Read The Promise: A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty, and Friendship for Free Online Page B

tough on her as it was on me, maybe even more so. I was unaware then of what an enormous sacrifice she’d eventually be making for me.
    I knew when I woke up in my room that my ribs seemed to really hurt and that they were bruised. I don’t know how exactly, but I could feel inside of myself, like somehow my insides and my stomach could still register pressure. A day or two later, I began to wonder why my chest was still hurting. It was an odd feeling, and I noticed then that there was sort of a line between where sensation ended and where it gradually picked up again. The discomfort intensified and the pressure had increased. It began to feel like I’d been punched in the chest.
    I still had a tube in my throat when a doctor came in one afternoon while I was alone, which was only because my parents and other visitors had to leave the room during a shift change for the nurses. Within that gap this doctor flat out told me my heart had stopped. I had no memory of going into cardiac arrest. There was no explanation, no comforting; he was very short and to the point about it, and then he left. I couldn’t communicate or ask questions because of the tube. I was terrified. I didn’t know what that meant exactly for my health or my future or anything. It was a truly awful moment. My mom and dad came in and asked me what was wrong, as my eyes were as wide as they could get. If the blow had been delivered by my family or a little more softly, perhaps I could have processed it better or easier and then moved on. Instead, that weird moment stuck with me for a while. But from then on my parents refused to leave me alone in the room even for a minute. My mom scolded the doctor later for telling me something like that without my being able to communicate.
    They were supposed to put an umbrella stint into my leg to prevent blood clots. When I was in the elevator heading down for that procedure, my heart stopped.
    This, of course, made me more upset. I was frustrated, mostly, that no one had told me. I didn’t want to be protected like that. I wanted all of the information I could get my hands on. Information was helping me cope and process the situation. I had been strong up until then, so I didn’t want anyone to think I was too fragile to know or hear about what was happening to me and what exactly I was dealing with. Information, as hard as it was to hear, was reassuring. Being informed was comforting.
    After that some days went well and some days were really terrifying. Everyone would describe it as a roller coaster. There were random things happening all the time to my body while I was in the hospital. My lung collapsed while I was in the ICU, for example. I didn’t have the ability to cough and I wasn’t moving around, so mucous and congestion entered into my system and had the potential to cause pneumonia. The stickiness of the mucous essentially made the two sides of my lung walls stick together, and when that occurs no air can go in. I couldn’t breathe. I remember one day that suddenly I couldn’t get enough air, and I felt panicked.
    The resolution to that problem, which happened often, was pretty horrific, too. The nurses would suck the mucous out with a tube that had suction. On days when it became really bad, they’d put the tube up my nose and down my nasal passage, into my throat, while I was completely awake, and it would suck all the mucous out from my lungs while I was sitting up. It was the most horrible feeling ever, but at the end of it I knew I would be able to breathe. They had a screen that showed what was going on in my lungs, and they could see exactly how much congestion had built up. If there was more and they needed to go in, I’d say, “Just do it again, just go for it and get it over with.” The mucous made me feel like I was going to puke and gag, so the procedure became the easy part. The doctors told me no one had ever asked for them to go back in. I realized then I was pretty brave.
    One of