The Last Day I Was Me
Dedicated to my son, Justin Finnila
By Lori Finnila
Copyright 2010 Lori Finnila
“It’s not the breaths you take, it’s how you breathe.” Augie Nietto’s motto by Five for Fighting.
Introduction
Lori Finnila was an aspiring model posing for photographers and doing commercials and extra work in film before it would all be pulled to a stop because of a few who took her medical decisions out of her hands who couldn’t accept her and let her be herself making it impossible forever to work in this field again.
This is a book of honesty and courage of one woman’s true account of her journey through domestic violence leaving her with a brain injury and how it changed her life.
The conspiracy of a medical cover-up and how she faced it all alone penniless. How she was encountered by bad men who forced her to do things she thought she’d never have to do or ever see.
A true book of courage and how she came out of it and made her own success a new definition.
She hopes in the end this book will help others in understanding the relation in our everyday lives as we live it before we make our decisions in this life.
In the end she came out her own hero with help from others.
I started out this intelligent, vivacious, and intuitive woman. I had aspirations more than usual I was always told. But I never stopped working towards them. I would seek and find new ways to push or overcome new challenges that would come my way. And that’s what led me to New York. If I were going to make it anywhere as the saying went and it would be recognized and respected it would be there. Now wouldn’t it be great?
When I first went out there my friends and family had a party for me. I had all the support you could imagine. The party brought in $500. Not enough for all my
expenses but a good start. I sold my wedding ring—after all my husband wanted it back, anger at the time. I wasn’t going to have that. LOL to him. That’s okay.
So I went out this first time and it didn’t work out. My naiveness and lack of knowledge left NY to eat me up, or so I thought. But I was still alive, not raped or beaten like some other women I had been hearing about in the news.
I would call my dad at these times sure he had heard these stories. He was surprised to even hear from me let alone have heard the stories on the news. I knew I was in a world of my own then.
When I would venture back home for love and support when all had failed and my emotions battered and bruised I found I felt a sense of suffocation. Not to anyone’s fault but to my new found sense of exploration and identity. It would not die and this is what will lead you to my story.
I returned back to New York brighter than ever after getting my breath back, this time sassy. Ready for anything and willing to do more. I pushed myself in the knowledge of computers and working for executives and this is where I found my new found appreciation of some self worth in the business field. I was making good money then and working for Fortune 500 companies. I was still temping but they would always ask me back and most of the time offer me full time jobs. I had money for clothes, eating out, and my own apartment, and plenty left over for photo shootings.
I still hadn’t given up on the entertainment and modeling industry. I came so close when I had come out before was taken down by a man once again, not realizing it was all coming from home, but had some idea not facing it.
I loved designing my own shootings and planning how my new pictures would look. I still hadn’t found “that” picture I felt even though I had been offered my own modeling account before being taken down by a man. And I knew I needed this to take off again except at a higher rate seeing I was a bit older.
I did finally meet one photographer who would give me this opportunity but I was never able to use it. I would be given a shot at this field again but due to the lack of knowledge to what had been following me I would never be able to use it ever. I was now going to have to face what was tearing my world up.
The first meeting with this photographer was set up. I slept in on this one and found myself unusually groggy that morning. Because of this I ended up leaving all my cash for the shooting in the subway seat and watched my purse go by as I was on the train going the opposite direction. This wasn’t a good start or a good meeting with the photographer. He told me not to come by and I had to set up a second session.
It took me another year out there before this would happen. But I had been getting very good in the office. I was working for lawyers and brokers now and being recognized for something that I didn’t have in the field, intelligence.
They actually wanted me to stay on and manage a team of employees under a CEO of their company at the World Trade Center. It was very impressive paying about $45,000 - $50,000. Now back then almost 20 years ago with no formal training that was a gold mine. Not that I forgot my goal of shooting again I agreed. But there was one small problem.
I had been having some pain and was advised to have a routine surgical procedure to alleviate this before I could go to this job. I got into a squabble with my temp boss before this job due to my surgery but I knew he’d overcome this, this not being the first time we’d had verbal spats. I had a strong personality and this is what led him and my current job to upgrade me upstairs to a higher level. But this job would never come about nor any job using this new found intelligence that I didn’t know I had.
My surgery would be scheduled and not delayed because I was in so much pain now. I had forfeited the first doctor feeling he was too aggressive, not realizing the better doctors are, and now had a second. He seemed timid and was anxious to get to his own private practice most of the time and/or have it bustling to make his ends meet without having to divide his time between this job and his private practice.
