last Summer, we were asked to come take part of a movement called Abortion – free Gwinnett. Our county has its first abortion mill and people have been asked to pray in front of it as often as possible. The first day we went, Jon and I looked across the street and we could see, looming above us a few blocks away, Gwinnett Medical Center. We could see Paul’s room from where we stood. “To what point and purpose did that accident have to happen?” Thank you Dear Lord, for allowing us to be part of Your Point and Purpose.

Our continued love and prayers are with you each and everyday.
Peace, love and Pro-Life!
Jon and Rebecca