The "Tao" is often described as a path, or way, to clarity. There are those who need guidance to move forward; and there are those who know the way in their bones. The latter seem to possess an uncluttered vision and intensity of commitment that light the way for others, as well as themselves.
- Unknown
I've mentioned my accident here in passing, but have yet to go into details. Today just happens to be the eighth anniversary.
Eight years later I still dream about my accident and in my dreams, it is all still very real. I can feel the wind in my face as we gallop, feel the rhythmic pounding of Angel's hooves, feel her pull on the reins silently asking to be let loose. I can hear her deep breaths and be lost in that world I so dearly love. Then it happens. I feel Angel stumbling. Over and over and over. I try and stay still, stay out of her way and let her find her footing. I feel myself flying through the air, and then the impact. The bone jarring impact that grips my heart with fear. I wake up with a start. Drenched in a cold sweat with my heart pounding in my chest.
July 26, 2003, Saturday, 7:30PM.
What I did was stupid, I shouldn't have done it and it was completely my fault. I wanted to let Angel out and gallop her a little bit. She had been cranky during our ride and I knew running full out was what she wanted. I knew when we reached the end of the straightway she veers sharply to the left, this is because the next field is so over-grown with undergrowth. We started out smoothly, within two strides Angel was in stride and moving comfortably, almost without effort. When we reached the end, she veered and I tighten up on the right rein and stepped into my right stirrup. I wanted to keep her straight, or as much as possible. In my mind, she was going too fast for that sharp of a turn and for sure she'd lose her footing and go down with me. She obeyed the rein and went into the field, where she took this huge step and stumbled to her knees. I lost my balance and let go of my right rein to steady myself. Angel kept stumbling and I kept waiting for the impact of her flipping over and possibly killing us both. I don't know how she did it, as if it was by magic, she regained her footing and then veered at what seemed like a 90ยบ angle. It all happened so fast, her change in direction, and my clinging to the rein for balance. I was slipping and knew I faced a good chance of coming off. But in the back of my mind, I thought I could still save myself. Then it happened. The pressure on her mouth from the bit and my hanging on, Angel did probably the only thing possible - she flung her head to the left. It was like a bungee action or a snapping of a rubber band. She continued left and I flew to the right. I remember being so close to her thundering hooves and knowing there was a great chance I was going to be trampled under them. We were going so fast. My arms stretched out in front of me, my legs stretched out behind me; rendering it impossible to bring them back to my body for protection. With this knowledge in front of me, I knew I wasn't going to be able to go into a ball and roll with the impact. I also knew that at the speed and angle that I was at, I was going to break my neck and get killed. I didn't have a helmet on and landed face first going through the weeds. The only thing that I could think of to still save myself was to duck my left shoulder and throw myself into a ball. If I could do that, the worse that would happen would be a dislocated shoulder or a broken collar-bone. But I did it wrong, or maybe it didn't matter. When I hit the ground, I got whipped around and stopped. Just stopped.
The next thing that I remember was looking up into the clear blue sky with big fluffy white clouds. That's a good sign, I thought. But I knew something was wrong when I couldn't move and couldn't yell for help. I was behind a cornfield and no one saw me fall. My first sensation was nothing. I couldn't feel a single thing below my shoulders. Before panic could set in, pain started to fill my senses. I slowly moved my fingers, hands, neck, took a deep breath...and then nothing. I felt everything fine above the waist, it was below that was the problem. Before I could stop myself, panic did set in and I thought for sure I was paralyzed. Then ever so slow, an incredible pain started to filter its self in. As I took in my surroundings, I found myself surrounded by thick weeds and underbrush. And to add insult to injury, I stopped in a poison ivy bush. But Angel was no where to be seen. I had always wondered if Angel would stick around if I came off, now I knew. I was wrong. In actuality, Angel ran to the closest house, our neighbors, into their garage and when they went to grab her, she took off heading back towards me before going home on her own and into her stall. (Later a nurse was kind of enough to tell me that she thought Angel was trying to get me help my going to the neighbors first, years later I believe it.) My brother found me first and I told them to call 911. It seemed like ages before the ambulance got there. Then it was pure torture, them trying to move me into the ambulance and getting me to the hospital. They couldn't physically pick me up, so they had to slid a sheet under me and move me on to the stretcher that way.
My x-rays showed that I had broken my femur, at the point of the break my femur had shattered and both broken ends split down the middle, re-broke and came through the skin. When it came down to it, my femur was broken in four spots and I had a dislocated hip. I was in need of emergency surgery if my leg was to be saved. The orthopedic doctor at the county hospital was on call and wasn't returning the page, so around 1:30 a call was placed to Med Corp to transfer me to a level 1 trauma hospital that had the staff and specialist I would need. It was around 2:30am by the time Med Corp picked me up for the transfer and another hour before I got to the other hospital, where I was admitted through the ER. Seven hours had now passed.
Since I had been on so much morphine, the ER couldn't give me anything else but needed to stabilize me and more importantly my leg. I was given a local to numb me and with me being fully awake they drilled a hole through my tibia (right below the knee) to place a pin for traction. I was told prior that I wouldn't remember anything, that's half true. I don't remember the pain, but I'll never forget the sound of drill and breaking bone. I also don't remember screaming bloody murder, but I'm told that I did. From there on out, till after my surgery, everything is very blurry. I slept pretty much all the time and anything that did happen seems like a surreal dream now. I do remember being in prep for surgery and seeing my parents and brother there. During the surgery, 19 hours after my accident, they placed a titanium rod with two screws attached to my leg and a pin in my hip. Instead of stitches, I received 30 staples.
