Joni Read online

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me…

  I fought back the tears and tried to think of other things. I wonder if Kathy called mom and dad. I wonder if Dick knows yet.

  A man in dark tweed slacks and a white lab coat pulled the curtains and stepped into the cubicle.

  “I’m Dr. Sherrill,” he said pleasantly while flipping through pages on a clipboard. “And your name is Joanie?”

  “It’s pronounced Johnny. I’m named after my father.” Must I go through this explanation with everyone?

  “Okay, Joni, let’s see what’s happened to you.”

  “Dr. Sherrill, when can I go home?”

  “Tell me, do you feel this?” He had a long pin and was apparently pricking my feet and legs.

  “N-no—I can’t feel that.”

  “How about this?”

  Gritting my teeth, I shut my eyes to concentrate, hoping to feel something—anything.

  “Nothing.”

  He was holding my arm and pressing the pin against my limp fingers, wrist, and forearm. Why can’t I feel anything? He touched the upper arm. Finally I felt a small sting in my shoulder.

  “Yes, I feel that. I had feeling there at the beach.”

  Dr. Sherrill took out his pen and began to write on the clipboard.

  Other medical staff people began to appear. Amidst the clatter and clutter of tubes, bottles, and trays, I heard Dr. Sherrill ask another doctor to come over. He went through the pin routine with the other doctor, and the two of them conferred in subdued voices near the head of my table. The language of medical terms and jargon was unfamiliar to me.

  “Looks like a fracture-dislocation.”

  “Uh-huh. I’d say at the fourth and fifth cervical level judging from her areas of feeling.”

  “We’ll need to get to it. X-rays won’t tell if there’s continuity or not.”

  “Shall I order O-Rprepped?”

  “Yes. Stat. And try again to reach her parents.”

  Dr. Sherrill’s associate left quickly, followed by one of the nurses. Dr. Sherrill whispered instructions to the brusque nurse who had destroyed my swimsuit, and she left too.

  I watched someone wipe my arm with a cotton ball and stick a needle into the vein. I felt nothing.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Sherrill holding a pair of electric hair clippers. There was a loud click and buzzing sound as they were turned on. What on earth are those for? I wondered. With growing terror, I realized they were moving toward my head.

  “No,” I cried. “Please! Not my hair! Please,” I sobbed. I felt the clippers sliding across my scalp and saw chunks of damp blond hair fall beside my head and onto the floor. An attendant was preparing a soapy lather. She picked up a razor and walked toward me. She’s going to shave my head! Oh, dear God, no! Don’t let them!

  The room began to spin. My stomach churned, and I felt faint.

  Then I heard a high-pitched noise, something between a buzz and a squeal. It’s a drill! Someone held my head, and the drill began grinding into the side of my skull.

  I began to feel drowsy—probably the shot they gave me. I was falling asleep. More panic. What if I don’t wake up? Won’t I ever see Dick again? Kathy? Mom and dad? Oh, God, I’m afraid!

  I saw faces. I heard voices. But nothing made sense. The room began to grow dark and the noise faded.

  For the first time since the dive I felt relaxed, even peaceful. It no longer mattered that I was paralyzed, lying naked on a table with a shaved head. The drill no longer seemed threatening either. I drifted into a deep sleep.

  Coming out of the blackness, I thought I heard the drill and tried to wake up enough to shout at them to stop. I didn’t want them drilling when I was awake. But no words came. I tried to open my eyes. The room was spinning.

  The noise in the background became more distinct too. It wasn’t the drill; it was only an air conditioner.

  My head and vision began to clear, and for a moment I couldn’t remember where I was or why I was afraid of a drill. Then memory returned.

  I looked up at a ventilator grill above my head, at the high, ancient, cracked plaster ceiling. I tried to turn my head to see the rest of my surroundings, but I couldn’t move at all. Sharp pains on each side of my head resisted my attempt to move. I sensed that the holes they had drilled in my skull had something to do with this. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see large metal tongs attached to a spring-cable device pulling my head away from the rest of my body. It took an unusual amount of strength—both mental and physical—just to learn this much about my new surroundings.

