reading

“The recognition of head injuries as a major health issue is on the rise in our society, yet patients’ stories are often left untold. Ms. Valentino’s story is one of a remarkable recovery, the rise of a phoenix from the ashes. She has had an outstanding recovery from her head injury, and this can be attributed only to her determination. Her story is uplifting and illuminating for anybody who has dealt with head injuries. It is a remarkable testimony to the human body’s ability to recover from injury. I believe that anybody interested in the triumph of human spirit and mind will enjoy this book immensely.”

—Abdolreza Siadati, MD

Fort Worth Brain and Spine Institute

“She is living proof that if you live, laugh, love, respect yourself, and respect others, all good things will come to you.”

—Nikki Weiss

Donna’s daughter

“Donna has continued to demonstrate incredible levels of courage, determination, attitude, and faith throughout her recovery process. Without a doubt, these attributes have been the key to her unbelievable results. . . . As her rehabilitation specialist and director of her training and therapy programs, I am anxious to see her continued progress and honored to be working with her!”

—Everett Aaberg

Founder and CEO, Ortho-Kinetics Institute

Director, Telos Fitness and Performance Center

“Her accident was something that few people could overcome. She’s progressed better than I could have ever expected, and I’m thankful to have my mom back.”

—Jordan Weiss

Donna’s son

“Most people I know are too scared, too emotionally paralyzed to face their demons. I was astounded that Donna was one of the few who broke free of her mental bonds. I could see more clouds lifted from her after each visit. She glows with an inner radiance and beauty now.”

—Cyrus Peikari, MD

Internal Medicine, Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas

“No one has given me a better perspective on how important life really is. She radiates positivity and is an absolute joy to be around.”

—Tyler Lindenmeyer

Ortho-Kinetics Trainer, Telos Fitness and Performance Center

“‘Life sucks, but it is getting better.’ That’s Donna! She is exhausted, frustrated, and in a good amount of discomfort—but determined.”

—Wendy Dawer

Donna’s friend

“I’ve known Donna for a long time, and she never said ‘Why me?’ Nothing. I was amazed really. Even to this day, she has never said anything.”

—Wendy Blum

Donna’s friend

Chapter 1

Forty-Nine Days
Images

Iopened my eyes.

There in my room were my children, Nikki and Jordan, along with a handful of friends just waiting for that moment. I wanted to speak—I wanted to shout—but I couldn’t because I was intubated. My friend Wendy Dawer held up a dry erase board, and with my right hand, I wrote what I’m sure I had been dying to tell everyone for the past seven weeks: “I want a drink.”

I think at that point everyone believed that I would, eventually, get back to normal. But normal is a weird, subjective word. Normal can mean whatever reality you ascribe to it. My normal in the coming months would not be one you’d want to call your own. As I went through the pain, the sometimes near torture, of trying to regain as much use of my body as possible, I also had so many questions about how I came to be in this place.

I’m one of those people you hear stories about but never imagine you’ll actually be. I had a horrendous chapter written in the book of my life—although I couldn’t tell you a single detail about the most significant moment firsthand. The day of my accident has been censored by a black bar across my memory. I know the basic facts because Paul, my boyfriend, witnessed the accident, because I’ve seen the medical records, and because I can show you physically how much I’ve changed. I’ve pieced together the facts of the accident from photos taken at the scene and from details shared by Paul, the emergency medical techs, and the doctors and nurses who took care of me. But I remember zilch. As far as my memory goes, I was on vacation, and then I was in the hospital. Point A to point Z with nothing in-between.

I’m lucky to have all my marbles.

At least, that’s what the doctors said. Actually, everyone else did too—my family, friends, neighbors, trainer, even Paul. Surviving a horrible accident in which your brain is damaged—knocked around so forcefully that surgeons have to remove a piece of your skull temporarily and expose the organ just so it can heal—is an incredible feat. An act of great fortune, really. And when I finally understood what had happened to me, when I was able to digest the facts, I simply couldn’t believe I was alive.

I survived an accident that involved hundreds of pounds of metal and rubber landing directly on top of my 120-pound body, then bouncing off and rolling away as if it were done playing and ready to go home. I’d broken dozens of facial bones, fractured my spine and skull, and lacerated my liver. As a result of this accident, I was forced to spend weeks in a medically induced coma, rendered completely unable to do a thing for myself except breathe. It was not a party.

The coma was designed to help my body heal. On the laundry list of things that were broken, twisted, crushed, and bruised, my brain took the biggest hit. Doctors call my experience a traumatic brain injury, or you may hear it referred to in acronymous form: TBI. While doctors can address the bodily symptoms of a TBI with physical, occupational, and even speech therapy, the complexity of the brain makes the aftershocks in the mind way more difficult to predict and treat. I thought, said, and did bizarre things as a result of the TBI. But I’ll get to all that later.

For forty-nine days, I lay in my bed at Harris Methodist Hospital. Many of those days I had my head bandaged with that white gauze you associate with a Halloween mummy and my neck was wrapped in this awful, thick, itchy navy neck brace that made Spanx seem like loose, silky pajamas. I’m not kidding you—I’d rather wear a girdle in August than ever have that thing touch my skin again. There were tubes coming out of my throat and belly, and I couldn’t move my left side at all, couldn’t even lift my pinkie. I had air- compression wraps on both legs that would hiss and inflate just like one of those blood pressure machines you can use for free at Walgreens. I had a catheter and wore a diaper. I was a complete and total mess.