Just starting out that must have been frustrating for him. I still didn’t feel confident enough in him seeing as he only had 3 years experience and I could see this. The other doctor who was aggressive I had found out does these surgeries all the time. I had tried to reschedule with him seeing that I had made a mistake and needed to accept his behavior as competence but I was too late. At this point he wouldn’t accept me.
The day all seemed normal as my surgery were planned. I would get in and out and get back to my doggy dog world when it was over. But would I?
There were some young guys in there in street clothes that didn’t fit standing around the operating table before I went in laughing and making strange gestures towards me. I immediately recognized one of them and felt a sudden panic attack of fear for a second. Then I shifted into protective mode. I had seen this man in an uncomfortable place before I couldn’t put my finger on it. It almost felt as though he had been part of the family somehow or at least close to it. But he looked different than from what I remembered. He had given me a frightening smirk almost to the point this would be payback time.
Always running from confrontation I couldn’t understand which one this might be. Yet I couldn’t be sure of this whole thing and I didn’t want to show my fear as paranoia. I did try and force the thought of walking out and rescheduling but the pain had gotten so much worse I knew, or so I thought, the consequences could be much worse than anything that they could do to me.
So I took a deep breath and let my side fall to the wall around the corner trying to grip myself back. I had thought what could he, or they seeing there were 3 of them, do to me. They certainly wouldn’t do anything medically to me. This wasn’t even there arena.
They were talking and what they were speaking of I couldn’t hear well. I was a little too scared to listen always learning to be quiet and shut my mouth as a child to everything around me feeling to survive. I had been running for years from it.
I thought I heard them say they had to check something alone to the medical help dressed in scrubs and then there was quiet. I heard a slightly large clicking sound of some sort. Then the talking had stopped and as I looked around the corner they had disappeared. Before I could think how they even got in there to begin with they were gone. It scared me a little but I was relieved that they were gone now. I felt relieved and started thinking what I needed to next and it was my surgery. I had to get my mind in the right mode, a positive mode.
Little did I know the ways of the world and what happens and what would happen to me.
When I had left home there had been some hard feelings of resentment and jealously. Never in my mind did I think or feel that anyone would ever act on them or I would ever be in real danger from any of it.
The surgery was a disaster. I hadn’t been doing anything but lying there quietly on the operating table when as fast as I lied down was as fast as the straps to the table that these men were just leaning on were quickly put on me where I couldn’t move and now a needle was being administered in my arm as at the same time I was told that I would be put out two different ways as I felt a mask being put over my face. Once he showed me a needle with a strange smile on his face and another him nodding to the nurse towards the anesthesia mask hanging on the wall connected to a long tube stemming from a gauge fastened to the wall permanently.
The nurse asked the anesthesiologist that shouldn't she check the pressure gauge as she was routinely asked to do and on this occasion he firmly said no as she had a worried look on her face now I felt I was fighting an army from a different country as he looked into my eyes with so much defiance that I had never seen before. He said to just forget it to the nurse, that it should be fine and that it was always set at the same pressure.
I felt this was all wrong I asked him for the Chief of anesthesia as I had been told I could do in an earlier meeting with the hospital. He said he was the Chief and I knew this was not true because I had just signed papers with him and his training staff him identifying himself as other.
It all was so fast from there. When while the needle was being administered the mask was over my mouth and nose as I could now hear a familiar clink for a second as the nurse was told to turn the anesthesia on as she approached it as I had heard just before when these men were in the room, now not allowing me to breathe in anything but a strong gush of chemical smelling air entering my passageway.
As I gagged and gasped not able to talk with a tear coming down my eye now I was trying to speak to tell him I was gagging as the nurse started crying with me. She too knew there were something wrong but did not want to talk out of place.
Not being able to move to get off the table I went out knowing I would never be the same again.
I was woken in the middle of the surgery to a great pain of a knife cutting me, then the sharpness of a tube being stuck down my throat after that as the doctor now in there yelled for this to be done. I didn’t know if I had died and this is why they were panicking to do this to me or if I had had too much anesthesia and they were trying to save me.
At the end of surgery trying to come out of it I couldn’t breathe on my own. My brain was trying to stir but my it couldn’t find it’s way back and I was becoming aware of this. The doctor had to yell at me for my brain to respond which brought my head and partly my body lunging up and back down again on the table exasperating for air.
The doctor seemed frightened at this. He vowed he would find out what happened though he had been on the phone with another patient while I was being put out.
