My Story: a memoir

Chapter I – The Accident

If he makes it until morning, and I will tell you here, there were many times I hoped that prediction would not have come true, he will probably be a vegetable for the rest of his life. But I was glad that one did not come true. That was the news my wife Janet and daughter Kate were told by the doctor who had just operated on my head for the last three hours. And with her were my Uncle Stanley and our good friends, Bruce and Mary Lou. Janet had told Ruth (the ticket taker at the 18 Ave. beach entrance in Belmar, NJ) to tell Bruce and Mary Lou when they arrived on the beach to meet us which hospital we had gone to. Janet had called Bruce before they went to the hospital, and Bruce and Mary Lou drove to the hospital to meet them. Then Bruce drove to Belmar to get my Uncle Stanley who was working on his boat and told him what had happened. They both, naturally, drove to the hospital. Janet later told me that anytime she talked to the doctor on that first day, Stanley was on one side holding one hand and Bruce was on the other side holding the other hand and Mary Lou was with Kate offering comfort.

Now, the doctor told her to go home, that there was nothing they could do there. They had me stabilized, and that would probably keep me alive for a few days. So Janet and Kate left. As they were leaving Janet told me Kate waved goodbye to me because we all used to wave to each other from the house and car whenever anyone left. They went home, Janet called her mother and told her what had happened, and the next day called school to tell them we wouldn’t be in. On Monday, Janet went to the airport before she came to see me to pick up her mother who had left her home in Michigan. She volunteered to come to our home and help Janet take care of Kate and the house while I was in the hospital.

Next Janet drove back to the hospital and met my uncle Stanley. When they talked to the doctor he said I would start to come out of it a little at a time, but no one should come until Wednesday, when they would know more. So on Wednesday my parents, my Aunts Stella, Bert, and Sophie, Uncle Stanley B. and my other Uncle Stanley, cousins John, Stan and Rosanne, Joan and Tom, and our friends Bruce and Marylou, Rich, and Barry and Ellen came to see me, but not as it turned out for the last time.

Now I don’t remember much of this. In fact my memory is going on what Janet has told me about those first few months right after my accident, and the few days before it. From what Janet has told me, I will try to tell you the beginning of my story.

It all began on a cloudy Friday August 26, 1988. I naturally wanted to go to the beach. That's where I wanted to go everyday especially on the weekend. This time Janet and Kate were a little doubtful about it. It was a pretty cloudy day, but fairly warm. But I thought, we had a place to stay, as our good friend Bruce gave us a key to his house in Red Bank and we could stay there anytime. Not only was our favorite Mexican restaurant in New Jersey just a few towns away, Casa Comida, and we all loved going there for dinner. So Janet and Kate gave into me; not because they thought it was a good idea, but because they knew I would act like a spoiled brat and be hell to live with if I didn’t get my way.

In fact, Janet told me I was angry with her about something that must have been an insignificant event around the house. I was always flying off the handle about the smallest trifles and not talking to that person until I got over it. Naturally I felt very sorry for Janet, because of me we might have parted on bad terms. That’s something that will always haunt me.

Now, remember I don’t remember most of this; even many events that took place before my accident are a blank to me; I’m writing from what Janet and Kate have told me.

Even though I wasn’t talking to Janet, I did talk to her about the fact that we needed to stop at Rheos, a nursery that used to be in my former hometown, Wallington, NJ which had moved to central Jersey probably for tax reasons. We wanted to buy some new houseplants; and they had the largest and the freshest selection, so we stopped there before we went to the beach. Now this is one event I do remember. But it is as it were a foggy dream. The rest of the day isn’t in my memory at all. Janet told me we then went to the beach, went to Bruce’s, showered, had dinner at Casa Comida, went back to Bruce’s, watched TV, and went to sleep.

The next day we went to the beach again, went back to Bruce’s, got cleaned up, and went to Casa Comida. After dinner we went to the park across the street so that Kate could ride the swings and play on the slide, which Janet and I did too.

From what Janet and Kate told me, we got to the beach a little before ten that morning of August 28, 1988. Janet and Kate had books to read and I had my New York Times to catch up on.

It was getting close to time for us to leave when I decided to take just one more dip. Isn’t that the way it always is, just one more? The surf was small that day; the waves weren’t large at all. But they had a little strength to them, at least enough for me to body surf. So I body surfed for a while and then began to swim from jetty to jetty until this one small wave hit me and gave me a headache. The headache was so bad it drove me out of the water. When I got back to our blanket I sat down and held my head in my hands and complained of a terrible headache. Then I began to vomit blood. Janet ran to the ticket lady, Ruth, and asked her to call an ambulance. When Janet got back to the blanket, the two people who had been sitting near us were kneeling and looking into my eyes. They just happened to be Belmar EMT’s and after asking questions about my health narrowed it down to brain trauma. Ruth had made the call, and within minutes the ambulance from the Jersey Shore Medical Center was there. Janet said when she and Kate got to the hospital, the ambulance crew told her that they knew I had suffered brain trauma from my symptoms, and they quickly acted to treat it while we were still in the ambulance, a move Janet thought helped save my life, although the crew didn’t put it that way. I was lucky to have a crew that had studied brain trauma. I then had an emergency craniotomy to clean out a left subdural hematoma.

