The helicopter ride from Logan Regional Hospital to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City felt bleak.
That’s really the only word I can think of for it.
Bleak.
The sun was going down by then, and I remember lying on that stretcher looking out the window and seeing nothing but it getting darker and darker.
I was scared.
Really scared.
I had no idea where I was going. I knew I was being flown to another hospital, obviously, but I didn’t really know which one at the time, who would be there when I landed, or what the hell was going to happen to me once I got there.
The paramedics weren’t saying much.
One of them kept his hand on my shoulder for most of the flight.
I remember that.
It was such a small thing, but it was comforting.
The helicopter was bumpy. Everything about it felt strange and surreal.
How the hell had I gotten here?
A couple of days ago I was riding a dirt bike around Grandma’s yard with my five-year-old sitting in front of me.
Now I was in a helicopter in the dark with blood in my brain.
Life can change pretty damn fast.
June 2002
When we landed on the helicopter pad at the University of Utah, there were people waiting for us. Paramedics. Hospital staff. Everybody moving quickly.
They rolled me inside and down another long white hospital hallway under those horrible hospital lights.
Seriously.
Why do hospitals have such shitty lighting?
You already feel like crap.
You don’t need to look like crap too.
Anyway.
They got me into a room, and everything around me seemed chaotic. People moving. People talking. Everybody seemed to know something I didn’t.
I still didn’t really understand what the hell was happening.
Then all of a sudden, my Uncle K walked into the room.
I hadn’t seen him for a while.
I’ve said before that I was kind of the black sheep of my family. I grew up in a pretty religious family, which I actually feel very blessed for. And even though I was definitely the wild one, I always knew my family and my extended family loved me.
Uncle K was there for me.
He had come to give me a blessing.
I remember sitting up in that hospital bed while he put his hands on my head and prayed for me.
And I remember him tearing up.
That got me.
Because I still hadn’t completely wrapped my head around what was happening to me.
But everybody else looked so damn worried.
Then my best friends, Shane and Wendy, came into the room.
Shane and Wendy and I have been best friends since we were twelve years old.
We still are today.
Apparently news had traveled fast, but not necessarily accurately. They told me they’d initially been told I was at a different hospital and had been trying to track me down before finally finding me at the U.
They were so worried.
Everybody was so worried.
And I was sitting there watching all these people come through the door looking terrified while part of me was still thinking:
What the hell is going on?
Everything after that gets a little blurry.
I kept my medical records from that time, and Grandma kept notes, so years later I’ve been able to piece together things that I don’t actually remember myself.
According to those records and notes, I was admitted to the Neuro Critical Care Unit #1.
I do remember being taken to a room.
The lights were dimmed, thank God.
And they let Grandma come back with me.
So once again, it was just Grandma and me.
Nurses came in and told me they needed to take me for another test. I believe it was called a cerebral angiogram.
At that point my response to pretty much everything was:
Okay.
Sure.
Whatever.
Just make my damn head stop hurting.
They wheeled me out, and I remember looking back and leaving Grandma sitting alone in that empty room.
Two nurses took me down—a man and a woman—and I remember being really annoyed with them.
They were talking.
Laughing.
Carrying on like it was just another normal day at work.
And maybe for them it was.
But it sure as hell wasn’t a normal day for me.
I was scared. I felt like shit. My brain was bleeding. I didn’t know if I was going to live.
And these two were laughing.
I was pissed.
We got into a room that looked almost like an operating room, and they started explaining the procedure.
The way I remember it being explained was that the doctor would numb an area near my groin, insert a tube into an artery and guide it up through my body toward my brain. Then they would inject dye so they could see where the bleeding was coming from and how bad it was.
Or something like that.
At this point I was annoyed, mad, sad, exhausted and felt like total crap.
But okay.
Let’s do it.
They numbed the area.
And then the procedure started.
I don’t know what happened or why it hurt the way it did.
I only know what I remember.
And I remember excruciating pain.
I cried.
I pleaded with them.
I sobbed and told them how badly it hurt.
I remember feeling like I could feel that tube tearing its way through my body and up behind my eyes.