I was then wheeled to the recovery room with others where my heart beat rapidly for 2 hours as I could feel as though my heart were splitting at this time and pounding out of my chest.
They decided to get me out of there even though I still wasn’t stable. A young man who was a helper of theirs smashed my cart into the wall as he was supposed to be wheeling me to my room.
When I got there to my room there was a hush hush going on around me as to what had just happened to me downstairs during my operation. I knew the medical staff did not want to take blame.
I felt my body barely hanging on for those two days in there. I was finally released and the friend who picked me up that took me home I could barely recognize.
The next day I went for an errand in the neighborhood and found I got lost. I couldn’t find familiarity inside of me of a sense of direction as to where I was for a moment and which way to go in my own neighborhood that I had strolled through so many times. I tried not to panic and had felt this might just be due to the trauma of the surgery and still to the effects of the pain medication that I was on.
I knew deep down there could be something wrong with me. The pain meds were wearing off and now my brain was being forced to focus as it usually would. My senses seemed dull and broken. This frightened me for a moment at the thought of being on my own and totally independent getting myself out of all my predicaments on my own usually.
The next day I had to make a call about something and the person at the other end could not understand what I was saying so I had to spell it out. I couldn’t spell the word soap. I kept spelling soup. And my brain took a couple of seconds to realize this and then I went into a panic mode again for a few more seconds from my mind being taken away from me and not being able to recognize the proper spelling. And also from realizing I had to push my brain now manually to do this where it would automatically click in for me usually.
This was hard thing for to accept and concentrate on so I let it go realizing now I had to move on the actions of my day that would require attention in this way. I solemnly sunk lower into a state needed and not wanted to have to function.
When I tried to return to work it was a disaster. I kept making mistakes where the keys were on the keyboard on the computer where it no longer looked familiar to me.
This was a problem where most of my work was done using a computer. I, being the one who wanted money more than ever to get those shootings done to be on my way, always wanted to work.
I eventually went back to the hospital administration and medical records where this happened to me. I wanted to know what had happened.
I was refused a few of the papers from my medical records now from this little man who also looked familiar who I can recognize now as one of the men following me from back home whom would be one of my stalkers. And the one who would also try and fight me for the original birth certificate to my son trying to take it out of my hands while filing for child support, one entire state away. This man had also moved in across from me at my apartment after having my son down the road. I don’t know the relevance and certainly was never going to get it.
At this time he was actually taking them out of the folder right before my eyes. I went to administration where they wouldn’t open the door to me. I sat outside it crying now. I finally did get a lawyer but the papers to whatever had happened to me were taken out permanently.
I was so dumb founded right about now I had no idea how to pursue it intelligently. The time in my brain was so irrelevant. Days could have been months and years to me and I wouldn’t have known the difference.
You could try and have a conversation with me and I would forget. My brain was too weak to function. Everything was in there it just wouldn’t work right. It was just too tired and damaged now.
I did try and go back to work again but I was still unsuccessful, sometimes being blamed for things I didn't do. When I would get flashed of what happened to me for a few seconds I would try and run to someone for help and report it and tell them of these things but it just made me look crazy. After all I was in a crazy city to begin with most felt.
So it left me to go home again, defected and broken completely this time and to a disappointment by all I would be told eventually.
I thought I could get SSDA back home safer seeing as you couldn’t work for 6 months before applying. I was so afraid to be out on the streets of NY homeless from the possibility of completely having no funds I felt I had no choice.
When I went home initially I was rejoiced and welcomed by my friends and family. I had told them that I just needed some time away and they had felt this was just a vacation. I had money from unemployment now and back there it seemed like a lot.
My family and friends couldn’t notice anything wrong with me and I rejoiced in that. But soon realized they didn’t even know me anymore and anything that would show up they wouldn’t recognize it as being abnormal. I had grown and changed from that time I was seen as that silly looking woman that they were always seeing.
I started drinking and partying like everyone else on the weekends and found I would get over inebriated to my usual three drinks. I had slowed down in New York before I left due to the surgery feeling I should at that time with the effects from the surgery that I was having. But I had felt fine now with some minor subsiding of the brain that I could hardly notice. But new things were showing themselves due to the injury. I had to leave my car as I was now driving this one night.
I seemed to be able to drive now okay too but I would get lost as I had no sense of direction at times still for moments and trying to push my senses again aware of this at these times for my brain to work. But I felt grateful to work as I had been driving my car now back and forth to some much appreciated temp jobs that I weren't able to keep for whatever reasons that kept coming up, mostly undue to me.
