On September 17, 2017, my life was changed forever...
I had traveled to Dewey Beach, Delaware with some friends to participate in a triathalon and the morning after I was hit by a drunk driver. Right before heading home, I had walked over to a nearby store to buy water and as I was waiting on the sidewalk to cross the street, a drunk driver drove over the sidewalk and hit me from behind. I was left with c1/c2 incomplete spinal cord injury.
My family and friends found me at Christiana Hospital while I was in a coma and I stayed in that state for 20 hours. Once I woke up, before even going into surgery, one of the nurses told my parents that even if I made it through the surgery, my injury was so bad that my life wouldn’t be worth living – she said that for my whole life I would be paralyzed from my chin down, and wouldn’t be able to move or feel a thing, I would always need a ventilator and oxygen tank to breathe, would always need a feeding tube, barely be able to talk and probably would have to just stay in bed all day. Well… for the first few months she was correct. While at Magee Rehab I was all that plus constantly had really high fevers, had pnemonea a few times, coudnt control my body temperature, my breathing often got blocked even being on the vent and doctors said that I had brain damage. Then three months after the accident, when I was getting a little better, I got a surgery to implant a pacer which resulted in much worse conditions. The pacer was placed correctly, but during the surgery my feeding tube was misplaced and gave me a terrible infection which almost ended my life. I was held in the hospital for over a month and during that time my kidneys almost failed, I was on all types of antibiotics which made me lose my hearing, most of my hair fell out and I lost my memory for that whole month (which is probably a good thing). The first few months seemed impossible and caused everyone so much pain. But even though all this happened, that nurse had no right in telling my parents that I would be in this condition my whole life.now.