Never Give Up

Jenny Maher

Description

Never Give Up is the inspiring memoir of Jenny Maher and her fierce determination to make her own way in life."As a quadriplegic, with no family support or place to live, I had to live in the hospital/nursing home. My goal no matter what therapists told me was to get around in a manual chair and to live independently."My treatment got so bad that all alone I took a plane from Colorado to Tennessee with only two backpacks to reach the spinal cord center. There they continued my therapy, took care of my wounds, and even taught me to drive."I wrote this book not to just tell people my story, but to show people who have given up, lost hope, or don't think they can make it another day to not give up, life is full of obstacles. That's what makes it interesting. Though I've learned as long as I kept moving forward, even if it was baby steps, I was doing well. Even when sometimes I took a few steps back or fell down, I learned with God's help to get back up and keep moving. I hope the people who read this will find the determination in themselves and not give up."Jenny Maher now lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she has bought a house and has two cats Pouncy and Sly to love and keep her entertained. She plans to continue writing and the next book she is working on is a murder mystery.Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/JennyMaher

Informations

• Publié par: Jenny Maher
• Date de parution: 06 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783012046
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2013
All rights reserved – Jenny Maher
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from the publisher.
Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.
12620 FM 1960, Suite A4-507
Houston, TX 77065
www.sbpra.com
ISBN: 978-1-62516-316-5
I dedicate this book
To the multiple caregivers
Who took care of me, not for
The money but for love of the job
And to the therapists who took that extra
Time with me so that I could get as strong as I am.
Without any of them, I wouldn’t be as strong mentally or physically.
Thank you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
W ith many thanks to Dalores Wiggington and Liz Lehman, who supported me from the beginning in the writing of this book, and the people at SBPRA, who helped me to publish this book.
PROLOGUE
I t was July 21, 2006, when I woke up in the emergency room, unable to sit up on my own or move my arms or legs. I guess I was having trouble breathing because the doctor asked me if he could intubate me. This consisted of putting a tube down my throat to help me breathe. I told him “No” since I had a medical background and knew how hard it was to get weaned off those machines. So instead, I was put on two liters an hour by nasal cannula, consisting of a tube under my nose blowing oxygen into me.
I was sent to the ICU (intensive care unit), where they put the most serious cases. Then all I remembered after that was having all these people around me, hooking me up to machines, putting sticky things on my chest to monitor my heart, a cuff around my arm to monitor my blood pressure, and a monitor on my finger to watch my oxygen level. That’s not to mention the numerous IVs they had me on.
With the beeping of the machines to monitor me, I was able to get only a few hours of sleep before being woken up by a nurse. It was five o’clock in the morning, and the sun had not yet risen. The nurse came in, as it was time for me to take some pills. I was not sure what they were for, and I just wanted to get back to sleep. Just as I began to doze off, in came a group of doctors.
I heard them talking to each other about my case, but I didn’t understand anything that they were saying. One of them looked like the chief doctor, as she had a long white coat; she began asking me questions, while giving commands, as if examining me.
As I lay on my back, my arms were bent up on my chest with my hands in a tight fist. I could move neither my arms nor legs, nor open or close my hands. The doctor introduced herself as Dr. Ross. She was not that tall—maybe five feet—with short brown hair, and she looked to be in her early forties. As she was talking to me, her voice was very calm and soft, which gave me comfort as she examined me. She first put her finger in my tight grasp of a fist and asked me to squeeze her finger. But no matter how hard I tried, my fingers wouldn’t move. Then she tested my arms and legs, and they wouldn’t move, either. She proceeded to pull out a rubber hammer with a metal point at the bottom. She used this to test my reflexes, tapping on my elbows and knees. She expected a reaction, but there was none. She finally used the metal end on the bottom of my feet, expecting my feet to arch and my toes to curl up, but my feet did neither. I knew that wasn’t a good sign. She said that she wanted to run some more tests before telling me what she thought was going on, but that I would probably get stronger as the swelling went down on my spine.
She explained that when I was in the ER they did an MRI of my spine and found out it was swollen with lesions, so they put me on prednisone, through the IV, to bring down the swelling. Every morning the neurologists would come into my room to examine me, looking for any change, but there wasn’t any. It had been a week, and the doctors had completed numerous tests, looking for a reason for my paralysis. The doctor asked me if my cats were sick, thinking I could have possibly gotten an infection from them, but they weren’t. An ophthalmologist put some orange drops in my eyes, to check the swelling in my brain. This was normal, but it did cause me to have yellow tears and my eyes to dry out badly.