I couldn’t understand why I was so sensitive to the hustle now of the office environment and would get panicky to the events of not being able to keep up with the phones where I was deeply downgraded in my job placements of what I used to do.
I thought I could possibly get through this and attempt to work again and everything would be okay. But I couldn’t. It was too stressful and the shocks of trying to recognize was too much for me. I would get caught at times where my mind and hand would get lost of the keys I was typing on of some gibberish of something that I couldn’t even make out with horrified looks of despair from my now employers.
And when I was moved out front to meet and greet at jobs, where I was always usually welcomed even as a youngster to this being seemingly pleasant to the eye, I would forget who I gave parking passes to which apparently were expensive to the company and no one was going to be sparingly with them and my situation for me to return them.
I would just stop and stare at someone sometimes when asked to do something left with a childlike crying pout on my face toward them knowing I couldn’t fulfill the request for their task feeling hopeless to all this. I’m sure I looked pitiful in their eyes. And there I was left helpless with no way of taking care of myself.
I see now I was being taken advantage of and no one was recognizing me for my injury to help me but rather than a coldness not seeing a person lost inside of myself to all of this.
I had separated myself for so long initially leaving home from that atmosphere that I was living in for personal reasons that had seemed to keep coming up and choking me all around my throat once again for reasons that I had never been able to understand as a child that were literally following me to no reason and to no fault of my own.
I had tried to start a new life elsewhere where there were less complications in my life and less vendettas but yet once again I still didn’t realize that yes these things can happen. People can hurt you and they will if they feel in their minds they have a reason and enough room to do this. I still at this time hadn’t understood this even up to this point. I didn't understand how people would or could go this far.
So I had to apply for SSDA now. There was no question of this. This was a complete embarrassment to everyone at that point. I was starting to see the true entirety of what is capable of happening.
I was no longer the popular voyager that went to New York to become successful and would just come home for periodic visits. I was now a pitiful wounded creature of embarrassment to everyone I knew. And I would have a hard time identifying with the person that they were seeing in me now as I no longer knew her not from my injury but from what I had attained previously on my own not knowing them anymore.
No one wanted to hear about my injury but to knock it off to it all and that it was all in my mind, everyone forgets. I couldn't explain the way my brain was functioning now.
I would get asked why would I ask such irrelevant questions of the past and want to know so much now as I tried to reason and put everything together possibly of what had happened before I left home to all the anguish that lie all around me now. It seemed as though my injury were relevant to it now.
When I had to revert to food stamps having no money DHS tried to force me to sign papers of everything I might receive from the injury and I refused. I was able to get some food stamps and a little change from that just enough to buy things like dish detergent, and I lost all respected connections with my friends then, all but one.
One would bring boxes of food to me while the others would say I should be ashamed and that there were people who really needed that. I felt I was people and I really needed that but looking fine to the eye this didn’t appear so.
I was brought free clothes by another friend that told me she wore them when she was pregnant and laughed at that as she left them with me. I couldn’t see how that was funny knowing that I couldn’t get my body to work in the way it should at that point and get my metabolism up to where it had been.
I could see another confronting me now when she would come over where she would make whispers to a roommate of mine whom had been scaring me of all sorts'
It seemed that everyone was talking at me or around me now and it left me with a sense of confusion and discomfort. I had tried to convey of the desperations of this male roommate and how I felt fear in what he might be trying to do to me as he would threaten me of past events and how he would vendetta against me for them.
I wasn’t sure if he were serious. I was always the pun of the joke and I would forget so easily what he had said then afterwards. I fell deeper inside of myself now not working on myself anymore.
He would come in to try and get me out of my room to socialize but I had felt even more unusually groggy by then not being able to make out why this was happening to me. And I had remembered a man climbing into my bed on one of these unusual moments as well. I knew nothing happened then thank God. But I remembered the fright and knew I had to find a way away from this situation. Not being close to anyone it just got worse. I tried to explain to a friend of mine which they brought into it by calculating information against her as well but this just made her apprehension towards me and she couldn't understand why I just couldn't get away from them but I felt trapped in some way. And I would eventually get away to these friends who were supposedly trying to help me but they too in turn seemed to be taking sides against me as I had now felt the same weird drug affects taking over onto my body and was being treated out of body out of mind now. But I appeared to have no where else to go.
When I would go to new doctors to get details of my injury they wanted to say I was so crazy before ever attempting to do this. They would run neurological tests on me but because I had no insurance they would leave me to the student and less trained neuropsychologists still learning and in school for the written and oral evaluations.