That Monday I started physical therapy, they wanted to get me up and walking around. My breathing was so hard, and it was during surgery, that they found that I couldn't be off oxygen.
I remember Tuesday being all round rough. I was told just how sick I was and that without enough oxygen, I could have permanent damage done to my brain and heart. They feared that my lungs where severely damaged and failing on me. Another x-ray of my chest was ordered. It was hell. My temperature rose to 103.5 and my blood pressure dropped to 93 over 60.
Wednesday they got the results of my x-ray and said that nothing was showing up. Back to physical therapy I went. That night though, they decided that since I wasn't getting better, that a blood transfusion might be best for me. Since my leg was broken for so long, they feared that some bone marrow had gotten into my bloodstream and was causing all the damage. The transfusion started at 5pm and ended at midnight. It was after the transfusion that I finally broke down and cried. It was the first time that I had cried during this whole ordeal. Gail, my 3rd shift nurse, encouraged me to cry, she said that it would probably make me feel better getting it out. It didn't make me feel any better.
Thursday my main doctor came in and told me that I could go home. I was happy and scared at them same time. I was discharged with enough drugs to make a hungry lion content.
In the beginning, I couldn't walk, not even on crutches. I got around with my wheelchair or walker. Two weeks after my accident, my staples were removed. That was horrible, it was like someone was performing hair removal with tweezers.
You truly don't realize how lucky you are that you can do something till it's ripped out of your hands. Nor do you realize how precious life is till you almost lose it. I know that I was very lucky, my first thought was I'm gonna get killed and then it was I'm gonna be paralyzed - all because of the angle and speed I fell at, the doctors figured I hit the ground going 30 -35 mph. We were almost full out, Angel was 16.2hh and weighed over 1200-lbs. So many things could have gone wrong. Angel could have stumbled and flipped right over landing on top of me, she could have lost her balance and fell when I fell and rolled over on me, my foot could have slipped in the stirrup and I couldn't have been drugged, etc, etc. There is so much and believe me I was truly scared whenever I thought about it, which was all the time.
I was also so embarrassed that this happened. Even I would like to think that I'm a better rider than this and would have stayed on, much less had enough common sense to not have done this. Angel probably knew about the undergrowth and that's why she veered, but I didn't listen and made her go into the field. Embarrassment turned into fear, scared that I wouldn't ride again and what kind of rider I would be.
After my accident I threw myself into school. I had four weeks to get from a wheelchair to crutches so that I could go back to school. Not to mention being able to get in and out of a vehicle that I could drive. More than two months after my accident, I re-broke my leg. It really sent me into a deep depression. It was such a set back, that mentally I didn't think I could handle it. There were days that my biggest challenge was getting out of bed. I didn't want to. I really just wanted to give up.
Of course you don't give up. You find the strength inside of yourself to pull through. Even though I was told I couldn't ride for a year, I was back on a horse (Sancho) exactly five weeks after my accident. My Dad had taken his saddle and one of my saddles down to the basement, knowing full well I couldn't get up and down stairs. My new saddle, he took the stirrups off and hung them up in the barn while placing the saddle in my closet. He obviously didn't know who he was messing with, a girl on a mission who needed to heal the only way she knew how: on the back of a horse.
I had convinced my Dad that I could lunge Sancho and asked for his jaquima, a Colombian headstall with reins, a bit holder and pisador (known as a life-line, can be used to tie the horse, lead or lunge), I had everything I needed to lunge Sancho, and ride him, albeit bareback. My Dad and brother, who was visiting that day, watched me for a short time and then went back to their work. Our pasture is in the shape of an upside down 'L' with the barn in front. I led Sancho to the back, tied him to the fence post and shimmed between the electric wires. I then rolled three cinder blocks under the fence and shimmed back. I stacked two cinder blocks on top of each other and used the other as a first step. It must have taken me, what felt like 20 minutes, to gather enough courage to get on and Sancho wasn't happy. He's only 13.2 hh and wasn't use to a 'mounting block', so he had started to dance around. I knew it was now or never, so I threw myself across Sancho's back. Who took that exact moment to bolt forward. I somehow managed to straighten myself and was faced with the an unimaginable pain; my broken leg was dangling against Sancho's side.
My brother was outside in the barn driveway working on his 1987 Monte Carlo, he didn't even look up as I rode by, just said, "You are going to get it..." Another trip earned me my Mother running out of the house, yelling, "You get off that horse right this minute!!!" Which got my Dad's attention inside the barn.
Let me just say, it was much easier to get on than it was to get off.
I didn't ride Angel for years. I couldn't breathe once I got on and would hold my breath during moments of stress. However, I knew I wasn't afraid to ride, I rode Sancho all the time, but it wasn't the same. I can't pin point when I lost the intense passion I had for horses and riding that I had growing up. It was before my accident, I know that much. There were days that I looked out the window into my pasture and saw Angel and Sancho grazing. I was longing to be the rider I once was, the girl that could ride any horse, who wouldn't bat an eye at a large jump, and thrived on the deafening sound from the crowd after a flawless ride. I didn't know what happened to her; was she asleep inside me, had she died, did I kill her off?
But then along came Dino, and slowly but surely I feel her reemerging.
Angel and I before the accident.
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