I was also seen by an infectious disease doctor. Apparently I was found with my back against the wall, long enough to cause pressure sores on both my shoulder blades, and he wanted a skin graft. The skin graft consisted of numbing the area by injecting lidocaine with a needle, and then, using a scalpel, he cut out an area one inch in diameter and then sutured it closed. I asked him how long it would take to get the results, and sadly he told me it would take a few days, because they had to send it out to another hospital. All I felt was despair because that meant I had to wait to find out what my future was going to be.
As I lay in bed on my back, with my arms bent up to my chest and my hands in a tight fist, the one thing that I was able to move was my head from side to side. The nurse had to tape down a big gray button onto my pillow so that I could press it if I needed the nurse.
Lying there paralyzed, I depended on others for everything, from changing the channel to eating. The cafeteria would bring my tray to my bedside, where I would watch it sit until someone got the chance to feed me, as if I were a baby.
A towel would be put around my neck, and they would put a spoonful of food in my mouth and give me my drink with a straw. The whole time I was wondering if that was what my life was going to consist of, being dependent on others.
My mom didn’t show up until the next day, and, like I expected, she wasn’t very comforting. She focused more on herself than me, walking around the room, saying she needed something to drink because she was dehydrated, but after only one swallow, she was fine. I was used to the over dramatization, as that was my mom. After being there only a couple of hours, she said she had things to do at home and had to leave.
I didn’t really expect anything more from her, though most of the time as I lay in bed alone in the intensive care unit, watching all the other families staying with their relatives, I felt so alone. At night, I would cry quietly into my pillow when nobody could see me or wipe my tears for me.
CHAPTER 1
G rowing up in California, I thought my life wasn’t any differentthan anyone else’s, except I had only a mom. My dad had diedwhen I was three and my brother was seven. My mom told me hewas on his way to visit us after they were divorced, when his car, aPorsche, broke down on the 405 freeway off-ramp. My mom hadsaid she always hated it because it always broke down. My dad wasstanding on the driver’s side of the car when an eighteen-wheelerdrove too close to him, causing the force of the wind to knock himunder the truck, which ran over his legs, killing him instantly. I don’tremember him because I was so young, but I’m sure my brotherdid since he was older. I was never able to know the kind of personhe was because my dad was never talked about.
I was a latchkey kid, and as early as second grade, I had my ownhouse key to let myself in after walking home from school. Mybrother was supposed to watch me after he got home from school,but we spent more time fighting than anything else, driving ourmom crazy. Most days, our mom got home around 6:00 p.m. She would have a bloody Mary to relax, and we would have dinner, watch television, and go to bed.
Then there were the bad days, those days when we never knew quite what would set our mom off, but we did learn to stay clear. There would usually be a week without any incidences. Sometimes, all it took was the smallest thing to set her off, “like a ticking time bomb.” Once I remember dropping a candy wrapper on the floor, and that started her screaming about how we never picked anything up, how we were lazy, and how tired she was of having to work and take care of the house and two kids. Then she would throw her purse across the room, causing all its contents to fall on the floor, and she would slam her bedroom door.
I would then go around the house, cleaning everything up, picking up the contents of her purse, straightening up the house, and cleaning the kitchen. This was a normal routine for me, starting from the early age of seven. There was no bedtime story, being tucked in, or kissed goodnight—just cleaning up after my mom, and then putting myself to bed while my big brother hid out in his room.
I didn’t realize that moms were supposed to take care of their children until I was about nine years old. I went to spend the night at my friend Arlene’s house down the street, and when we were getting ready for bed, her mom came to tuck us in, “like a bug in a rug,” she said. I felt so nice and warm. Then she kneeled down and prayed for God to watch over us and keep us safe, and she made a cross symbol on our foreheads and kissed us goodnight.
That was the first time I had heard someone pray. It made me a little uncomfortable because I didn’t understand much about God. I just knew of him, not about him. I did know that I tried spending the night there as much as possible, and I hated to see her move two years later.
At home, we were still walking on eggshells, not knowing when our mom was going to “blow up.” She was not able to show us any emotional or physical affection. It felt like she was able to show her love for us only by giving us material things. This meant that when Christmas, birthdays, or any other holiday came around, she went all out for us, giving us parties and great gifts. It was the one time that we could depend on it being a good day, without any yelling.
I found out later that my mom suffered from a mental illness called bipolar depression. This illness affects the brain’s chemistry, causing a person to jump from depression, when all a person wa