Those of you who know me, know my mission is to help others. I am not looking to accomplish this goal as a third party to the cause, but as an active participant. I have sat by and watched the world make decisions for me. I can tell you that if I would have allowed others to define me, my abilities, and my future I would not be sitting here typing this. Yet I type this with one finger. I feel like 30 words per minute as a hen picker is not bad. My left arm is not useful to me, but is a constant reminder not to give up. In a daze with my right arm hanging from some type of contraption a stranger says to me “This is going to hurt” and the next thing I remember is two young people skating by with the Olympic torch and the smell. It was not a smell I will ever forget. All of this was the result of a car accident. I was 16, a Junior in High school, and hungry. My best friend and I left school that day to run home and grab a bite to eat. We pulled out of the school parking lot and headed North down a two lane highway. We made it far enough down the road to run head first into a construction truck. The driver had been on a bender and was high on Cocaine. We found out later he was using the Cocaine as a stimulant to counteract the effects of a weekend of drinking. I have no recollection of the accident other than what I have been told. It took two sets of the jaws of life and an auto Mechanic to get me out of the tangled mess of engine parts so I could be air lifted to the hospital. My best buddy, he walked away with a few scrapes and a memory he will never shake. Seeing me took a tole on him and changed him forever. For some reason he moved on and away from me. I think about him quite often but he later became just a face in the crowd.
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My right wrist was so broken in the accident that the doctor who pieced in back together said, “This kid will never use this hand again.” He was wrong. I still bare the scar from that surgery on my right palm and if I would have lost use of this hand I would be screwed right now because its the only hand I have use of right now or ever. They put a elbow cast on to immobilize the arm and the wrist when done and I was awake the next morning talking to family from my hospital bed. It was not right however. Later in the morning I panicked and told my mother to get a doctor, “Something was wrong.” I lost consciousness and was rushed down for testing. The testing showed massive brain damage to the right side of my brain. What the doctors did not know until now was that during the car accident I had tore the inner lining of my right carotid artery and a golf ball sized blood clot had formed there. Pieces of the clot had broke loose and went to the right side of my brain which cut off blood flow and caused a massive right hemisphere debilitating stroke. It eventually killed me! I rapidly declined until my brain was no longer controlling simple things like breathing. So as far as I remember I left school and anything after that is missing up until…….
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I was in a room. It was brightly lit. I do not remember if I was floating or standing but I can go there in my mind. In front of me was a door way. I could not see through the doorway and there was no door blocking my view. I was at peace, and I felt as if I had been there for a very long time. Why was I here, in this room? My father was killed in a construction accident when I was 9. He was crushed by a bulldozer while working a construction job. When he came through the door way in front of me he smiled as he approached. He reached out for me and it felt like he lifted me up. He told me that it was not my time to be there and that it was very important that I follow the plan. He told me that he looks in on me from time to time and that he loved me. We talked ever so briefly for what seemed like a very long time. He let me go and I remember falling back. I was falling, falling, falling, and then I rested. The way I explain it to people is if you have ever had a really long day and then lay down and your body says ahhhhh. It was like that but then it was hell.
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There were people rushing around me as I layed there. Loud voices, needle sticks, I was aqwake and I remember this moment. The pain, the fear, What in the hell was going on! I will never forget that moment EVER! So the stroke had killed me. My lifeless body was laying still in the ICU. I was still hooked up to the EEG which monitors brainwave activity, and the EKG which monitors the heart. Both had flat lined for 30 minutes and a nurse who was there for my death was leaning over my body to remove some equipment etc when she got the shock of her life! I started hitting her with my the cast on my right arm. I used to go visit the hospital staff and she never forgot me. Activity returned to the monitors and the staff returned to my bedside. I do not know what they were doing. Whatever you do when a dead guy returns to life I guess (laugh). So they stabilized me, and all I wanted to know was where was my dad. I am adopted, and it was my adoptive father that I saw. It was so hard on me when he was killed. We were close. He took me everywhere with him. I never showed it. I do not think I ever cried over it until now. Oh I am sure that many cries I have had over my life were a direct result of needing to deal with that event but I never admitted it to myself.
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So when they could I was taken for more tests. It is odd but the test results garnered from the testing they did after my near death experience showed a difference. Instead of showing heavy trauma to the right hemisphere of my brain, these testing results appeared much different. Same tests that they had done before, just repeated again after my death and return showed what one specialist said, “The only trauma I see is that it looks like someone surgically damaged the part of the brain that controls motor function to the left side of the body.” So from complete and definitive damage to just enough to paralyze the left side of my body completely. No explanation was ever given to me and here I am. The best doctors in the country from some of the best institutions have looked this before and after testing over and nothing. No explanation. So my story was on the news for a brief time. When people die and come back to life at the age of 16 it makes the news. I was sent to a local rehab facility. Right arm in a cast, left side of my body completely paralyzed. Future and attitude not looking so bright. Until….
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A nurse took me down to the area where the MRI was. I was in a wheelchair and she left me. No sooner had she left and my butt starts to slide forward. As I slide down the belt around my waist starts to slide up. People, doctors, nurses, all are walking by me and I am asking them for help. I guess I was invisible because they just kept walking by and damn it I was hunched down. It was all I could do to use my right leg to try to hold myself from sliding further. My left side completely useless and my right arm in an elbow cast. I am struggling and I felt like I was being loud enough in asking for help but they just kept walking by. Why would no one help me. The strap had come up under my arms and it hurt. It hurt and I needed help. They all just kept walking by and I needed help.; Why were they just walking by me? Could they not see I needed help? The nurse returned and with the help of another they got me back up in the chair the right way. I will never forget being left there to suffer and that was the last time anyone wiped tears off my face I told myself. That night I had a dream…..
