A Horrific Accident

        Most of you who know me now may not believe this, but I spent most of my life being brutally shy to the point of having stomach pains if I thought I might have to talk to someone I knew when meeting them randomly out in the world. As I got older, I was more able to cope but unfortunately many people mistook that shyness for snobbery. It lessened over time and I finally outgrew it when I was around fifty. I also had a brief time in Junior High School when I was able to make friends. And great friends we were. I felt as though my life was really beginning to thrive. At the same time, I discovered the joy of gymnastics at school. I especially loved the uneven parallel bars and had dreams of someday competing in the Olympics. Then disaster struck.
        One night at dinner, near the end of eighth grade, my dad told me to sit up straight at the table. I replied that I was. He started threatening me with the usual punishment, which was his leather belt, if I didn’t do as I was told. I was sitting as straight as I possibly could, almost leaning backwards. Luckily Mom, who was sitting on the other side of me, noticed and challenged Dad. They started arguing and eventually had me stand so they could both look, and they were both right. On the right side, my back was curved forward while the other side straight as an arrow. After visiting our family doctor and a local specialist, I was diagnosed with kypho scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. And, lucky me, I had a severe double curve. That summer I spent a week in the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan to be fitted for a Milwaukee brace that stretched from my chin to my hips with one steel bar in the front and two in the back. It also had a leather chin rest, a leather girdle that rested on my hips and two leather pads, one under my right arm near my shoulder blade and one on my lower back pushing on the lump that had formed there.             The stay at the hospital was traumatic to say the least. I had just entered puberty, amazed by my changing body and now was being poked a prodded by strangers in a teaching hospital while a crowd of students looked on. They also took photos of me naked in various poses as well as x-rays and lots of measurements for the brace. I really wanted my mom, but my parents lived an hour away and only came for visits a few times. The worst time was being hung in a sling, again completely naked, in the place where they make the orthopedic supplies. They wanted my back to extend to its fullest before making the cast that would be the model for the brace. Not only was it physically uncomfortable, but no one thought to throw a cover over me as people came in and out to collect their items. Finally, the head of department came in and wrapped me in a blanket while screaming at his staff for their ineptitude and insensitivity. To say I was traumatized by the entire stay would be a gross understatement. I wore the brace for my four years in high school. I was allowed to take it off for up to an hour a day to shower. I often used that entire hour, taking long hot showers. The last two years, Mom would just let me have the hour regardless of whether I showered or not. I went home to discover that my parents had decided to take me out of public school, where I had been since kindergarten, to enroll me into the private Catholic High School where I knew only one girl from our neighborhood.
        Many people believe that bullying is a relatively new thing, but I can tell you that it is not. I was bullied relentlessly and was an easy target. I was shy and now I was a freak. Eventually the bullying escalated into physical altercations. At least once a day my books were shoved out of my arms as a crowd stood around laughing as I leaned against the lockers to make my way to the floor to pick them up. If they were feeling especially mean, they would kick the books further away forcing me on my hands and knees to gather them up. Occasionally, as I was walking through the halls, one of the boys would grab a bar in the back and spin me around into the lockers. There were no hall monitors, and the administration insisted that the students were all from good families and would never behave that way. My parents were sure that I must be exaggerating. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. During my four years there, two students committed suicide, and another took a gun to the roof of the school randomly shooting, hitting one teacher and then killing himself. All through high school, I was anorexic and was carving designs in my forearms with straight pins.
        My high school didn’t have any art or music classes. Those were the things that I loved the best, and music was the thing that always took me out of the chaos and violence around me at home. To no avail, I begged my parents to let me go back to public school where I had a few friends and could study the things I loved. But I did continue with my piano and voice lessons, spending hours after school immersed in music and healing from the events of the day. The school added those missing classes in my senior year, and I finally made a few friends in music class excelling in both classes after failing everything else. My brace came off just before graduation and I went off to college in the fall. But that is another story.
        Flash forward many years… Although the brace had stopped the progression of the curvatures, I was in constant pain. There were some days it was so bad that it was hard to even get out of bed. I had two children to care for and a house to maintain. I just figured I would have to endure it for the rest of my life and did the best I could. I moved with my husband and children to Albany in 1981. In 1982, I was concerned about my daughter’s back and took her to be evaluated. Scoliosis is hereditary. She had a slight curve but nothing to be concerned about. However, the doctor insisted on looking at me. After looking at both current and past xrays, he determined that my scoliosis was once again progressing, probably due to my pregnancies, and estimated that I had ten years to live if it went unchecked. Apparently, my spine was causing my rib cage to constrict one of my lungs causing my heart to expand. He recommended surgery to insert a Harrington Rod along the length of my spine. I had the ten-hour surgery and have had only occasional pain ever since. It was truly life changing. They predicted a six-week hospital stay and six months in a brace. I was out in three weeks, performing at Rok Against Reaganomix in Washington Park a few weeks later, and was out of the brace in three months. My family seems to have mutant healing powers.
        Now back to the present. The day after Thanksgiving I successfully stepped across our open trapdoor to hang up my bathrobe. It’s an easy step. There is a wooden support for the spiral stairs that goes halfway across, I stepped on that and on the other side. On the way back, with my head in the clouds, as it often is, instead of stepping on the support, I stepped into the void hitting my sternum on the support, which flipped me onto my back, and I plummeted down twelve feet onto the floor of the workshop, landing on my back with legs up against the wall and my head propped on the upright beam. I had tried to grab anything I could to stop or slow my fall, bruising my arms on the way down. Now here I was lying in a tight space, completely naked and cold, struggling to breathe. After what seemed like hours, but was only fifteen minutes, the ambulance came and miraculously got me out, racing me to Albany Medical Center. Somehow, I remained conscious and never even hit my head on the way down. I knew I wasn't going to die because my life didn't flash before my eyes. Four days later I had surgery to repair and connect the twelve broken ribs. Eight of them were broken in more than one place and needed to be plated. Originally, the plan was to send me from ICU to the surgical floor then to a regular floor and finally to an in-patient rehab facility. I never went to a regular floor, and when it was time to send me to rehab, they refused me because I was doing too well to go.
        So, I am home, thanks to my mutant healing powers, and am so glad to be here. You may wonder how this latest accident ties into the beginning of the story. More than one doctor came in to tell me that the Harrington Rod probably saved my life. At the very least, it stopped me from breaking my back and being paralyzed for the rest of my life. It blows my mind to be grateful for those harrowing experiences, but I am. You never know where life will take you and what things will lead to others. I am now truly a bionic woman and grateful to be alive to enjoy my family, continue making music, meet new people and tell you my stories. I’ve had an unusual and wonderful life, thankfully with more to come.