Reconstructed

Atta Ahmad

Description

Have you ever seen your life flash before your eyes? Follow one man's journey of positivity and resilience as he reconstructs his life after a near-fatal accident!

Atta Ahmad was determined to make his dreams come true. So unwavering, in fact, that he was willing to forgo sleep just to reach his goals.

Eventually, it caught up to him on September 5, 2015.

That fateful day, an exhilarating road trip from Boston to Michigan turned into a fight for his life when his exhaustion drove him to fall asleep at the wheel.

It all happened in an instant.

One minute, he was blasting music with the windows down, while drinking water and enjoying snacks. The next, he was flying through his truck's windshield and catapulted into a ditch.

A promising and ambitious young man was reduced to a mangled, bloody heap of flesh and bone on the ground. Any other person would have given up and let go. But not Ahmad.

Ahmad is a survivor and "Reconstructed: A Survivor's Memoir" is his story of determination, grit, and triumph... despite the odds stacked against him.

"Don't let anyone put you in a box and tell you 'this is how it should be.' Go get your second wind and keep running toward that finish line." – Atta Ahmad

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456639853
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Reconstructed
A Survivors Memoir
Atta Ahmad
Copyright © 2020, Atta Ahmad
ISBN: 978-0-692-03722-5 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-4566-3971-6 (softcover)
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Printed in the United States of America.
I would like to dedicate this book to my mother, Amatul H. Mahmud, who raised six children alone while deciding to go back to school at a later age. While attending college she was a straight “A” student and became a nurse. After becoming a nurse, she decided to go back to college to get her master’s in education. She now works in a public school system teaching special needs children. Even though my mother went through the worst situation in life she would always keep her head up and stay smiling. My family has a long line of strong females and I know that I received my strength from her.
I would also like to give thanks to all of the medical staff in Upstate Syracuse NY, Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, Spaulding Hospital and Dr. Tharaud in Medford. Without the paramedics, doctors, and physical therapist that worked with me as a team, I would not be where I am today. My eternal gratitude to you all.
In loving memory of my grandmother Corine Wilkins who is smiling down on me.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1: One Foot in the Grave
Chapter 2: All the Kings Horses and all the Kings Men
Chapter 3: Brain Over Bronze
Chapter 4: The City Jungle
Chapter 5: Returning Home
Chapter 6: The Gym and the Ride
Chapter 7: The End and Beginning
Foreword

“Success is walking from failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
—Winston Churchill
I was always a builder, and loved putting pieces together. It could be a jigsaw puzzle, Rubik’s cube, video games, anything that required me to plan and complete. I’m always curious to know how things work, and have an architect kind of thinking. At a young age, I would observe everything Boston had to offer and tried not to speak, unless I had something meaningful to say, mostly because I didn’t understand how people acted on the day to day. When I say “people,” I mean the natural negative characteristics in people. Seeing the best in people is what we should all do but because of all the negativity in my life at the time, it was difficult to see good. When you are constantly surrounded by bad situations life does not seem fair and, in turn, it makes “good” seem like a non-existent concept.
I would say in my mind when I watched television, which I did a lot of at that time, “What’s the point in drinking alcohol when it only makes you worse after?” Or “Why is that person upset about a situation and then takes it out on their love ones instead of fixing the problem?”
The biggest negative trait that I still do not understand still to this day is the concept of giving up. When I was a baby my mother would tell me that I would keep trying to lift myself up and that it looked like I was doing pushups. If you ever watch a young child they never give up. When they are learning to walk they fall, get up, fall again and the cycle repeats. Eventually, the child succeeds and walking becomes easy.
Throughout my adolescence, I wouldn’t drink or smoke and I would read anything and everything while constantly working out. I played dodgeball, basketball, football, pretty much everything out doors had to offer, considering it was not like the technological era like now. In my time, you were pretty much forced to go outside. Out of all the enjoyable activities that I have done in the past, nothing beats just to run from one place to another. I would run all the time for miles and was the fastest kid on the block, which led me to play track and field in high school. The idea of running as fast as you can and not looking back to get to that finish line was everything to me. As a kid I was not about drinking or experimenting with dugs; I was not interested, not at the least. No one needs alcohol or drugs. Some people use them to feel like they belong, but in the end these types of negative activities only lead to disaster.
I would always stay positive and know that there are happy endings, but only if you drastically, almost obsessively, work for it. In life, you have to work hard and earn what you have. We have so many opportunities to become successful. All you have to do is try. If you try, eventually you will succeed. It is when you do not try that you will never know and failure will always happen.
With that mentality and my faith, I survived a death defying motor vehicle accident that should have killed me and almost did. Surviving that accident was the most difficult thing I have ever had to overcome and coping with the aftermath was close to impossible. In the hospital I was told that I am a living miracle and that day should have been my last, but it wasn’t and I survived to tell my tale.
C HAPTER 1
One Foot in the Grave

“Perseverance: the greater the obstacle the greater the glory in overcoming it.”
—Molier
B efore my accident, I landed a great job that was slowly becoming my career. I was trying my hardest on buying my first multi family home and to really put my foot into real estate. Having to work so many hours not just to make ends meet, but to go further in life, I was exhausted. I did not have a day off in who knows how long and sleeping was something I could not afford.
On September 5, 2015, my life changed forever. On that day, I planned a road trip from Boston to Michigan thinking that it would not be too problematic for me. I’ve done hundreds of road trips without any problems and I was determined to get to Michigan on time. I started early to beat traffic, and in the beginning I was feeling fine, ready for anything….or so I thought. What came next would be a drivers worst nightmare. During that same day, about an hour away from New York, I fell asleep at the wheel. When I went to sleep it wasn’t a gradual doze off, but more like a on and off light switch and because I had a lead foot, the truck kept going.