  During those first days I drifted in and out of consciousness. The drugs sent me off into a dream world, a nightmare devoid of reality. Hallucinations were common and often frightening. Dreams, impressions, and memories blurred together in confusion so that I often thought I was losing my mind.

  A recurring nightmare came to me out of the surrealistic world induced by the drugs. In this dream, I was with Jason Leverton, my steady all through high school. We were in some unusual setting waiting to be judged. I was naked and tried to cover myself in shame. In the nightmare, I was on my feet, standing before a figure dressed in robes. I knew him as an “apostle.” He didn’t say anything, but I knew somehow that I was being judged. Suddenly he pulled out a long sword and swung it in my direction, striking me square on the neck and cutting off my head. Then I’d wake up crying and afraid. This same dream haunted me again and again.

  Other hallucinogenic experiences from the drugs turned even the crazy world of dreams inside out. Vivid colors, shapes, and figures swelled and contracted into strange and unusual patterns. I saw “frightening” colors, “peaceful” patterns—shapes and colors that represented feelings, moods, and emotions.

  Someone’s loud moaning woke me from my nightmare. I didn’t know how much time had elapsed since my last period of consciousness, but this time I was facedown! How had I gotten in that position? The tongs were still in place. Their pressure against the sides of my head caused more mental and psychological pain than physical discomfort.

  I discovered I was encased in some kind of a canvas frame. There was an opening for my face, and I could see only an area immediately beneath my bed. A pair of legs with white shoes and nylon hose stood within this narrow field of vision.

  “Nurse,” I called out weakly.

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “W-hat—where—uh—” I stammered, trying to phrase my question.

  “Sh-h-h. Don’t try to talk. You’ll tire yourself,” she said. From her pleasant voice and reassuring manner, I knew she wasn’t the nurse who had cut off my bathing suit or the one who had shaved my head. I felt her hand on the back of my shoulder.

  “Just try and rest. Go back to sleep if you can. You’re in ICU. You’ve had surgery, and we’ll take good care of you. So, don’t worry. Okay?” She patted my shoulder. It was such a pleasant sensation to have feeling somewhere—except in my head, where the tongs bit into the flesh and bone.

  Gradually I became aware of my surroundings. I learned that the device I called a bed was really a Stryker frame. It looked like I was in a canvas sandwich held tightly by straps. Two nurses or orderlies would come every two hours to turn me over. They’d place a canvas frame on top of me, and while a nurse held the weights attached to the “ice tong” calipers (and my head), they would deftly flip me 180 degrees. Then they would remove the frame I had been lying on and make sure I was ready for my two-hour shift in this new position. I had two views—the floor and the ceiling.

  Eventually I learned that my Stryker frame was in an eightbed ICU ward and that ICU was short for intensive care unit. I’d never heard the phrase used before but figured out it must be for serious cases. Patients were only allowed visitors for five minutes per hour—and then just by family members.

  As the hours blurred into days, I got to know my roommates better. Through snatches of conversation, ins
tructions of doctors, and other sounds, I pieced together quite a bit.

  The man in a bed next to mine groaned constantly. On the change of nurses for the morning shift, I heard a night nurse explain to her replacement in a whisper, “He shot his wife and then tried to kill himself. He probably won’t make it. He’s to be restrained.”

  That explained the sound of chains rattling—he had been handcuffed to his bed!

  A woman in one of the other beds moaned through the night. She was begging the nurses to give her a cigarette or ice cream.

  Judy was a young girl like myself. But she was in a coma as the result of injuries sustained in a car accident.

  Tom was a young man who was there because of a diving accident. It’s funny. I knew Tom had broken his neck but didn’t understand that I had. No one told me.

  Tom could not even breathe on his own. I learned this when I asked a nurse what a certain sound was. She explained it was Tom’s resuscitation equipment.

