A GOD-Story: From Death To Life
Patti Foster
Character can be formed, crafted, and shaped in so many different ways… Helen Keller, through her life-long adversity, learned: Character is not developed in quiet and ease. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success revealed. (Quote by Helen Keller)
Ah, the journey of life…. I invite you to step into my world and go back in time.
It was about 6:40 in the evening on that hot, summer’s night, June 18, 2002 – over 100 degrees! What I light-heartedly call “fry-daddy weather.” Four of us ladies were in a Tahoe, on our way to meet the others. Envision this with me, I was sitting behind the driver and all of us had our seatbelts on, being good law-abiding citizens.☺
Emily had completely stopped her Tahoe at the red light…all lanes of traffic were full. I had taken off my seatbelt to check on some flowers in a basket behind my seat. BAM! That’s when the impact happened!
A car-hauler truck pulling a trailer full of cars, barreling down the highway at 67mph slammed into the rear of our Tahoe with no warning. That’s when the life of this former radio personality came to an abrupt halt…much faster than “the blink of an eye.”
The right side of my face and head were ripped back and crushed; my right eye was hanging out of its fractured orifice onto the highway; fractures were all over me, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes; and multiple bodily injuries inside and out. My “heap of flesh and bones” was lying in a rapidly growing pool of my own blood. I had already lost well over 60% of my body’s blood.
An eyewitness described the scene, I saw something lying in the middle of the intersection. At first I thought it was a bag of leaves or some kind of bundle that had fallen off a truck. Then, to my shock, I realized that it was a real person …in the road! So I walked right out to this pitiful heap of flesh and bones, while the people on the side of the roads just kept staring at me and the body.
An EMS worker searched for my pulse. No pulse to be found. So she pulled the white sheet over my life-less body assuming I was dead. As onlookers and eyewitnesses filled the scene, some of them formed a circle over the heap of flesh beneath the white sheet and started praying. As EMS workers raced against time to save lives, one of the eyewitnesses heard a gurgling noise coming from beneath that white sheet.
An air-flight helicopter was contacted; it landed at the crash scene and flew me to the nearest trauma center of an acute hospital. My brain and body shut down and fell into a coma for 6 weeks.
I have had to re-learn every single, function of living…from the most elementary to the complex. In no time at all, that motor vehicle crash had stopped my dash of life and turned me into a 34-year-old infant.
Today some of my long-term deficits include:
- Agitation
- Fatigu
- Short-term memory
- Balance and equilibrium
- Slower processing
- Second-guessing my confidence
- Slowed reflex
Through Jesus, I lean into my motto for living, M.A.D. Now! (Make A Difference Now!) and persevere through adversity. #WeCanHelpEachOther #BetheHope
Please visit: PattiFoster.com and HopeAfterBrainInjury.org
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