When I look back on the way that God has worked in my life I really shouldn’t be surprised at all that He has brought me through. He is, after all, all knowing.
In high school, I was Christian that trusted in God with my life. I knew God was going to take care of me no matter what. I just didn’t realize it would come with consequences if I didn’t do what He commanded me to do. I assumed I could do anything and Jesus would always take care of me. That couldn’t have been more evident than through my decision to skydive for my senior seminar class project in high school. Before I graduated high school, I completed 20 jumps. However, after high school, I had no idea of what I wanted to be in life, so I went to college because all my friends were going. Since I had no idea of what I wanted to do nor had a goal, I didn’t really try and my grades were the lowest they had ever been. After two quarters at OSU I dropped out and hung out with friends.
Pretty soon, however, my carefree, “that won’t happen to me” attitude took a turn for the worse. I began drinking and soon the habit began to spin out of control. I had heard of bad things happening to people that lived this life style, but I just it would never happen to me because God had taken care of me my whole life. I was getting drunk more than four times a week. Although this sort of behavior might be considered typical for your average college student, I knew better and should have listen to the Lord. Then, the event happened that would change the rest of my life.
When I stepped into the car that night, I didn’t knowingly make the decision to drive drunk. My blood alcohol level was 0.22 – almost three times over the legal limit. I’m sure I was so intoxicated that the rationale “I shouldn’t drive” never crossed my mind.
I have no recollection of how things played out, but this is what they told me: I drove more than 20 miles to my friend’s house to drop a girl off. Once I dropped her off, my friend told me we had made some plans to go play Halo at my place. I was almost home (less then two miles away) on the next street over from my friend’s house, I ran into a tree. I’m told my car must have spun and done a 180 when I hit the tree. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and flew into the back seat. If I had hit that tree head-on, it would have thrown me through the windshield, most likely to my death. If that doesn't scream to you that the Lord was present, sadly, I don't know what will.
God continued to have His hand in the situation that unfolded. I didn’t leave the scene without scars. In fact, I was in a coma for 40 days and woke up with no recollection of the accident. When I woke up, I knew something had to be wrong just by the way my parents were acting. I don’t remember thinking, “Why am I not in my room?” or “Why are my parents in my room?” What put up the red flag in my mind was the way they were acting. I asked my mother what was problem. She told me everything and I did not believe her one bit. I felt like a million bucks, of course that is probably because I was filled with pain medication. I tried to get up and couldn’t move anything on the right side of my body, not because I was paralyzed but because I had suffered traumatic brain damage to the left hemisphere of my brain, which caused my right side to be very weak. These are muscles you use everyday and don’t think about consciously until you’re not able to use them. My heart sank because I knew what she had told me was true. I grew up at that moment of realization.
I engaged in all kinds of therapy, even those I didn’t know existed. I underwent speech therapy where they taught me how to stop drooling on myself and strengthen my mouth muscles for speech. I also did swallow tests to make sure that the things I swallowed went down my throat. I underwent vision tests because I had horrible double vision. My right eye muscles were not strong enough to sync up with my left eye. I still have double vision today at times, three years later, when I’m tired at late at night and on the computer or trying to study for an exam. My vision might not get better, but if that is all I have to deal with from breaking my neck, that’s pretty amazing. I soon had to relearn how to walk again. At that point in time, the road to recovery looked like a long and painful one.
I began my physical and occupational therapy at Villa Angela Care Center, where after each session I was making considerable improvements. My dad said I got better everyday. Next, I moved to Upper Arlington Rehabilitation Center, or Larwell, as they refer to it in the Ohio Health community. This wasn’t my first choice. I would have preferred to finish my rehab at Dodd Hall, but the facility was full. As it turned out, this was all part of God’s plan for my life.
When I got to Larwell, I met Joe Oswell, my second physical therapist. It was the perfect time for God to put Joe in my life. When I went there I felt like I had reached a plateau in my therapy and had a sense of hopelessness in making a full recovery. I thought I was going to be unable to live a normal life because of a mistake I don't even remember making. I did, however, choose to live that lifestyle.
At Villa Angela, I saw a huge improvement everyday and when those improvements slowed down drastically, I thought that I wouldn’t get any better. I stopped putting forth 100 percent into my therapy. I had been working out with Joe for about a week or two when he told me something that changed my thinking towards my recovery.
Right around the same time I had gone to a support group at Dodd Hall for traumatic brain injuries. I got so depressed when I went to it because I remember this one guy there who was still in an electric wheel chair and his accident had happened five years ago, whereas mine had happened only five months prior. I felt horrible for being ungrateful for how far along I had come. I was walking and I was upset that couldn’t straighten my right arm out all the way. I saw how ungrateful I had become.
Joe told me he had suffered a traumatic brain injury like mine 10 years earlier. God used Joe to show me that I could get better and that not all was lost. God already knew the impact this would have in my life. I was able to push through all the pain I was going through physically and can now straighten my right arm fully!
I now know this is what I am to do with my life by passing on the gift of hope that Joe had given me. I’m in school fulfilling my general education requirements and am very pleased to say I got my first 4.0 GPA! I’m also working in the Physical Therapy Department at Riverside Hospital and am continuing my pursuit of my PTA. Throughout all of this, Joe has been a huge source of inspiration. Before I apply for a PTA major, I needed to do 50 hours of observation. I was able to do those 50 hours at Larwell as a tribute to Joe and let him know how he changed my life. Also, I recently found out through a coworker that Joe that got his Doctorate in physical therapy after his TBI, so I know this is possible for me as well!
In retrospect, I can see the many miracles that God worked in my life. Although I made the unconscious decision to drive drunk, God not only spared me from a spinal chord injury after breaking my C2 and C4 vertebrae. He saved me from taking another person’s life and only running into a tree. The police came to my parents and told them that they had thought really hard about how to charge me. They couldn’t take me to jail because I was in a coma with a broken neck, and they didn’t think giving me a DUI would teach me anything. I already had hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay in hospital fees and a DUI would only only has a thousand more to that sum. They told my parents that since no one else had been hurt in the accident that justice had been served and they weren’t going to charge me at all. I personally feel they never thought I was going to drive again or even wake up from my coma.
The true miracle is that God brought me back to Him. God knew exactly what it would take to make me come running back to Him and leave the drinking behind. I now can't get drunk or else I'll have seizures nor do I really feel like it is worth it. I’ve had to do so much work to get to where I am now, life means so much more to me then it did when I thought I was invincible. It's so precious to me. We take so much for granted everyday, and instead of looking at what we don’t have or can’t do, we need to start being grateful for the things that we can do and have. God made me realize that. Furthermore, I realized the choices I make don’t just affect my own life, but that they affect everyone I have ever met and those around me, like you as I tell this story.