On the last day of my sophomore year of high school, I was hit in the face with a baseball bat. When my classmate tried with all his might, the bat slipped from his hand and came flying towards me and landed right in between my eyes. I don't remember the moment of impact.
The bat hit me in the face so hard that it crushed my nose into a distorted U shape. The collision caused the soft tissue of my brain to go through the inside of my skull. Immediately a wave of swelling rushed over my head. Within a second, his nose was broken, several bones in his skull were broken, and two eyes were broken.
When I opened my eyes, I saw people looking at me and running to help. I looked down and saw red spots on my clothes. One of my classmates took off his shirt from behind and gave it to me. I used it to cover the stream of blood coming from my broken nose. Shocked and confused, I didn't realize the seriousness of my injury.
My teacher put his arm around my shoulders and we began the long walk to the nurse's office, across the field, down the hill, and back.
Rand's hands touched my arms and held me upright.
Time and dowry gone nobody noticed that every minute
When we got to the nurse's office, she asked me about a chain
"How old am I
"I replied that it was indeed 2002" Who is the President of the United States of America?
"Bill Clinton," I told him. The correct answer was George W. Bush "What's Your Mother's Name?"
"Eh eh". I stopped. Ten seconds passed.
"Patti," I said casually, ignoring the fact that it took me a few seconds to remember my mother's name.
I remember that last question. My body could not handle the rapid swelling in my brain and I lost consciousness before the ambulance arrived. Minutes later, I was taken from the school and taken to a local hospital.
Shortly after arriving, my body began to shut down. I was struggling with basic tasks like swallowing and breathing. I had my first seizure of the day. Then my breath stopped completely. As doctors rushed to supply me with oxygen, they also decided that the local hospital was not equipped to handle the situation and ordered a helicopter to take me to a larger hospital in Cincinnati.
I was opening the doors to the ER and headed across the street to hell. The gurney fell to the uneven pavement as one nurse pushed me while another held my every breath in her hands. My mother, who had just arrived at the hospital, boarded the helicopter next to me. I remained unconscious and could not breathe on my own as he held my hand during the flight.
While my mother was traveling with me in the helicopter, my father went home to see my brother and sister and deliver the news. She held back tears when she explained that she would miss her eighth grade graduation that night. After turning my siblings over to family and friends, he went to Cincinnati to visit my mother.
When my mother and I landed on the roof of the hospital, a team of about twenty doctors and nurses reached the helipad and took me to the trauma unit. By this time, the swelling in my brain had become so severe that I was having frequent post-traumatic seizures. My broken bones needed to be set, but I was not in a position to undergo surgery. After another seizure on my third day, I was put into a medically induced coma and put on a ventilator.
My parents were no strangers to this hospital. I moved into the same building on the ground floor when I was ten, after my sister was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of three. I was five years old at that time. My brother was just six months old. After two and a half years of chemotherapy treatments, spinal taps, and bone marrow biopsies, my little sister finally walked out of the hospital happy, healthy, and cancer-free. And now, after ten years of a normal life, my parents found themselves again in the same place with a different child.
When I lapsed into a coma, the hospital sent a chaplain and a social worker to comfort my parents. It was the same priest who had met her a decade earlier, the night he learned that my sister had cancer.
As day turned to night, a series of machines kept me alive. My parents slept peacefully on hospital mattresses; One moment he was collapsing from fatigue, the next he was wide awake with anxiety. My mom told me later, "It was one of the worst nights I've ever had."
Fortunately, the next morning my breathing had returned to such an extent that the doctors felt comfortable taking me out of the coma. When I finally regained consciousness, I found that I had lost my sense of smell. As a test, a nurse asked me to blow my nose and smell a can of apple juice. I regained my sense of smell, but to everyone's surprise, my nosebleeds forced air through a crack in my eye socket and pushed my left eye out. My iris popped out of its socket, my eyelid and the optic nerve that connects my eye to my brain moved precariously.
The ophthalmologist said that my eye would slowly slide back into place as the air would pass out, but it was hard to say how long it would take. I was scheduled for surgery a week later, which would give me more time to recover. I felt like I was on the wrong end of a boxing match, but I was released from the hospital. I came home with a broken nose, half a dozen facial fractures, and a bruised left eye.
The following months were difficult. I felt like everything in my life had stopped. I had double vision for weeks; I couldn't see really well. It took more than a month, but finally my iris returned to its normal state. Between the seizures and my vision problems, it took me eight months to drive a car again. In physical therapy, I practiced basic motor patterns such as walking in a straight line. I was determined not to let my injury get me down, but there were times when I felt sad and overwhelmed.
When I returned to the ballfield after a year, I was struck by how far I had come. Baseball has always been an important part of my life. My dad played minor league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals, and I dreamed of playing professionally.
During the months of rehab, the one thing he wanted most was to get back on the field.
But my return to baseball hasn't been easy. When the season arrived, I was the only junior member of the varsity baseball team. They sent me to play with other junior college students. He had been playing since he was four, and for someone who had put so much time and effort into the sport, to be cut was humiliating. I remember the day it happened. I sat in my car and cried while flipping through the radio, desperately searching for a song that would make me feel better.
After a year of doubt, I made the varsity team my senior year, but I rarely made it on the field. In all, I pitched eleven innings of high school varsity baseball, just over one game.
Despite my disappointing high school career, I still believed I could be a great player. And I knew that if things were going to get better, I was responsible for making it happen. The turning point came two years after my injury, when I started college at Denison University. It was a fresh start and it was here that I first discovered the amazing power of small habits.
