Pretty as a Lily in May: Mommy and Baby

Pretty as a Lily in May: Mommy and Baby: "Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8"

My most beautiful girls! So proud of you both!

365 Pics: A year of photos with Rachel: A Work of Art

Now THAT is a work of art!

365 Pics: A year of photos with Rachel: ¡Piñatas!

You are the art teacher's daughter. There never was any doubt, but paper mache in language class makes it a certainty! Remember you can add feet out of construction paper, etc. oh and don't forget the candy!

365 Pics: A year of photos with Rachel: Leshee, Her Art and Lilly

365 Pics: A year of photos with Rachel: Leshee, Her Art and Lilly: "Three beautiful things that I love. Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7"

Pretty as a Lily in May: Swim Video

Pretty as a Lily in May: Swim Video

Reminds me so much of Rachel's first swim! Another water baby for sure!

When the World Fell on My Head - A Guide to Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Part I

The Life Altering Event

            I teach cultural art to 650 children a week in a rural Arkansas school.  Some of you may think that the world hits me in the head every Monday morning, but actually, on this particular Monday, things were going really well.

             On the previous Saturday night, I survived the way too expensive marriage of my daughter and I was glad to be back to my normal life of too much to teach and too little time.  I was even thinking that I could finally get off the Cymbalta recently prescribed by my well-meaning Gynecologist.

            Everything was going well with our study of Egyptian art (mummies, pyramids and curses are always a big hit with third graders).  As the class wound down, almost time to go on to the next class session, I caught from the corner of my eye that the free-floating 5 x 5 ft. bulletin board displaying hieroglyphs, canopic jar images and photos of King Tut’s sarcophagus, was falling from its perch on the white board rail.

            Rule 1:  Never move toward heavy falling objects.  (No matter how invincible you think you are.)                                  

            I didn’t know the rule at the time and thought I could stop it before the board and all its’ art hit the floor.  I got to it just in time to feel the whoosh of the 20 lb. rolled up, metal and wood encased world map, evidently dislodged from its’ mount by the top edge of the bulletin board, as it whammed me smack dab in the middle of my face. 

            Rule 2:  Never pass out, bleed or curse in front of small children.

            I did know this rule.  I crumpled against the white board, saw a bright white light, stars and heard the children gasp. The bulletin board smashed to my feet as the map swung like an upside-down metronome in front of my face.  Instead of cursing I teacher-trained primly exclaimed, “Dear God in heaven, help me!”  or something very close.  Then I didn’t hear anything for a few seconds.  The curtain rose.  A third grade teacher hearing the crash had entered the room.  Children started telling her what had happened. 

            Rule 3:  Stay put.  (Let someone else be the hero, for once.)

            Rule 4:  Call 9-1-1! (In reality, no one has a clue, including you.)

            I did neither of these brilliant things.  I am considered pretty smart by most, but to give myself an out, I really wasn’t clicking on all gears at that moment.  Instead, still holding my face (no blood yet, but it might flow at any moment), I crazily weaved past at least ten people in the hall, like a spawning salmon on a mission, to the nurses’ station.

Nurse Vicky, God love her, (I know I do), was the first and sadly, the best medical exam I was to receive for many months.  She checked everything checkable with a penlight, her gentle fingers and her own astute years as everything from a surgery nurse to a psych nurse.  My Vice Principal arrived as I mercifully lay on a child-size exam table with an ice pack on my face.  Efficiently, she called an aide to take care of my classes.  Then, I entered Hell.

                                             Doctors Suck (Not all, but most)

                                                   Remember, Rule 4? 

                                 Rule 4:  Call 9-1-1! (In reality, no one has a clue.)

            Because my injury occurred at school (the workplace), now I was no longer able to see my regular Family Practitioner.  I had to see the doctor chosen by my Workman’s Compensation to deal with “boo-boos” in the workplace.  The fact that this particular doctor was one that I never under any circumstances would ever see on my own, was basically one of the town’s favored sons for reasons I have yet to ascertain and although he was unable to get into medical school in the states because his grades were so low that   he went to Jamaica or Mexico or somewhere, he was still their fair-haire boy.  My opinion did not matter.  I should have called 9-1-1.  Hindsight is always perfect.

                        Rule 5:  Don’t drive yourself to medical help.  (unless, of course, there is no other option,                                                 then drive like hell and hope some cop pulls you over and calls 9-1-1)

            I drove to his office.  Not only did I drive, I drove by myself, holding an ice pack on my face. 

