Miles To Go Before I Sleep (27 page)

After about a month in the field, I was scheduled to take a special training course at IBM's headquarters in Thornwood, New York. I joined a large group of people who had the same job I did in different parts of the world. We all came together in Thornwood for further training. It was the first time IBM had done this type of training.

I was excited to learn that my friend Suki Fitzgerald was also scheduled to attend the training.

I flew to New York City to meet Paula Lang. She drove us into the city, where we parked and got out to walk to a restaurant for lunch. We stopped at a stoplight and waited for the light to change.

“Let's go!” Paula said.

The light changed and Paula was off and running. In blind faith, I obediently followed—then halted in my tracks.

I stood, bewildered, in the middle of a busy New York street. I looked around and saw jumbled-up pieces of cars—fragmented, broken, tangled-up images at odd angles—speeding straight for me. Their horns blared a rude warning. Somehow, I staggered to the median.

“Are you okay?” Paula asked, sensing my fear.

“Yes, but I want to get across the street.”

“Let's go!” she said again.

This time, she went without me. I waited a few minutes to recover before venturing to cross again.

The mismatch between my enthusiasm for the job and my readiness to do it created a lot of stress. Four months after the hijacking, I was force-feeding my injured brain a ton of new information and jetting cross country with IBM executives. I was clearly in over my head.

What in the world am I doing here?
I thought to myself.

I felt like a scared little girl. I knew people could quickly cross a busy street. But I'd forgotten how.

The first morning in Thornwood, Suki and I both had some free time and decided to work out at IBM's beautiful corporate gym. We had the place to ourselves.

I always loved working out and being fit. I grew up playing softball and played on the softball and basketball teams in high school. In Cairo, Scott and I worked out at the Cairo American College. I'd worked up to running four miles a day and had really built up my legs.

I went over to the exercise bicycle and climbed on. It felt good to start pedaling. Then it happened. I saw the rainbow light that signaled an oncoming seizure, just like I'd seen at my Toastmaster's meeting a few months ago.

Oh, no!
I said to myself. I was frantic and started panicking. I felt a surge of adrenaline rush through my body. I jumped off the bike and ran over to Suki who was jogging on a treadmill.

“I'm going to have a seizure,” I said.

“What do I do?” she asked, coming to a dead stop.

We were both scared.

I told Suki to move things away the best she could and let me have a seizure. “You'll know when I'm finished, because I'll just collapse,” I said. “When that happens, turn me over to my side so I don't choke.”

I started feeling prickly, and my body started getting cold. In the meantime, the rainbow light continued its steady shift to the center of my visual field.

I could tell Suki was nervous. She isn't one to let on, but I could tell from the quaver in her voice. She found a phone and called 911.

The seizure rendered me unconscious and, the next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital room. “Where am I?” I asked the nurse.

She explained that I was in a New York hospital. I called Scott and told him what happened. He offered to fly out to New York, but I didn't think it was necessary. That afternoon, a manager from IBM came to visit me. He was very kind and understanding. He arranged for IBM to fly me back home to recuperate. “Take some time off, Jackie,” he said. “If you still want the job, it will be waiting for you when you're feeling better.

The grand mal seizure was over, but when I got back to Minnesota, my hands wouldn't stop trembling. There was something new and different about these tremors. My hands and arms were shaking, but I didn't see a white light or rainbow light.

I made an appointment with my neurosurgeon at the University of Minnesota Hospital to find out what was wrong. He came into my room and said he wanted me to see a Dr. Ilo Leppik a neurologist at the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the University of Minnesota.

My hands and leg were shaking when Dr. Leppik walked into the examining room. I was sure I was having another seizure.

Leppik had already reviewed my chart and started checking me out. First, he asked me to try walking a straight line—which I couldn't do. Then he asked me to hold my arms parallel to the floor and slowly bring my index fingers together to touch my nose at the same time. I couldn't do that either. I had problems with my balance.

“I don't think you're having a seizure,” Dr. Leppik said. Before coming into my room, he carefully observed me from behind a one-way mirror, paying close attention to the nature of the shaking motion in my limbs.

