Adaptations: The Central California Adaptive Sports Center Newsletter Issue 5 - 2017-18 | Page 8

2
I truly, honestly feel lucky. I get
better every day, while some
people get worse or there is no
change at all for them. I’m not
By Melissa Griffin
sure if it’s a blessing or a curse that
I’m completely aware of what is going on around me. In the
accident, the part of the brain that was injured caused mostly
physical problems. Cognitively, I remain the same.
My Story
My horse fell June 15, 2007. I don’t remember the accident, or
even that day. I have to go by what people tell me. I had an
audience, so I investigated and everyone has their own account.
I took the slightly differentiated stories and made my own
memory.
I wish that I had a good story to tell -- like I was riding a colt
and he broke into a frenzied bucking episode. No, not me. I
can’t say that. My clumsy horse merely tripped over her own
feet while I was backing her and she fell. I have a traumatic
brain injury as a result of this fall. My boyfriend at the time and
my good friend saved my life. Adam did mouth to mouth
resuscitation while Rosie did the chest compressions. (Mind
you, Adam had to swallow his Copenhagen because it was
getting in the way of saving my life. I told him to quit that nasty
habit.) From there I was taken by ambulance and then flown to
the hospital. My first ever ride in a helicopter, and I wasn’t
awake to enjoy it.
For the next four weeks I remained in critical care in a coma.
All those movies you see don’t prepare you in the least bit. In
the movies, people wake up from the coma like it was a terrible
dream. Forget the fact that your immobile body is losing
muscle tone and endurance. When I woke up from the coma I
couldn’t do much of anything. I could barely raise a finger. I had
lost the ability to move, let alone walk. My brain had to relearn
everything.
Of all the things I have lost, I wish I didn’t have to deal with my
speech. You don’t realize how important it is until you have lost it. My
voice and my capacity to speak were affected by a combination of
things. A tube was put into my throat in order to save my life. There is
an old nonsmoking commercial where a woman is smoking through a
hole in her throat. That was me, with a hole in my trachea allowing me
to breathe. I was also lying on my back for an extended period, which
caused a form of acid reflux. When I did attempt to speak, it was
garbled. Many a time in the hospital when I was semi-comatose, I
called people in my cell phone and they had not the slightest notion of
what I was saying.
Not having a way of communicating was frustrating and scary, not
only for me, but for my family and friends. I had a great deal of things
going through my mind, but had no way of expressing them. No one
knew if I was in pain, tired, hungry or thirsty. It was trying at first
because I was in a wheelchair and couldn’t speak for some time. Some
people, not all, would treat me like I was invisi