            I sat with ice on my face in the office for 30 minutes before seeing his majesty, the earthly god we all worship, the Doctor.  He never touched me, not to open my eyes to look in them, not to touch my nose, face, head, anything.  Crazy!  I knew I was in some trouble, but I was already trapped in the workman’s compensation Alice-in-Wonderland world.  He sent me down the hall to have an x-ray of my head.

            The technician had never performed a head injury x-ray before.  She laughed about it as I lay there.  She looked up how to take the x-ray in a little cheat sheet booklet.  After the x-ray they shoveled me into yet a different room to await the doctor.  He arrived and proceeded to give me his expert opinion.

            “You just have a bad bump, a boo-boo.  I guess you want to go home for the rest of the day, huh?” I looked at him with as much contempt as my poor swollen face and squinting eyes could produce.  “I guess I can let you have that much.  Here’s a script for some Vicodin.  Call me if you need anything.”  With that, he was out the door to cure someone really sick.  God help us all. 

            I drove to the pharmacy and filled my prescription.  I could tell the pharmacists were already writing my name in their secret “drug-seeker” file in the back.  (No, paranoia comes much later with a head injury, but I ‘ll get to that later.)  Then I grabbed a bottle of three -day old water from my center console, popped the lid on the pills and swilled one down as I headed to my house.  The ice pack was melting by now.  I stopped on the way to my recliner to refill the ice pack, then lay back in the chair, keeping my face up, my head as still as possible as I phoned the school and my husband, and wondered what I would feel like in the morning when I got up to go to work.

But Doctor, Something’s Wrong

            Rule 6:  It’s your body.  You know it better than anyone.  Don’t forget it!

            Life as a raccoon-eyed art teacher is not fun.  I did not need kohl to play the part of an Egyptian princess.   I could have played Zorro without the mask by the time the black began to fade to green.   Then I could have played Green Arrow, I guess.  It was all I could do to pretend I was getting better and keep teaching.  Pain pills became a weekly purchase.  After three weeks, he (the Dr.) ordered a prescription for antibiotics.   I told his staff I was still not feeling ‘right’ and I begged to see the ‘god” doctor again.  Desperation is never pretty. 

            I got an appointment, worker’s comp approved.  He decided I needed a new x-ray.  This time it was a different technician and the process was totally different.  When the doctor came back to speak with me this time he told me, well imagine that, I did have a chipped frontal bone, right on the brow ridge between my eyes.  When asked if I needed to do anything else about the condition, he said.  “No, it will just take a little while longer to heal.”  There was no offer of pain medication at this time.  I was officially cured and an obvious drug-seeker.  No one likes getting caught in the wrong. He wanted to remind me that he was in control of my condition, I guess.  I nodded my head in disbelief and tried unsuccessfully on the way out to get my x-rays. Their policy, the receptionist told me, was never to release their x-rays or any clinical test results.  I looked at the woman, I’m sure, as though she were a creature from another planet.  She smugly closed the window on me.  I left, crying.  I always cry when I’m pissed.    

            I knew I had to somehow get around this crazy system and see a REAL doctor, but how?  I have excellent health insurance through my husband’s company, but once you tell anyone how the injury happened, at work, the regular insurance won’t touch your care.  I tried to figure out a way around their system.  I’m not ashamed.  I was in trouble and I was not receiving any valid care, something had to happen or I might as well pack my bag for the looney bin or head to Mexico for over-the-counter hydrocodone.

            I researched my situation.  I was getting pretty good at 3 a.m. internet searches while continuing my 6 a.m. wake-up calls for my job.  I found out the numerical order of doctors that worker’s compensation followed when the regular doctor was unavailable in my area and found that if the ‘god doctor’ was on vacation and the second choice doctor (the one that was always too busy to see anyone) was unavailable they would, as a last resort, let me see my own family doctor.  Light dawned in an otherwise dark world.  It just so happened that all those events occurred on the following Friday.  I was the first walk-in of the day at my physician’s office. I would have been smiling if the pain had not made that impossible.

            Rule 7:  Insist on CT scan at the time of the injury, not weeks later.

            My doctor listened to my story.  He then, in his twisted sense of humor, grabbed both sides of my head and pressed in, kind of like grabbing a wet basketball before taking a shot.  “Does that feel better?”  He chuckled, looking pseudo-serious.  I generally have a pretty good sense of humor and I’d been his patient for many years, but there is a limit.  He grumbled under his breath, ordered a ct scan (if he could get worker’s comp to pay for it) and gave me the blessed relief of a prescription for hydrocodone.  I might actually sleep that night. 