  When we learned of the similarity of our accidents, we began to send notes back and forth. “Hi, I’m Tom,” his first note said by way of introduction. Nurses and visitors wrote our notes and were our couriers.

  At night, when the flurry of activity was less intense, I’d hear the moaning and groaning of others in my ICU ward. Then I’d listen for the reassuring sound of Tom’s resuscitation equipment. Since I couldn’t turn to see him, the sound was comforting. I felt a kinship with him and wondered what he looked like. Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll ask for his photo.

  Later that night, the resuscitator stopped. The silence was as loud as an explosion. Panic seized me, and my voice choked as I tried to call out for help. I heard nurses as they rushed to Tom’s bedside.

  “His resuscitator is down! Get a new one, stat!” someone ordered.

  I could hear footsteps running down the tile hallway and the metallic sounds of the oxygen unit being removed. Another person was on the telephone at the nurses’ station calling for emergency help. Within minutes, the room, hallway, and nurses’ station were busy with urgent, whispered instructions and the confused commotion of crisis.

  “Tom! Can you hear me, Tom?” a doctor called. Then snapped, “Where’s that other resuscitator?”

  “Shall we try artificial respiration, doctor?” asked a woman’s voice.

  My mind was spinning with the frustrations of my paralysis. I was helpless—and even if I could move, there was nothing I could do. Wide-eyed, I lay there staring past the ceiling into darkness.

  “The orderly had to go downstairs for another unit. He’s on his way.”

  “Keep up the mouth-to-mouth. We’ve got to keep him alive until—” the man’s voice broke off.

  I heard the doors of the elevator down the hall open and close and urgent running footsteps along with the rattle of equipment. The sounds were aimed toward the ICU ward and, with a sense of relief, I heard someone say, “I’ve got a unit. You want to make room?”

  Then, with horror, I heard the chilling reply. “Never mind. We’ve lost him. He’s dead.”

  I felt the flesh on the back of my neck crawl. With mounting terror, I realized they were not talking about some unknown patient, some impersonal statistic. They were talking about Tom. Tom was dead!

  I wanted to scream but was unable to. I was afraid of falling asleep that night, afraid that I too would not wake up.

  The next day, my terror was no less intense. I grieved for a man I knew only through notes, and I began to think about my own situation. I was not dependent on a machine in order to breathe. But I was dependent on the IV—intravenous solutions—that put sustenance into my body and the catheter in my bladder that drained body wastes and poisons.

  What if one of these fails’? What if the tongs come loose from my head? What if—my brain was a frightened jumble.

  A day or two later, a man was brought in with a similar injury. They put him on a Stryker frame and put an oxygen tent around him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see what the frame was like. I could not see my own, but could now understand what happened each time they flipped me—two hours up, two hours down. Looking at him, I had the feeling that we were like steers being turned regularly on some huge barbecue spit. I was terrified each time they came to flip me.

  The new patient was just as apprehensive. As the orderlies prepared to flip him one day, he cried out, “No, please don’t flip me. I couldn’t breathe when I was turned before! Don’t flip me!”

  “That’s all right, mister. You’ll be okay. We have to turn you. Doctor’s orders. Ready, Mike? On three. One. Two. Three!”

  “No! Please! I can’t breathe! I’ll pass out—I know it!”

  “You’ll be fine. Just relax.”

  They fixed the plastic tent for his oxygen and left. I could hear the man’s labored, gasping breathing and prayed the two hours would pass quickly—for his sake as well as my own peace of mind.

  Then, suddenly, the breathing stopped. Again there was commotion and activity as nurses and orderlies responded to the crisis. It was too late. Again.

  Hot tears flowed from my eyes. Frustration and fear, my twin companions during those early hospital days, overtook me again. With a growing sense of horror and shock, I learned that the ICU ward was a room for the dying. I felt my own life was a fragile thing—not something I could take for granted.

  Shortly thereafter, during one of the flipping sessions, I fainted and stopped breathing. But within minutes they had revived me, and I felt reassured by their efficiency and deep concern.

