It was a lesson hard learned…but I did it… I was in a coma 5 years ago…and I want you to know that IF you will it…you CAN do it!!

Trust me on that…I'm not supposed to be walking…but I showed them!! *grin*…You can't even tell!!

They put the papers in front of my (then 19 yr. old) daughter to sign me off the life support….she tells it like this…. They said "Don't do it now, go home, think it thru and come back tomorrow"…so she went home (an hours drive from the hospital), she told me she went to bed, but didn't sleep, got up drove back to the hospital where they put the papers in front of her once again…she says she looked down at the papers and just stared at them for 5 minutes or more and as she looked up at the doctors, she slid the papers back across the table and said…"YOU obviously don't know MY mother, SHE is too stubborn too die!! SHE'S not done here yet!"

They told her that even if I came out of it, I would not be myself and I would probably never walk again and that they were only giving me a 10% chance of coming out of it at all…….

Two weeks later I started coming out of it..(guess they didn't know as much as they thought they did! lol) I spent a total of almost 8 months, give or take a few days, in the hospital (about 4 in the coma and 4 rebuilding my strength). They had pumped me so full of fluids to keep me alive that when I woke up from it I weighed 286 pounds!!!…I could NOT move, my little muscles just couldn't lift the weight…I thought I was paralyzed…..and to add to all of THAT, I was born with only one kidney and due to the trama of the coma, it shut down, I was on dialysis every other day while in the hospital, one day they cleaned my blood, the next they would suck off fluid…and so on and so on….by the time I was released I weighed 180….still big for me though…I had NEVER weighed more than 172 and that was when I was 9 months pregnant! lol

They sent me home with an air mattress hospital bed…nicely arranged in my living-room and after 10 MORE, very long and excruciatingly painful, months of physical therapy, I managed to get into my wheelchair all by myself!! Yeah me!

Slowly but surely,I began pushing up on the arms of my wheelchair to strengthen my arms and legs…got to where I could stand in front of my wheelchair with the help of a walker and then my progress just leveled out…came to a halt actually…but I AM stubborn, just like my daughter said…I kept trying…………

Then one day about 3 or 4 months later, when she came home from work, I was sitting in my wheelchair, with my walker in front of me and as she came thru the back door I said "STOP!", she did and said "What Mom?", I stood up and smiled a BIG GRIN at her and she smiled and said "I know Mom, you're getting real good at that!" and she started walking toward me, I yelled out "NO STOP!" and I took the walker and set it aside and took 3 steps toward her…..she fell to the floor crying and laughing all at the same time!!

So….you see…I KNOW it can be done, IF you want it bad enough! So NEVER think things are at there worst…..and that there is no hope for improvement….because there is my friend…I am living proof!