How was I going to get up and down my stairs? Would I be able to care for my kids? Could I clean my house, or mow the lawn like I always had? I remembered a trip into the desert to gather landscape rocks with my neighbor, and still thought there would be a time when I might do that again.
My family packed up my room; the get well cards, empty vases and every pillow I used during my stay. A nurse told my parents, She paid for them, she might as well keep them. The were flat, dead pillows with a lot of bad memories clinging to them and, soon after I got home, I threw them away.
My husband went through the same How questions I had, but he simply hired a nanny to care for the kids and I until more recovery was evident. Claire, the nanny he hired, was here illegally from England, the relative of one of the agency's employees. We were near Los Angeles so aliens without papers were nothing new to us. Hiring her was safer than the older woman with tuberculosis, our only other option. So I went home, after almost 4 months, and I now had an English Nanny, to boot!
Clair cooked, cleaned and also cared for my kids as I attended outpatient rehab. Overall she was fine, but I was appalled when I learned she taught my children, who still rode in car seats, to raise a hand above the back seat and flip the bird to rude drivers behind the car. It was NOT the way I handled road rage! I think she also played pool in seedy bars on her days off. But I didn't have much to do with her, she was my husband's hire and I was using every ounce of energy is an attempt to navigate a new world with with compromises I wasn't even aware, at that time, I had.
My parents were there for my release from the hospital, and my ex prepared a surprise party at our favorite restaurant. I was not in anyway capable of interacting with a roomful of friends and family, so I was guided to my place at a table and people came to me to congratulate me on 1) my survival 2) my returning home and 3) my perfect, gleaming white smile.
I went to a house across the street from Northridge (my 2nd hospital) for rehab. I spent my days there practicing real life, and continuing therapies I started at Northridge. My husband dropped me off before his work day, and then picked me up to take me home at the day's end. He packed lunches for me that included frozen hamburgers and I relearned how to use a microwave oven. I also had to interact with other patients, as well as the therapists.
Physical therapy sessions also happened at The House, and the equipment included a smallish Universal Gym that I recognized from my high school years. My long term memories were there, it was my short term memory that was shot. There wasn't much I could do on that little, all encompassing gym, though, with 1/2 my body compromised. So I started a tactic, (I have used ever since that moment,) to navigate through life; I figured out how to do things differently, using my compromised body however I could.
When I tried push ups, I could not fully open, and lay my hand flat on the floor as the exercise requires. Even though I wore a brace to keep my bad hand open at night (and remind my brain, HEY! Relax that hand. Therapists continued to encourage me to lay my hand flat but it was virtually impossible. So there I was, struggling to achieve the proper hand position when I noticed a the young man next to me. He was a high school athlete, football quarterback I think, who had suffered a head injury too. Football really is a violent game. And he was also doing push ups.
His athletic brain had made the correct accommodation. One of his hands remained in a fist while he pushed up from the prone position on the floor. They weren't even trying to get him to do it properly, so I thought I'd give it a try. When I was able to achieve the needed position, but was too weak to actually push myself up, I remembered that I hadn't been able to do a push ups in many years!
At the house, I also continued playing the computer game Where in the World is Carmen San Diego for cognition. But when my children were old enough to play that particular game, I had only fleeting memories of the game I had once mastered. Or maybe I hadn't mastered it, and only thought I did. When I played at Northridge no one checked on me, and I don't remember changing levels, or winning for that matter.
I was fortunate that I was able to stay at home for OT (occupational therapy) because my therapist from the hospital lived near me. Not necessarily close, but we both lived in California's high desert, which was quite a distance from Northridge. She agreed to make OT house calls at the end of her work day. Occupational therapy has to do with being productive in your job, but I was a stay at home mom so my job was running the home. A huge part of what I did was caring for the kids and getting them fed so she taught me how to make mac and cheese for their dinner. I hadn't looked at those directions for what seemed like forever, but now I needed to, and I actually had to time the noodles!
She also got me on the floor cleaning tiles in the kitchen because I told her that is how I had done it pre head injury. Let me say for the record, before my TBI I fit in the OCD category of housekeepers. No longer, however. She should have showed me ways to compromise with a Swiffer!!! Oh, those probably weren't around yet.
She was a help, don't get me wrong, but when I look back on those days I think that I would have benefitted for help dealing with my compromised condition. Occasionally I feel like the expectation, regarding my recovery was that it would be complete since they were teaching me to do things the way I had did prior to my accident.
I never did return to that place, physically, or mentally. And I wonder if I didn't work hard enough. But then I tell myself I did my best...and I am happy.