  “We’re going to take good care of you, Joni,” comforted one doctor. After that, while every turn was still a frightening experience for me, I was conscious of the fact that the nurses and orderlies were more careful than before. Or so it seemed.

  I began to notice how cold the ICU ward was. Nearly every patient was unconscious most of the time, so they were probably unaware of the coldness, but it began to bother me. I was afraid of catching cold. One of the orderlies had let it slip one day that a cold could be dangerous for me. Also dangerous was blood poisoning, which was somehow frequent in such cases. There was so much to be frightened about. Nothing seemed positive or hopeful.

  Everyday doctors came to see me. Sometimes they came in pairs and discussed my case.

  “She has total quadriplegia,” one doctor explained to an associate, “the result of a diagonal fracture between the fourth and fifth cervical levels.”

  I knew I was paralyzed but didn’t know why. Or for how long. No one ever explained anything to me about my injury.

  Nurses said, “Ask the doctors.”

  Doctors said, “Oh, you’re doing fine—just fine.”

  I suspected the worst—that I had a broken neck. That thought alone frightened me. A vivid childhood memory came to me. It was the only “real” instance I knew of anyone breaking his neck. A man in the story Black Beauty fell from a horse and broke his neck. He died.

  So, inwardly, I didn’t want to hear about my accident, and mentally I began to tune out the medical staff’s discussions.

  I knew that I was in a room of dying people because I was going to die, just like Tom and the other man. They both had had injuries like mine. I’m going to die too, I thought. They’re just afraid to tell me!

  CHAPTER 2

  The days passed, marked only by recurring nightmares and the strain and discomfort of my canvas prison and metal tongs. I had finally decided that I probably wasn’t going to die. While others in the ICU ward either died or got better and were transferred to regular hospital rooms, I stayed. I got no better, but no worse.

  To take my mind off the anguish of the nightmares, from which I woke terrified and drenched with perspiration, I began to daydream, recalling all the events in my life before the accident.

  I had had a happy life with my family and friends. We had never known tragedy firsthand. As far back as I could remember, there had been nothing but happiness surrounding our lives and home.

  Daddy was
probably the reason—the man I was named for, Johnny Eareckson. Born in 1900, dad took the best of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is an incurable romantic and creative artist but is also in tune with technology. His father had a coal (fuel) business, and during his childhood, dad cared for the horses before and after school. He drew much knowledge from what he calls the “school of hard knocks” too. He had been attracted to unusual and difficult work because of what he felt it could teach him. His values are personal character, individual happiness, and spiritual development. If a man has these and can pass these qualities on to his children, only then does dad consider him successful.

  Dad had done almost everything—from being a sailor to owning and managing his own rodeo! His life was filled with hobbies—horses, sculpture, painting, and building things—his handiwork literally covering the walls and shelves of our home.

  I asked dad once, “How do you find time, with your work, to do all the things you do?”

  He looked at me, his clear blue eyes sparkling, and replied, “Honey, it began during the Depression. Nobody had work. Most people sat around and felt sorry about themselves and complained. Me? Why, I could use my hands. Carving didn’t cost anything. So, I built things from stuff others threw away. I kept busy with my hands all through the Depression. Guess the habit stuck.”

  It was also during those lean years that dad was an Olympic wrestler. He was National AAU Wrestling Champion, a five-time winner of national YMCA championship wrestling honors, and earned a berth on the U.S. Olympic team of 1932. During his days as a wrestler, he received an injury that makes him walk with a slight limp today.

  As a young man, he was active in church youth work. In his twenties and early thirties, dad was “Cap’n John” to the church young people. He took the kids camping, on overnight trips, hiking, and on retreats. He had an old flatbed truck and would pile kids, sleeping bags, cookstove, and supplies on board and leave for one of “Cap’n John’s Tours.” They were memorable times and often made an impression on many of the young people. One young woman was especially impressed by “Cap’n John.” She was the energetic and vivacious Margaret “Lindy” Landwehr, who took a natural interest in athletics and the outdoors and thus gained the attention of “Cap’n John.”