This was devastating because this one student that I was given would write me up as being crazy but not until I had been sexually assaulted by a doctor in their facility which I seemed to be prey for at this time. I was more of a good time Lori now out of it most of the time and word had seemed to be getting around. The drugs, the craziness, the being followed had all caught up with me, but from back home and not NY.
To a later phone conversation after she had taken the report out of medical records she change her signature from student to PH.D, she would tell me she had done this for the doctor who was her friend who sexually assaulted me. I would later find out I was set up to him by this male roommate who had been scaring me so much about what he felt he had to cover that had happened to me in my youth and where I had somehow been left so groggy for such a time at the point when he had moved in.
I couldn’t understand how this student could legally get away with that or why she would want to. But I was so out of it now always seemingly on something I couldn’t comprehend enough to act upon it.
Everything just seemed to be happening so fast. My father had been worrying about me and somehow now was mentioning this male roommate to me, saying that he contacted him about my care. Not being able to put anything together being under most of the time I hadn't responded properly. Unfortunately before we could connect on any of this my father was dead. A misfortunate aneurism I was told.
My life had sunk deeper. Now I really had no one. We hadn’t had the best of a relationship my father and I before but now everyone knew my dad were dead and all the wolves would be closing in on me for sure.
And with that I was led to be put on all kinds of pain medication even stronger when I would go in for treatment for things unrelated that just ate my brain up even more.
What saved me somewhat was when I saw a story on TV about brain injuries and I said that’s me. I could relate to the symptoms and I knew right away and now understood the reason for the misunderstandings within myself. These people were trained in head injuries. This was this nice little place not too far from my town and I would venture over there to their facility for help.
This led me to a rehabilitation center for head injuries. But by now my medical records were a mess and a friend who made my life a living hell when I was forced to live with her having no more money left being in a state of confusion when I would get my now SSI checks awaiting disability accepted for non related reasons, would send the bad records that I was set up to for the sexual assaulter of the doctor around for me.
I also had to find a way to convince this new facility that I had had an anoxic experience without looking for fault with no medical records or backing. They hated this getting involved this way. I had already tried this and this is where it left me with the angry student neuropsych who now had more reasons than one to falter a medical report on me. It just seemed that I had no one at this time.
I did finally find one woman to help me who believed me enough to schedule a new test and this was the beginning to an end of a horrible nightmare which I had endured. But because she was afraid of being a part of a malpractice syndrome she would send me to a crazy man whom was referred to her which I would have to eventually readjust the name of doctor of the medical referral so I could see another.
It was finally agreed that it would be looked into as to me having a brain injury. I couldn’t believe it. After all I had been through and the way I had been treated. I thought I was on the right road.
But before this was done and I had to decide to take measures to change the referral I had to encounter the original referral for myself.
This test once again was only going to be accessed through written and oral testing and I knew I needed something more concrete to prove what happened to me.
When I arrived at the hospital where he was I asked for directions to him seeing as there were no listings of him on the wall with the others. I was told, “Oh yeah, he is upstairs with the monkeys as I returned back with a glance of horror. The woman answering me looked surprised and startled at my reaction as though I should know who I was dealing with and certainly not for any medical reasons.
Seeing this I certainly didn’t tell her what I was there for and I tried not to show anymore of a reaction to my fright of this answer to this area of the hospital and what might lie ahead.
I had to go. I had to see for myself. I wasn’t going to let paranoia and fear stop me of something I wasn’t 100% sure of. I had to see for myself.
But once I got up there I knew I wasn’t paranoid. I could see cages for animals in one room. And he brought me to the back by some computers that didn’t look normal. I had wondered what he had in mind.
I stayed a safe closely six feet away from him. Now that I am more conscious I wonder if I were the one to be experimented on. This deep dark hollow ran through my body as I knew now to get out. That’s when he noticed my fright and proceeded to initiate his conversation about my injury and how he could cure me trying to keep me in that room. He proceeded to tell me though that I would have to give him all my money from every resource I had I wondering where he had the information possibly to my father's inheritance.
That’s when I had the strength and the nerve to say no thank you and while I still could make a dash out of there.
Down the hollow length of an abandoned floor away from him now down to the elevators and down quite a few floors to the rest of civilization as I let a gasp of air out in relief. I was still normal and whole to me anyway like the others I thought. I could feel my head still there so thankful.
And for anything he would write up about my panic and fear I did not care for I knew I got out of there and would never go back and that I should never have gone in.