If I hadn’t mentioned it already, sleep was becoming a problem.  It seems so silly to mention it but sleep is not something humans can do without for very long.  I had not slept for more than three hours at a given time since the accident.  I normally slept on my left side.  My entire life of sleep was spent on the left side of the bed, lying on my left side rarely rolling around.  Since the accident I could only sleep on my right side and had to ask my husband to switch sides of the bed so I could be looking outward instead of inward.  This “little” change was to be the first of many.  The change also marked the first of many reasons why my husband is the most amazing man on the earth. 

            It is now getting close to Christmas/Hanukkah time and no one wants to work.  I did get in for the ct scan, another day away from work.  My sick leave is dwindling to nothing just on doctor visits alone.  I have no idea what will happen when the days run out.  Since I was hurt at work, my wonderful boss is not counting any days I’m out when he can cover my job somehow internally without a substitute teacher hired, but even with this help my sick days are mounting up.   When I am at work I’m doing a poor job, I feel.  When the students ask you if you're getting any better, consider prayer circles for you and behave really well all the time without much fuss, it becomes quickly apparent that there is a real problem.

            I’m that weird beast that actually thinks a teacher should make sure the students learn something.  If my head would just stop hurting I kept thinking I’d be fine.

            I go for the test and wait for the results.  I get the call that I have a fractured skull, and need to see a neurologist. The skull is fractured in not one but two places.  Of course, worker’s compensation will not send me to just anyone and not just anyone will see a worker’s compensation patient.  I, too smart for my own good, have started researching head fractures on the internet. Scary stuff.  I'm scared down to my toes.  At this point I misguidedly, not having been told any differently, think the main fracture is in the frontal bone, where the god doctor spotted the ‘supposed’ chip.  After researching frontal bone trauma and feeling on my face what feels like a crack (yes, I’m that stupid!) I’ll blame it on lack of sleep just to save face this once. I call a friend that is a world-renowned brain surgeon for advice. 

            “Who/what should I see?  If I have a cracked frontal bone, do I need surgery to knit it back together?  Oh and by the way, I nearly caused a fire in my classroom.”

            “Oh really (pause for effect) how, did that happen?”  Eric is a very calm, very organized genius, I might add.

             “Well, I was working at my desk and the students and teachers kept coming in my room saying something smelled really bad in there, like something burning.  I thought it was the hot glue gun plugged in by the sink and told them so until out of the corner of my eye, I saw the curls of smoke rising from the floor by my chair.  Somehow a wood burning tool had fallen from my desk was kicked on and was burning it’s way through an electrical power strip under my desk.” I told him.  “I couldn’t smell anything.”

            “Laura, I’m not certain who you need to see.” Eric responded. “Hopefully, no one will need to do anything to that pretty head of yours, but let me make a few calls.  Call me in the morning at 8:30 and I should have some answers.”

            I hung up the phone relieved that I had someone with a clue in my corner.  True to his word, he checked around the teaching hospital where he works and found a wonderful specialist in facial trauma of the ears, nose and throat.  He was a specialist in facial reconstruction and damage to the olfactory and auditory systems. 

            The battle to get to see this specialist through the worker’s compensation system was a nightmare, but after weeping and reminding the caseworker, that I seemed to have a crack running from the bridge of my nose to my hairline that had never been assessed and that I’d nearly burned the school down, I got approval to see him.  What he disclosed to me took several visits.  The crazy thing is that I still did not know about the damage that was to disable me for life.

                                  Story continues next post. . .

             

              

                             

Now What?

I'll give you the basics of my story maybe next time.  For now I just want to let those who might want to read a few of my stories and/or look into my damaged brain know that I've decided to stop lying around (at least I hope I can) and live my life.  Whoo-hoo!
 Over the years a lot of people have come to me for advice -go figure.  I always had advice for everyone else, too bad I had none left over for myself when the world literally came crashing down.
November 8, 2006--Over four years have passed and I am just now crawling out from the hole I dug for myself.  I want to share what I've discovered along the way, not just examine the creepy crawlies that one finds in a typical hole but be amazed by the tiny seeds sprouting against all odds and the points of light that made their way to me and continue to do so even on the bad days.
I've got some big hurdles to climb over this year, hope you'll grab on to some of my thoughts, stick with me even if I whine and enjoy my journey!