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The only other time I remember seeing my dad was the night of the wheelchair incident. I had a dream where I so upset. My life was over. I had been an aspiring athlete, baseball, football, weight lifting, girls, now a partially paralyzed, brain damaged ghost of the teenager I was before. My dad told me that if I wanted to walk again I needed to ask god and pray. I remember waking up the next morning and doing just that. I would have tried anything at that point in time but the wheelchair event changed me. It changed me forever. I made a hard decision on that day that if I was going to get my life back it was me who would need to make that happen. I believe that folks have helped me and I love them for it, but the next morning I drew a mental line in the sand and my goal was to eventually step over that SOB unassisted! Things from that moment changed. The local news ran a follow up story on me and Julius Irving(Dr. J) saw the story while waiting for a flight at our local airport. He cancelled his flight and took a cab up to the hospital I was in to see me. He was very inspirational and I will never forget his kindness. After his visit I will never forget the visit I got from the vocational rehab specialist. After her testing she thought the best job I might be suited for was clerk at a 7/11. Now I think that is a fine vocation, but obviously she was wrong. LOL!
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So I continue doing therapy for weeks. You want to talk about work. Before taking a construction job my father was a farmer. So I grew up on a farm as a little guy and farm work back then instilled a work ethic in you at any age. Its a work ethic I have today. A gift from a time of fond memories. The 80’s hit and we lost the farm. Farm Aide was just a TV concert to us. I continued my therapy and eventually graduated to a much smaller wrist cast. The fingers on my right hand were moving and I was feeding myself. The right hand was working and the tests to document why since according to the “best” doctors it should not were happening regularly. It was during this time I received a gift from a industrial arts teacher at my high school. He had constructed a walker shaped like a horseshoe. It had 4 legs, each with a multi directional roller wheel on the bottom. The therapist would stand me up and the legs of the horseshoe shape would go under my arms. There were two peg handle sticking up on the front to hang on to. They would get my paralyzed hand on one peg and I would do the best I could with my cast hand. My left hip came around first. I would take a step with my right leg while in the horseshoe and then pull or drag the left leg forward. Practice helps and with daily self pressure to push myself I got to where I could swing the left leg through. My left foot would drag, but so what, “ I was doing it.” I had sat around for months being paraded around in front of groups of doctors who asked questions I could not answer, nor did I want to any more, all the time they would compliment me on my wheelchair. Saying, “Looks Great!” To this day I never understand why able bodied people treat handicap people differently. "We do not want your sympathy or your opinions of our limitations. We just want an opportunity.“
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So these really smart doctors said I would never walk again. That the wheelchair was my future, because they just saw the outside. They were unaware of the determined rage and fire that almost limited my ability to sleep. So every day I practiced. Here is something funny. I had gotten to the point where I could walk around the hospital floor I was staying on. I am a talker, always have been, always will be. As a typical 16 year old guy I would talk to the nurses, and they me. It felt like we were flirting. I mean I really thought these girls liked me, so I would follow them around as much as I could. It was not until later in life that I realized they were not flirting with me. These were good people who were just getting me to walk around and exercise. I walk today and I will never forget those people. Those girls will always hold a special place in my heart. I wonder if they ever think of me? I wonder if then they ever could have imagined 26 years later whom I would become. The doctors continued to give opinions on what they felt I was capable of achieving. I continued to progress, but their opinions of where that progress would stop did not. I had a electric wheelchair donated and ready to go. So the day came and the horseshoe lost its purpose. My left arm and hand still hung there but with the promise of outpatient therapy I finally took the unassisted step over that mental line I had drawn in the sand and I was discharged.
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Not sure who ended up getting that wheelchair, but it was not me. I had a brace for my foot to keep in from dropping and having to be drug through as I walked. I swung that left leg through so my walk was super unnatural but I did not care. It could have taken me a year to limp from the front door of the hospital to the car waiting at the curb, but Damn it, I was doing it. I was doing it after the best in the country told me I could not. After my family told me to take it easy, and that it was ok to have limitations. After everyone in my life I had trusted up until that day had listened to those professional opinions and sympathized with their science I took 57 steps they said would never happen. 57 steps. Every time someone looks at me funny as I limp past them I remember those 57 steps and limp right on by them. Every time someone treats me unfairly, or tells me it cannot be done I re walk those 57 steps in my heart and mind and I succeed! Every time I enter a room and everyone looks at me because I limp I smile and limp right on by. I think the hardest thing for me was returning to school and having to walk from class to class. I would not take a pass or leave early or arrive late. When the bell rang I ventured out into the halls with everyone else. It was a lesson every time I had to endure the looks, stares, and comments. 99% of the kids I went to school with were understanding and great. .5% went above and beyond to help me, but there was that .5% that did there best to make sure I felt unworthy. So as I would walk by those folks I would count each step 1 to 57. By the time I reached the 57th step I was past them and they were in my rear view. You can walk right on by other peoples looks, stares, and opinions. They are just advertising the hurt someone in their life has caused them. Be compassionate, but be strong and limp on by! Not everyone can be wealthy or famous, but we can all be great. Greatness is determined by personal action.
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So my story goes on. I ended up having to have that artery replaced, and another in my chest that had an anurism in it. That surgery was supposed to kill me, and I spent the night before it saying my final farewells to those I loved in my life. And still here I am following the plan. I have a beautiful wife I have been married to for 12 years. We have a 9 year old daughter who is a freshman in high school, a 6 year old daughter whom Business Week magazine just called the "youngest senior executive in the United States.” A billion dollar business empire, and enough sense to know that with love and support directed in the appropriate way anything is possible.
Sincerely,
Douglas Vandergraph
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