I then traveled to New York knowing this area better. I found a facility in the area with a neuropsychologist who specialized in head injuries. This was the change of my life as well where a diagnosis was concerned. No one could refute this now. This is when I changed the referral.
The only reason I was able to be diagnosed was because my father had left me some money, quite a bit of money that covered more than my tests through the proper channels that my insurance wouldn’t cover.
And my doctor had to write down the results of the information you could not ignore now with the proper papers in front of her. An anoxic event was then written down. What kind and from what was not determined at that point. But my deficits were concluded to that, a hypoxic incident.
But this was only going to get me a diagnoses and not keep track of how many times this other bogus record was being passed around now on me or not to the affect that every time I would encounter another medical staff that I would have to have all these papers with me not realizing that this was essential for my life in my medical treatment by everyone now.
I then had to see a neurologist. The first neurologist which I was told to see did not want to get involved as to what she saw was a malpractice case as well, me still not understanding this was done as an act of violence.
She told me to just deal with my injury as it stood and felt that nothing would show up on any physical test to my injury. But to her dismay and my pushing it did. I told her I could have a seizure and at her fear of this she agreed to send me to have an EEG and some other battery of tests that would not conclude the exact deficits except the EEG.
I had swiftly left the hospital with a wod of paper large enough of 5 novels all stacked up together as the nurse was now being advised and second guessed that was not a good move to give me those sheets of paper as the rolls of paper unrolled by the breeze of me running now to catch an elevator in a hurry with it and taking it directly to a man who now specialized in cerebral palsy as I had been randomly referred by someone.
I felt the air outside as I could feel a breath of freedom and the feel of satisfying the truth of what had happened to me.
From there everything went down the line to a more undeniable diagnose to a hypoxic encephalopathy from anesthesia showing up in the small traces of how my brain was receiving its messages, so subtle yet so answering in the hands of this one expert man.
I wasn’t even angry and felt past that point of malpractice being followed by now, drugged, and having attempts on my life as I ran towards the truth of what happened to me with glee having some answers.
An event from anesthesia no one wanted to know how or who or when. Not many people get this and to the severity that I did.
After that it was never spoken of and if I tried to push it my company was completely excused. I then knew how serious the reasons for my injury were and for how hard I fought I tried not to think of now. I really didn’t want to know.
But this definitive diagnosis wouldn’t help me. Even though I had the truth now no one wanted to hear it or even speak of it with me as far as medical was concerned and even sometimes outside of that. It was always said that I had a reaction to anesthesia briefly might be the only words spoken and usually brashly put towards me if I even ever spoke of it. Where I had surgery before successfully with no horror effects of these I knew this wasn’t true.
Because of this rarity of the diagnosis I couldn’t find anyone who I could communicate this injury to or relate or find anyone who could relate in this area.
The head injury support groups were always of actual injuries to the head by force (which I would receive later by my stalkers or followers) or stroke or simply the loss of oxygen. And many of the patients that I encountered complained that their life was going by and that half the time they were unaware of where they were being so heavily medicated and disregarded.
But the monitors of these head injury meetings where I would attend would quickly dismiss this comment as a usual account. I would look at them and think how sad that they can’t reach anyone to listen to them seriously as I could see the helpless cry for help on their faces in an attempt of a hopeless situation to them as I was running from the same thing it seemed. It only made me feel worse.
And the people there of the heavy medications that they were on would kill me of my injury. I couldn’t even break down regular doses of cough medication as a child now.
I were in fear all the time that I would need emergency services and not able to respond and would be administered too much medicine that would kill me. I was especially scared I might have to go into the hospital again and this time die from the anesthesia that now so lingered sensitive to my body so I began to wear medical a bracelet.
I was told by my friends not to divulge my injury that this would be an embarrassment. I had an injury that you couldn’t see but yet something enough to make knowledge of I felt yet I wasn’t sitting there immobile not incapable of taking care of myself. Which at the time it didn’t seem enough for anyone around me to take recognition of, not at that time anyway.
When I would go to rehab it was stated in the notes that the doctors had said I didn’t need any yet I was sent there for it. I kept getting conflicting information as this.
Instead I would be given quirky pamphlets with quirky questions that had nothing to do with my injury. The questions didn’t make sense at all. They seemed to be of a cartoon nature and I felt that my intellect and demeanor was being insulted. I couldn’t continue without comprising myself so I left.
