FanStory.com - A Long Time Goneby Mike Stevens
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My journey
I Survived
: A Long Time Gone by Mike Stevens

The following true story is one that I've told before, but that was years, decades ago, so if you're familiar with my tale of, "whoa!" My apologies:

A spur-of-the-moment decision, seemingly inconsequential at the time, can change the whole trajectory of your life, not to mention your life itself. Faced with two options I chose to go up to the main office of my credit union to cash my paycheck from The post office where I worked as a letter carrier. Had I chose to go to the closer satellite branch office, I wouldn't have been on the highway where I was hit head on by a woman in a hurry to get where she was going, failing to notice the Ford Ranger pickup truck in the oncoming lane, and turned left into my lane.

They tell me I was airlifted to a hospital in the big city, but I have no memory of it. Ironically, I don't enjoy flying and get extremely apprehensive, preferring to drive, true, it is dangerous, but at least I controlled my own fate. Ha!

They tell me I was in a coma for 13 days, but to tell you the truth, waking up to my new situation made me wish I'd just have gotten the dying over with. At least I wouldn't know I was dead. What I did know was I was messed up. I couldn't walk, or talk, afflictions which still are affecting me 24 years later, come October 30th. On that day in 1998, my life was changed forever, some positive, but most negative. I remember being told by the doctor in charge of head injury patients that most of the healing takes place within the first two years. Two years! I couldn't wait that long. I was a bit nieve of my reality, two years is nothing. It's almost twenty four years and I'm still messed up.

Years ago I was told by a doctor, who undoubtedly figured I needed some tough love, that I was going to have to accept that I've gotten back all there was to get back. But I won't accept that, refuse to accept that, I still notice minute changes toward a full recovery, and yes, I admit that that is highly unlikely to happen, it's my goal.

What a long, strange trip it's been. That's the understatement of all understatements. I won't get into the hours of physical therapy, the frustration of being trapped in a body that doesn't respond to the orders I give it, and all the time that's gone by, time I'll never get back. Ironically, I can see my life direction clearly now, the things that will make me happy. Can't do much to make them a reality, but...



     

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