Then there was this strange taste in my mouth.
I assume that was when they injected the dye, but I don’t know.
I just remember the pain.
It hurt so fucking bad that at one point I remember thinking:
I just want to die.
Not because I wanted my life to end.
I wanted the pain to end.
Eventually, it was over.
And I remember the ride back to my room almost as clearly as the ride there.
Same hallway.
Same two nurses.
Completely different people.
Nobody was laughing now.
Nobody was talking.
They were quiet.
Solemn.
Respectful.
And I was lying there still sobbing.
They wheeled me back into the room and parked my bed next to Grandma.
She held my hand.
That’s what Grandma did.
She held my hand while I cried.
Then she went out and told the nurses I needed more pain medicine.
More Valium.
Just give me more Valium.
Make this go away.
A nurse came in, hooked something up to my IV…
And to sleep I went.
What felt like days later—but I believe was actually the next day—I was scheduled for surgery.
I honestly don’t remember how those plans were made.
I don’t remember someone sitting down with me and having some big conversation about what was going to happen.
There are pieces of this entire experience that are crystal clear in my mind.
And then there are just holes.
While I was in the hospital, life outside of that room kept moving.
My kids still needed somewhere to sleep.
They still needed to eat.
They still needed somebody to take care of them.
Colton and Taylor stayed with their dad, Todd.
Shane and Wendy went and got my baby, Shaylee. She wasn’t even quite a year old yet, and Todd suddenly had three little kids to figure out while their mom was in neuro critical care preparing for brain surgery.
So my best friends stepped in and took my baby. I don't even know who arranged that. But it happened.
I remember missing my kids so much.
And somewhere in there, the reality of everything finally started getting through to me.
Oh my God.
This is real.
What if I never see them again?
And then my mind went somewhere even darker.
Maybe this was the way it was supposed to happen.
Maybe they’d be better off without me raising them.
I was still quite the drinker back then.
Quite the partier.
Quite the wild one, for sure. And still continued to be for many years after this.
I wasn’t lying in that hospital bed thinking I had been some amazing mother whose children couldn’t possibly survive without her.
I was thinking maybe they deserved better than what I could give them.
Maybe this was how it was supposed to happen.
Those are horrible thoughts to admit now.
But they were mine.
I was a young mother with three babies, lying in a neuro critical care unit waiting for brain surgery and wondering if maybe the universe was correcting a mistake.
At some point, Grandma told me my mom had booked a flight from Texas.
She was coming.
I was so happy.
Mom had been living in Texas for about three years by then, and for a while my brothers were there too. I didn’t get to see them very much.
And yes, I had Grandma.
God, did I have Grandma.
I was so incredibly blessed to have her.
But right then?
I wanted my mom.
Then it was time for surgery.
Mom hadn’t made it there yet.
It was still just Grandma and me.
They came into the room to get me, and once again they started wheeling me away.
I remember looking back.
Grandma was sitting there alone in that room.
And I was leaving her again.
They wheeled me into the operating room and started explaining what was going to happen.
I don’t remember much of it.
I remember them showing me this big machine and explaining that it was going to breathe for me.
I remember them explaining something about restraints keeping my brain and body still during the surgery.
And I remember staring at it thinking:
You what?
Okay.
Okay.
Then they showed me how I was going to be positioned on the operating table.
That’s when I lost it.
I sobbed.
I don’t remember getting onto the table.
I don’t remember them positioning me.
I don’t remember anything after that except hearing someone count.
Three.
Two.
And then—
I opened my eyes.
The room was dim.
For a second I just lay there.
Then I looked down.
Grandma was sitting beside my bed.
Her forehead was resting on the edge of my bed.
She was asleep.
I felt pressure on my head.
So I reached up to touch it.
Except I didn’t feel my head.
I felt this enormous bandage.
In my memory, the damn thing felt like it was sticking three or four inches off the top of my head.
I moved my hand around it, trying to understand what I was touching.
I started to cry. I cried a lot.
I put my hand back down.
Then I reached over and touched Grandma’s arm.
She woke up.
She was still there.
Grandma P