My physical therapies or brain stimulating exercises were always dismissed unless I searched and paid for them myself which left me exhausted trying to do this seeing as I had to try and explain my own injury and deficits which most were unfamiliar with being different than a regular head injury. This left me with a road nowhere to go.
I had been told to use an organizer when my injury was somewhat recognized by some professionals in the field which was very helpful. I realized how I couldn’t do without it.
I have alarms set and schedulers on my phone that keep me organized and functioning on time up until this day. It’s hard to keep me apart from others running their busy lives on this note. But they still didn’t identify with my sensory damage which was getting worse and worse from all the unasked for drugs I seemed to be being administered in my homes and of some of my friend’s homes.
I was refused a nutritionist specializing or at least having knowledge of brain injuries through my insurance. I needed to lose weight and I was afraid to leave out some foods that my body needed to function in order not to have seizures that I was having for some reason by now.
I had been hit on the head and had gone into a coma by now from my stalkers catching up with me now knowing they were the ones connected with my original injury and to my past.
These seizures were never recognized by the doctors whether I reported them or not and I had to treat them on my own. I would feel my body on the line all the time and I was afraid to have seizures again.
I would feel the wrath of my body go all around me as I would feel myself coming up trying to get through it. I felt myself mesh along as with the flow I would start my journey with faith and hope and a smile to get through it all and hold on as I lost my breath more and more during these times I knew I was contributing to a further, deeper brain injury.
How hard it was now for me to think and write. My brains senses had all been damaged and screwed up. I couldn’t see things sometimes and yet I could others. I would hold a cup to my mouth and miss the liquid which hadn’t initially happened before.
It would now at times pour out onto me and my clothes if I wasn’t concentrating enough yet I could drive a car. I would report these things to my doctor and she would disallow my statements to her and move on.
How would I convince people of my deficits when I couldn’t even get them to listen to the affects going on of the damage I derived, ones that did not show up on any of these tests.
I would hold my hand out sometimes like a child’s and say help me, please take it. Please help me take care of myself because yes sometimes I am lost in my head and I don’t know what to do anymore.
But I never got any response from them, any of these doctors. I thought I would surround myself instead by people who loved me and get them involved with my meetings but I knew I really didn’t have any. No one responded to go with me or about my injury at all. These were people that I had run from and spaced so far away from my life for a reason.
I was on my own. On a journey that no one would want to take with me and no one would want to take on their own.
I ended up being befriended by people I would never deal with in my whole life never mind giving them the time of day.
When I eventually got pregnant by one of them in one of my complacent stages my wishes of having a child were great but all the doctors would do is threaten to take him away from me. I hoped that he wouldn’t notice my injuries before I could explain them to him and I hoped he wouldn’t be taken from me before I could prove that I could raise him.
It seemed so unfair that I could be injured out of violence and now have to fight to keep my child. I had already felt cheated enough and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I had to fight and run many times now because I seemed to be in more of a domestic violence situation and being stalked now more than ever. I had filed my restraining order but no one would ever help me. I had suffered a blow to the head, pushed down a flight of stairs, and attacked in the hospital putting me into a deeper coma after giving birth. I had wondered many more times that I can count whether or not my son or my baby at the time I started would be better off with others but always came to the same conclusion that no one could ever love him like I do.
I also worried what would happen to him in another's home, one that I didn’t know or of the horrible stories I would hear of the system. And many times couldn’t help but picture the devastating outcome. Also in fear that I was the only one that knew the extent of the danger that was going on. And to the fact that I couldn’t get anyone to understand the extent of the danger my son and I were in.
Now I see his intelligence bypass me as this has happened so early on. Way before I imagined that he would notice the difference. As others didn’t feel the same as I my son was now being shown mistrust and having to fight it everyday of his life of his love towards me.
It seemed the more I tried to find more of what happened to me to get to the truth my life got harder. My SSDA medical reviews were always hard. One would try and push me to say I were depressed and I would assure them that I were not. I had told them of a sexual assault I had encountered in New York after surgery that I had reported which I thought was on file now but was never filed I would find out later by Internal Affairs.
Seeing this didn’t help me with this particular review I would have to take my time around this man to think of what my next routine movements would be in my body and how my brain was going to recognize that which was being misread as crazy as he would throw stern questions and accusations at me. Then as my senses would go tell my son to let me walk out to the doorway by myself letting me find my own way as my vision now had temporarily been lost from my sensory damage from the original injury of the anesthesia put overly inside of me and from the push this man had just put on me.
