One evening, I was
awaken in an automobile listening to the wheels turning and
people shouting. I remember thinking what is going on and what
are these people doing around me. All a sudden, I heard a male
voice yelling, Can you move? This question brought a horrific
memory back to me, I remembered that I was in my automobile and
was trapped inside of the automobile. I remember the feeling of
a burning inside of my neck and the sensation of bricks lying on
my chest. The male voice called once more, Can you move? I
answered with a small grown as I tried to shout, but all I could
with every breath was to give a small nerve wrecking moan.
I then woke up in a room with a
female voice talking to someone. I realized she was speaking to
me. The female voice was my mother, who had tears falling down
her cheeks. I recalled asking her, what is wrong? She went on
to tell me that I was drinking and driving and was chasing
someone who came out of our driveway. She went on and told me
that I missed a curve and crashed into an embankment overlooking
a ditch and flew into the air and landed the automobile upside
down. I asked her, what I was doing way out there in the
country, because I could not remember anything. As I asked her
the question, a heard a crackle outside of my hospital window,
the nurses who were at the window explained to me that the
startling noise were the fireworks going off at the St. Louis
Arch. I had my automobile accident early in the morning around
1:30 A. M., July 4th, 1987. I remember the nurses and my
mother explaining to me the sight of sparkling streaks in the
night sky and I could only imagine how beautiful the colors of
the fireworks.
I slowly started to regain my memory
after surgery. I had broken my neck in the cervical area of the
spine between C5 and C6. The doctors had put a plastic bone in
my neck to replace and to fuse the vertebrae’s together. After
surgery, my neck was bolted down with five pounds of weight to
prevent my neck from moving. I had two bolt looking type going
into my head right above my ears into my skull. Yes, I thought
it could not get any worse, but the doctors came to remove the
bolts, just to replace the contraction with another painful
contraction. The doctors put me into what is called a “ Halo”.
The halo had a bar going around my head, hence a halo, with four
screws going into my head about a half inch. The doctors had
driven the screws into my skull and I remembering hearing a
snap. The pain felt like my head was in a vise and left me in
agony. Believe it or not, I became somewhat immune to the pain,
but when I became to minimize the pain, the doctors would come
back in and tighten the screws up tighter. I will save you
anymore details of the pain and the contraction. Let me make
one more point, when the doctors took the halo off, I cried for
them to put it back on, because I was like new born baby with no
control of the neck. I could not hold up my neck. Remember the
saying, you never know what you have until it is gone, well;
mine was the muscles in my neck. After being in contraction for
two months, I had lost all my neck muscles, because with the
contraction, I was not holding up my own neck.
I wanted to describe in details of
this memory, because it is important for several reasons. First
you remember me writing about: I was chasing somebody who was
leaving my driveway? I already made it home! My impaired
judgment let me turn and chase someone who I knew very well. My
family lived on a farm in the country and we have about a half
mile of a gravel lane to the house. We recently had some
gasoline stolen out of the vehicles and this is why I started
chasing this person. Due to the amount of alcohol I consumed,
my judgment and thinking logical was impaired. The person who I
was chasing was a year older then me and his family owned part
of the land surrounding the lane to our house. He was out there
parking with a date. If I was sober and using sound judgment, I
would have realized this error of judgment. I was home! I
could have been inside sleeping, but no, I had no logical
reasoning and thinking. Why? I had been drinking from the time
I clocked off work, so I had an average of one to two cases of
beer in my system.
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The alcohol brings me to my next
point, which is drinking and driving. I will not give a lecture
on this subject, but it is related to my injury that left me a
quadriplegic. Quadriplegic is most commonly known as paralyzed
from the neck down. The word quad means four, so I was affected
in my four limbs. I did regain some movement back in my legs
and fingers, so many people who first look at me in the
wheelchair think of another disability. Most of the time, I am
compared to a paraplegic, who is paralyzed from the waist down.
So a person can never judge a person by the looks or never judge
a book by its cover. I can only think about, what if I did not
turn around to chase someone? That night there were too many
what ifs. What if the person whom I was drinking with, for his
birthday, the brother did not lock me outside of his house?
Before I took off in my soon to be death trap, I was supposed to
stay with him. What if, I found my sister which I was looking
for to arrange a birthday party at her house. At the same time,
she was looking for me to stay at her house while she went
camping for the weekend. We missed each other by minutes. Too
many what ifs that night, but I learned the disability was a
destiny for me.
The biography of a memory is the
thoughts I have shared with you. Of course, there are many
other memories of that night, but I picked this memory to be a
short biography of myself. I wanted to instill that what if
cannot be a reality and we cannot live in the past. The present
and the future is the reality that every individual needs for
each dream and the fulfillment of our inmost being to shape our
way of thinking and behavior. As a person living with a
disability for twenty years, I have seen and lived almost
everything imaginable. I have been through kidney failure and
many affects that stem from my disability.
I have been asked the question many
times: if you could do everything all over again would you?
No, of course not! I would not be where I am today without my
disability, because I would probably still be doing drugs and
alcohol in a dark alley or in and out of drug therapy. I am not
a rich person, as far as material things, but I live a rich
filled life with four sons, a daughter, and a wonderful unique
wife. The reason I say unique is because I believe it takes a
unique person not just to love a person with a disability, but
to stay with the person. The disability not only affects the
person whom has the disability but everyone around him or her.
Disability does not discriminate on the basis on race, sex, age,
or any other characteristics of a person. Remember, I was
sixteen, so I believe I was blessed to have the opportunity to
walk. Many people do not have the same opportunity because of a
birth defect or some other factor that can lead to a
disability.
In conclusion, I would like to leave
every reader with a few thoughts. No matter if a person has a
disability or not, there is always somebody worse off down the
hall, the house next to you, or a family member. My father had
the same disability that I have but he eventually started to
walk with a small limp. My father lived what I went through the
first years of being disabled. He was my rock! When I needed
advice either from depression or someone to lean on, I could
always count on him. He died of lung cancer four years ago on
June 20th. His words still ring in my ear whenever I was down
because of my disability. He always told me, “It is mind over
matter, if you don’t mind, then it does not matter.”
DAD on
WHEELS
Leslie Johnson
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