When enough time had passed, the doctors brought me out of the coma. Believe it or not, after I had adjusted to consciousness, my mental faculties were completely intact, and I understood everything cognitively as I had before. I just don’t remember much about those first few days.

Two days after I woke up, I was in the bathroom when I looked down to see a thick, fresh surgical scar from my sternum to a few inches past my belly button. I screamed. I had no idea it was there and had to ask the nurse what happened to me. It was terrifying. Little by little, I realized how much I was clueless about, including the extent of my surgeries. The doctors had performed so many procedures I had no memory of just so I could be in a position to scream at the sight of a scar I had no idea existed.

I often wonder if people who survive horrendous accidents without a recollection of the pain and trauma are given one of those special, gracious gifts Mother Nature sometimes grants a species. Like how a baby can’t remember a second of the full-body squeeze of birth, or how lizards lose a tail as if it’s no big deal and re-grow one as if they’re a Chia Pet and just needed to be watered. People like me, who undergo intense pain and physical jarring, who survive a relentless beating to their organs and bones and muscles, receive the grace of oblivion.

I rely on others to fill in the gaps about the actual accident. Today, I look down and see an arm that gently hangs like a broken wing and a hand that opens and closes with little enthusiasm. I see scars that zigzag my skull, and I feel my shoulder bark at me any time I move in a way it doesn’t like. I can tell you that permanent double vision is not a good trip. But I can’t tell you what it felt like to lie on the earth bleeding and broken as my panicked, terrified boyfriend waited helplessly for the ambulance to arrive and save my life.

What happened to me on February 7, 2009, was horrendous. I’ll never be the same Donna Valentino as I was before that day. So I’ve set out to understand why. Not “Why did this happen to me?” Or “Why can’t I recover and be as I was?” But rather, “Why in the hell did I survive?”

It’s a question I’m not afraid to ask candidly. Now, in the accident’s aftermath, I’m on an expedition, playing the role of a sightseer to my own life, re-experiencing things I’ve done a hundred times over in the past. I was always a doer, an athlete, a mover, and a shaker. Now my moving and shaking happens at a much slower pace. But I’m relearning and reprocessing, forging and forgiving. And I’m not done trying to redefine myself.

Images

I survived this horrendous accident, I’m convinced, for several reasons. The most significant reasons can be summed up with two names: Nikki and Jordan, my children. They are, by all accounts, independent, intelligent, and capable of great things. But I’m here because I’m their protector, and until I can find some guarantee that these kids will be safe and secure every day, I’m not going anywhere.

I’m here in the pragmatic sense because of the savviness of Paul. If I let my mind dwell on what the scene must have looked like the day of the accident, I still choke. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be him. To stand there waiting and waiting for help. To know you can’t move the body, you can’t fix the body. You can only pray for the person inside that body. I feel a deep love for and commitment to Paul. Had it been the other way around, I would’ve done anything it took to save him. But it was me lying there. And it was Paul who worked to save me.

Once I came out of that coma, I literally had to go back to the basics. The accident forced me to relearn how to swallow, to walk, to climb stairs, to hold a toothbrush. The hours and hours I spent in rehab were beatings, and there were times when all I felt like doing was shutting down and going to sleep. I wanted to fight the therapists who made me use a wheelchair. I wanted to ignore my friends who forced me to play card games and Boggle to keep my mind engaged. Sometimes the only thing I wanted was for Paul to climb into the bed with me and snuggle, but he was afraid I’d break apart. I had lost so much weight I looked like a paper doll.

But my girlfriends came to that hospital every single day, and Paul made the drive to see me sometimes two times a day, and these are facts that I still cherish and still tear up over to this day. These wonderful people put their needs second to mine. They made sure my nails were polished and my legs were shaved. They cheered me on even when I didn’t want to try anymore. Paul, my friends, and my children gave me the purpose I needed to plow through the thorny weeds back to my life, which now looks the same as before in many ways, but still is very different than it was.

The road back to my new normal was filled with misery at times, and although I’ve improved dramatically, my injuries took plenty away in the physical sense. As I write this book, the accident is in the past by more than three years. Still, my entire left side feels tingly and tight, as if there’s a piece of elastic running from my neck to just past my thigh that’s being pulled too tautly. I’ve had surgeries on my left arm and hand, but they’ve made little difference in my ability to use this limb, except that now I can make a half-hearted fist. My left fingers don’t work properly and I can’t flatten my hand. My pinkie finger is in a permanent bend. My first finger and the middle finger are fixed in an eternal peace sign, and I can’t shoot the bird, which is a bummer in Dallas traffic. If you ask me to carry something with my left arm, I’ll drop it. If you ask me to hold a glass of water with my left hand, I’ll spill it. My arm just hangs there. I don’t have any control over it. I don’t trust it.

On my right side, the rotator cuff in my shoulder is torn. This prevents me from being able to raise my arm past a certain point. I know from a CAT scan that there’s a piece of bone just floating around in the general shoulder area. I have constant lower back pain. It’s not debilitating, just annoying. I work with a trainer several days a week to improve my body’s functions and reduce my limitations. I’m as active as I can be. But once the brain is injured, it’s a crapshoot as to how well it will heal and to what extent. I live in an active holding pattern.

When my brain was injured, certain neurons were severed that can never be repaired, including the ones that control smell and taste. As a result, I no longer have these senses, and my research tells me I’ll never regain them. I’ve had to learn to recontextualize my experiences; now, I can only predict what things taste like or smell like based on what I know from the past.