Hymas: Wildly spinning conclusion to my life-changing accident - East Idaho News
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Hymas: Wildly spinning conclusion to my life-changing accident

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Accident in the past, surgery done, learned to be humble, delegate, and ask for help, life back on track with just a little rehabilitation scheduled for Monday.

Table

Then Sunday happened. I went to bed Sunday evening dizzy, I woke up and my world was literally turned upside down.

I couldn’t stand up even with my crutches without falling (not good, considering I just had knee surgery). My husband had to run to catch me a couple of times. I couldn’t hold my food down. We called the doctor got another medication, but when my husband left to get it, I had to call neighbors to help clean up my constant throwing up (good thing I had already been forced to learn to ask for help).

Medicine didn’t help, so my husband and teenage son carried me to the car and then the doctor. 5 hours of IVS and 3 giant bags of fluid I could finally leave the doctor’s office.

Thinking it was over I just tried to sleep. The next day I drank and drank and drank. I will never get dehydrated again. But the spinning never stopped, so it was back to the hospital.

Wheelchair

The Empathy/Tolerance lesson

And now another lesson. As my husband, so worried about me because I couldn’t stand, walked me slowly to the door, I saw another person just surviving, one step at a time, trying to walk to the front door of the hospital. I’m normally pretty intolerant of those who walk slowly and painfully in the center of the parking lot or road, wishing they had the courtesy to use a sidewalk. But at that moment I realized … when it takes all you’ve got to get to your destination, and one slow hard step at a time is literally all you can do, you can’t worry about anything else. I was getting dropped off at the door and then to a wheelchair. This person was getting there a step at a time … on their own strength! Empathy and tolerance replaced my negative thoughts.

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The ultimate, final, concluding lesson!

I spent a week and a half spinning. I ended up with a wheelchair prescription (I never would have thought a wheelchair could equal freedom). I have spent my life running , doing, planning, falling, getting back up, fighting some more, but I have never been knocked down and stopped so abruptly as this spinning had. I kept pleading: “This will be good for me? Please just let me stop spinning. Please let me walk. Please let me be able to hold down food. Please let me close my eyes for peace. PLEASE let me learn what I need to learn because I just want to be able to care for myself again. PLEASE LET ME STOP SPINNING!

Then it happened. I woke up and I had control of me!!!!! (it turned out to be a crystal in my inner ears along with a double ear infection). And this is when I learned my most important lesson yet.

I learned to BE!

Vegas 3 again

A balanced life used to mean planning my day in my head from hour to hour. I would say a prayer, take a deep breath, and go! Make breakfast and lunches, go to gym, answer work emails, start my day at work. Even during my daily 5 minutes of sitting still and meditating, I was still planning and being busy in my head.

On the morning I stopped spinning, I also stopped thinking. I stopped planning. I stopped fighting internal battles. I stopped. I appreciated that my heart beat. I could feel the warmth of my skin. I could close my eyes and open them again and see. I got it. I could finally just BE. I already knew I could push and try and try again, but just being is just as important. I would always tell my clients to BE YOU! No one else, just YOU. I understood the ‘YOU’ part, but I never understood ‘BE.

“This will BE good for YOU!” I heard spoken to me when my knee first broke. How could I have guessed how true that would be.

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