Lessons in Prayer and Pixie Dust
Today I’m sharing
a very personal story. I hope you don’t mind.
16 years ago my
husband had an accident. He was electrocuted. The how is not as important as
the fact it was bad. He took 277 volts, triple faze. The insulated dykes he was
cutting wire with blew up and pieces imbedded themselves a ½ inch into the
cement ceiling above his head. He crawled down the ladder he was on and told
everybody near that he had electrocuted and that his wife (me) was going to KILL
him for touching electricity! I had told him if he was visiting his brother and
his brother asked him to do anything to help him stay away from electricity! After
saying that he went into full arrest (no heartbeat no breathing) and CPR was
started by people that were there that just happened to know how to do it. 911
was called and paramedics showed up within 5 minutes of him going into arrest and
they continued CPR until he got to the hospital. He was at the ER within 15
minutes of the accident. CPR was continued at the hospital for another 30
minutes before they got his heart going again! That is a total of 45 minutes of
CPR!!
Normally after 10
minutes of CPR there is major brain damage and in fact little hope of saving
the person’s life. If a person survives they are usually vegetables. My husband
was showing all the signs of being brain dead. For 36 hours after the accident he
was in a coma and unresponsive to commands. He was responding to his ventilator
and the ventilators of the other patients in the ICU. You see, he is a
respiratory therapist and maintains ventilators (life support machines) on
patients. Whenever someone’s ventilator alarm went off he would get agitated
and fight. He would kick and thrash around. Several times kicked nurses who
were caring for him. The doctors had two choices. Keep him on the machine and
give him more sedatives or take him off and let him die. Really there was not a
choice as giving him ore sedatives would have killed him. Could not leave him
on the vent as he was because he would hurt himself and the staff. They said
the best I could hope for when they took him off was him being a vegetable in a
nursing home for the rest of his life. I chose to let the doctors take him off
of the ventilator and all other life support and place him in the loving hands
of God.
Within an hour of
him being taken off of life support he was sitting up . . . in a chair talking
to his nurses!! His memory was shaky and he was nervous but he was ALIVE! His
voice sounded like a 4 year olds but his words were his normal highly intelligent
adult vocabulary. He remembered me and our daughter, who was 3 at the time. He
remembered most family members and some friends, it was obvious his memories
were there but he did not “know” the way to get to them in his brain. He also
remembered his very complex medical history. He knew what meds he is on and the
dosage he took.
The paths to his
memories were destroyed but not the memories themselves. Once the “door” to the
closet holding a memory was opened he could slowly bring it out. I chose to
help him rebuild the paths to his memories. I came in with photos and even
receipts I’d saved and started talking about vacations, special occasions and fun
days we had during our, then 18 years of marriage. I told stories of friends
and family. I started talking about what I knew of his childhood and asking him
questions giving him time to think and chase down the various trails in his
mind to find the correct memory. One of the things we spoke about often were
the various days we spent at Disneyland and how those had bonded us together. Disney
came up more often than any other topic!
After a few hours
of hubby repeating the same questions over and over I wrote them down along
with the answers. I gave him the note pad and when he would ask, “Was I electrocuted?”
I would answer, “Number 1.” (Yes, you were electrocuted at your brother’s
worksite.) There were about 10 questions he kept repeating and I made sure all the
information was there and the nurses knew it was there to help him.
A few days after
waking up the doctors wanted to discuss Scott’s future. They said I was on the
right track with helping to rebuild his memories and continue what I was doing.
He had nerve damage that affected the fine motor control in his hands. They
asked if he had any hobbies. I said, “yes, woodworking, furniture building.”
The doctor said, “NO! It’s too dangerous for him to use power tools with the
poor control of his hands.” So I looked for another “hobby” that I knew hubby
wanted to try but never had. He needed something low energy, low cost, low maintenance
(I’d be the one cleaning up after him and our daughter for a while without
help.) and something he could do anyplace. I knew he had always wanted to draw
but felt he never had the ability. He said his stick figures looked like you
asked a 5 year old to draw it with a crayon. I chose to encourage drawing!
I went out and got
the book “Drawing for Dummies”, good colored and black pencils and a high
quality drawing pad. I was excited to give these to hubby and looked forward to
seeing him get excited! Instead of excitement I got a confused look. He was
excited and like the idea but did not have any idea of what to draw!!! When he told
me he could not think of what to draw. I reached in our daughter’s bag of toys
and books that I had brought to keep her busy while visiting daddy and pulled
out several Disney coloring books! He started freehand drawing the characters
he saw in the coloring books. He soon was adding things around the characters.
That was the start of Disney being a major part of his healing process.
The doctors
released him from the hospital 6 days after the accident. ICU nurses that took
care of him the first few days fell off their chairs when he walked into ICU to
thank them and say good bye as he left to go home. He was off work for 30 days
total and maybe he should have taken longer, but he felt he needed to go back
or lose the ability to rebuild the memories of how to do his job. His work gave
him a shadow for a month. This person would go around with him and watch what
he was doing and answer any questions he had. This small assistance made the
world of difference and got him back to work!
Have you ever
gotten a good static charge and then had a strong shock from a doorknob? You
know you would not want Mickey Mouse to hear the first word out of your mouth!
You feel angry and scared when you take a static shock! That is a natural physiological
reaction to an electrical shock! You respond with anger and aggression to
survive! With the amount of power that my husband took that anger, fear and aggression
has never left! That is also normal for someone taking that amount of power. It
is not uncommon for someone who takes that amount of shock to become aggressive
and abusive. I’m blessed because hubby has not become that way! The question is
how does he control it? Prayer and Pixie Dust! A lot of time is spent praying
for strength in our household!
People ask why we
spend so much time at Disneyland. (About 2-3 days a month on average.) It is my
husband’s therapy, the Pixie Dust! We decided, a few months after he got out of
the hospital and was finally feeling strong enough, to go to Disneyland for a
day. Our daughter needed a day of family fun and positive relaxation and so did
we! We found that he relaxed in ways at Disneyland that was different and
deeper than when he was anyplace else for a day trip! The happiness he found
there lasted longer than anything else! He had to slow down. He followed what
the sign said as you enter Disneyland from the entrance plaza.
Going under the
train there is a sign that says, “Here you leave Today and enter the world of
Yesterday, Tomorrow and Fantasy”. Going through that tunnel you leave all the
problems and worries of today behind and remember the joys of yesterday, look
forward to the hope of tomorrow and choose to relax and accept the fantasy that
is Disneyland. This is medicine to his soul!
Disneyland is
where we spent time rebuilding his memories of past trips with family and
friends. We relax in the lines talking about past trips to Disneyland and other
places. At Disneyland we sit and make plans for the future and have dreams that
seem too big to happen and some are but they are fun. It does not matter! Blue
Sky dreaming is a good thing! Going to Disneyland helps him put things in
perspective and put the stress, anger and frustrations in place.
So when people ask,
“Why Disney?” We say, “Why NOT Disney? It is a healing place that brings joy
and peace to our family!” Not only did my hubby have to learn to cope with his
accident so did my daughter and I. We had to learn to understand when he gets
nervous. We learned to see his anger building and encourage him to deal with
it. We had to discover ways to help him remember things. To this day he still
has short term memory issues. This is why I am a Disney Travel Agent helping
those with special needs see they can enjoy Disney. This is why I blog about
Disney.