I would sometimes even come home and it would seem as though there were drugs in my foods that I would only eat even as my son were a youngster and even a baby to find my brain getting worse to an even more irreparable damage that you cannot imagine. As at times I would see my abusers trying to break in. When reported I would receive more abusive tactfully planned responses. My restraining orders meant nothing find my abusers seemed to be the befriended ones. They just didn’t appear of this nature to me.
My body would freeze and not move at times because it couldn’t. I would have convulsions involuntarily and seizures at any time still which wasn’t wanted to be discussed. These would get worse but I couldn’t understand what had changed in my life and what had been possibly being done to me.
I would demand blood tests and be refused a simple command to possibly show some signs or answers to this. Yet I would still get increasingly bad to such a minor injury where it all started out as.
At one point when I was drugged there was a man in emergency waiting for me that seemed to know I would be coming in. He threatened me he would put me away and would not run a test on the product that I had suspected or run a blood test on me. He instead ordered me as a threat to get a psychological evaluation at a mental health facility.
I only went because I had been drugged one last too many times after my car had been set up for me to die in and this one was so strong if it was even a drug. I could not tell the burning in my head was so bad it could have been anything deadly and I started to realize there could be more being done to my body than I initially feared for, and later found what it might be.
My car had been set up with gas rags and a transmitter of some kind in the trunk telling me that I would die next that I ran from and found myself being dragged from the gas tank of my car about forty feet which was covered up later with death threats of mafia hits unless I waited until they could clear the trunk out of all debris to there ineffective attack.
I would go to pick up my personal affects and find the car trunk lock cut out with metal scissors, with the woman who would possibly drug me for them, desperately cut out to clear all evidence. So my idea was to try and get this off track by giving in to their command, momentarily anyway. I knew I wouldn't be written up as crazy but they didn't have to know that. I had figured they probably would feel that they got what they wanted and leave me alone for the time being until I could get away temporarily.
I did as the man asked the next day at the evaluation. Knowing I would not be found crazy but instead referred to a head injury foundation which I already had, I seemed to receive this sense of peace around me for a time as though I had answered a prayer to some, and that’s what I needed to get away.
I did not discuss the outcome yet to keep that to myself. But this was going to put me into another dilemma. As I had felt I finally was able to put some peace and quiet behind me now and I felt my body clearing from any drugs I may have been put on I was ready to leave back to the city.
But this started a whole new problem being put into the hands of some friends needing to be signed out as per their normal procedures putting me in more jeopardy with others whom I thought were friends and then this is where the rest of the past caught up with me and I wasn't going to happily run back to NY to pick up on acting again now with my new income as I had been doing after my initial injury using my natural born talents to work and have fun at the same time but not making much money. These friends were to take me down with my abusers so I would never go back again, not the same if I ever wanted to.
I had turned to a friend to thank her and told her of how much better I felt after her letting me stay in her home for a time, my body coming back now being drained of all drugs. Just at that time she offered me a sandwich with drugs she said.
I had thought obviously she was kidding knowing her well and uphold as I took a bite I shockingly felt the same dangerous drug I just got away from that I had been running from for so long now.
I couldn’t believe it but with the helpless look on my face I looked back at her in horror and disbelief that she would do this to me. Something that took me so long to get out of my body and I felt I would not suffer any long term affects had just caught up with me from someone that I thought I would and could always trust.
I said how can you do this to me? She said I put it in the mayonnaise.
It would be days, maybe weeks before I would be able to leave her home. I was told and to believe an old classmate who was possibly sleeping with my husband was the lawyer behind this friend doing this to me.
She would ask me to punch her out of attention I guess where I had been the beautiful one in school and got all the attention and now this was her chance to get hers and that was needed for her I guess. And when she was finished with me she would drop me off at another friends house and tell me never to call her again.
I slowly tried to sneak out of that town and state to some more familiar ground that I had ran to before, back to New York, the land of safety to me still very shaky.
The more I pushed it each time I would get well enough the more it drove me to threats of having my SSDA taken away. It seemed the more my brain grew and I could think the more the abusers wanted me.
I was left to live in almost uninhabitable of places sometimes. If I were quiet it would get better and if I made a fuss it would get worse.
People would be sad that I wasn’t the same person but I would say I was just without the inhibitions that I once had. I’m not so injured it’s just the little things inside of me that are so wrong that is always being pulled on around me that make me look so bad.
My mind is still here it’s just my body does what it wants to do at times. My muscles had suffered so much damage from whatever I was being administered without my consent I would have to drag my body at times. I needed this noticed.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-29 show above.)