This is when the doctor told Janet I probably wouldn’t live the night. Neither of us is sure why he told Janet I wouldn’t live the night and then told her to go home and call him about when to come back. Now Janet told me I was in a coma for about a week and a half; during my early stay in the hospital Janet was with me as much as she could be. Her mother was a great help in this; she came all the way from Michigan to take care of the house and Kate while Janet spent as much time with me as she could. Janet would come in the morning and stay all day talking to me for the intellectual stimulation I needed to get better.

Ramsey high school where we both worked Janet worked half time. But they were nice enough to put her up to three quarters time so that she could get health benefits. So Janet would go to Red Bank to stay at Bruce's from Friday until Tuesday, so she could be with me. On Tuesday night she would go back up north to work and to be with Kate and her mom. In Ramsey they were very good about giving her time off to stay with me. They let her have as much time as she needed to be with me, as long as she gave them the time back by working past her three-quarter time on some days.

So she sat there talking to me to stimulate my brain. When she couldn’t be there, she would leave a radio on so I could hear someone talking all the time. And she left a tape player with singing on it and with Kate talking on it. She knew I would be better than a vegetable when one day she said something to me and I squeezed her hand in response. The fact that I'm mentally alert today is probably in a large part due to Janet's being there and talking to me for all those days.

Janet later told me that our cat Blackberry acted very strangely after my accident. He'd meow while sitting at my closet door, as if he wanted to go in, which is exactly what he wanted to do. He'd go into the closet and she said he would sit on my shoes and go to sleep. We guessed he just sensed something was wrong. He was Kate's cat, but I fed him every morning and cleaned his box so I guess that established a bond between us. Anyway, he seemed to know something was wrong.

When I came out of the coma they kept me there as a patient for about a month before transferring me to JFK/Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey. There I was a patient from October, 1988 until August 15, 1989.

Chapter 2 – The Therapies

I don’t remember the first time I knew where I was or what was happening to me. Some of my first thoughts were strange. I don’t remember if these were dreams or just an overactive imagination. But I thought I was in a huge room with no windows, and the room was full of beds with patients that had all kinds of problems. And the beds were practically on top of each other, they were that close. But I don’t remember actually seeing another person, yet I’m sure the room was full. Then I also imagined Janet and I were eating breakfast together on this small pier above a city street. I don’t remember ever knowing the name of the street or the whereabouts of it. But the breakfast was always the same: farina, toast, and orange juice, which was what I always had for breakfast at the hospital.

I then remembered just being aware of myself and my surroundings one-day. They had me in a diaper and they fed me through a tube in my stomach. One day they tried to give me baby food, which I was able to eat and to keep down. After a couple of days of that they tried solid food, which I was also able to eat and to keep down. But they kept feeding me with the tube. One day I asked the nurse how they expected me to eat and then put up with them pumping food into my stomach. She said I wasn’t eating enough yet. Finally one day this doctor came in and in a very arrogant manner said I was able to eat by myself and in a very haughty way pulled the tube out of my stomach and left it bleeding, until he called in a nurse to put on a band-aid. I have no idea why that doctor was so arrogant with me. It’s not as if it was my idea to keep the tube in me. I was ready to get rid of it weeks before this. There’s just no understanding some people.

Once I was on solid food it’s a lot tastier for me. But I always eat everything with a fork, oh, not cereal or soups or things like that, just solid foods. Because my muscles are so weak my tongue isn’t able to move the food around in my mouth. So I use a fork to move the food around so it all gets properly chewed.

I’m, also, grateful that I soon became aware of life around me and I didn’t go through a period of swearing that most people with brain trauma go through. That would have been tough with Kate around, not to mention anyone else within hearing distance. Also, I was never out of my head; I was always in control of what I was doing and thinking. I never sat there talking to myself or never was out of my mind for anytime. And I was never confused; I always knew who I was and who everyone around me was. I knew where I was, except for those imaginings I spoke about earlier, and why I was there. Hence, I never felt any of the frustration, nor engaged in the verbal and physical abuses that go with them. As for those imaginings I wasn’t out of my head in a deranged way when I had them.

At JFK/Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center my physical therapist, Suzy, always told Janet my brain trauma wasn’t typical. One way it wasn’t typical is that my shortcomings weren’t heightened. One of the doctors told Janet that very often one’s faults become more outstanding after brain trauma also, I could walk tentatively but not roll over in bed. I wonder why that doesn’t work on one’s good qualities too, but it doesn’t.

One problem I did have, though, was the inability to sleep. I guess it was