The doctor put his hand on my hands and I stopped shaking. “I think this has to do with your emotional status right now,” he said. “I'm going to change your medication so that you won't have any more grand mal seizures. What's happening is that your medication is not strong enough to keep the seizures from coming out in your body. We have to stop that. Those are real. But the tremors you're having right now have more to do with your emotional state.”

I told Dr. Leppik about the depression I couldn't seem to shake. He said depression was a possible side effect of Dilantin, the antiseizure medication I was on, and that there were many other medication options we could try.

Dr. Leppik was more hopeful and positive about my future than other doctors had been. He was also very distinguished in his profession; he was an internationally renowned neurologist who traveled and spoke widely.

I liked Dr. Leppik right away. He understood what was going on with me and genuinely seemed to care. He was in his fifties, wore glasses, had dark blond hair, and seemed a little shy. “Tell me a little bit more about what's going on in your life right now,” Dr. Leppik said, gently.

As I told him about my job with IBM, I saw his eyes widen. The look on his face said, “My God, woman, don't you realize you were just shot in the head!”

“Jackie,” he shook his head, “you've got to slow down. I want you to take at least four months off.”

I felt so good, as if somebody had finally given me permission to heal. For the first time, I began to realize the terrific pressure I'd been putting on myself to rush through my recovery and rehabilitation. Four months after being shot in the head at point-blank range, I'd taken a demanding professional job.

I was basing the most important decisions in my life on what I thought
other
people wanted or needed me to do—not on my own needs. I was relying on external authorities—doctors, Scott, my parents—to be my guides. I was acting as if I needed Scott's permission to take time off to heal. I was waiting for doctors to tell me how to heal.

It was obvious to Dr. Leppik that my strategy wasn't working, and it was becoming more obvious to me. I quit my training program with IBM and decided to stay home for a while.

Staying home was when the pain started to come. I'd been running to get away from the pain, so I wouldn't have to feel what was going on inside me. Now, I had nowhere to run. I had to give myself permission to heal.

There were many important milestones in my continued journey to find people and places that could help me heal. One of these was meeting Dr. Robert Maxwell, a doctor who filled in one time when my regular neurosurgeon was not able to keep a scheduled appointment in the summer of 1986. Dr. Maxwell was a tall man with dashing good looks and a kind, reassuring voice. He reminded me of a gentle, strong father figure.

I was having CAT scans often because the doctors were concerned about bone fragments still in my brain. The pieces had been left behind, because the surgeons couldn't get them all.

“Do they always get the pieces out?” I asked Dr. Maxwell. I certainly wasn't the first person shot in the head to have bone fragments left—I didn't want to be the only one. I sought some reassurance that my problem was “normal” and clearly understood.

“Sometimes we have to leave them in,” Dr. Maxwell explained. “It would cause too much damage if we tried to take them all out.”

He said doctors during World War II found that meticulously removing all the bone fragments sometimes caused people to wake up disabled.

“If the bones are too far in to get our fingers in, we just let them stay,” Maxwell added. “We're keeping an eye on where the fragments are and making sure scar tissue develops properly.” Doctors wanted to make sure the bone fragments didn't go in any deeper.

Dr. Maxwell showed me a copy of my CAT scan and pointed to the bone fragments and scar tissue forming over them. He took me by the hand, spent lots of time with me, and answered all my questions. I kept thinking,
Boy, doesn't he have another appointment?

As I listened to Dr. Maxwell's caring voice and felt his reassuring hand on my shoulder, a light went on.
Ah, this is it
, I thought.
I've finally reached home. I finally got the doctor I wanted.

Everything's so hard when you're healing from a head injury. If you have the right doctors, it's easier to ask questions and find answers. It took a lot of physical and emotional energy for me to get satisfying answers to my complex difficulties. Now that I knew I was being listened to, I could take time to heal other parts of myself.

Dr. Leppik referred me to a psychologist at the University of Minnesota's epilepsy center who worked with epileptic patients on an emotional level. My first visit was on December 16, 1986, a little over a year after the hijacking. At that meeting, the counselor reviewed some memory strengthening exercises with me and encouraged me to slow down so I didn't set myself up for having a seizure. I was thinking about taking a university class, but the counselor suggested I consider taking a community education course to strengthen my memory. The counselor was very adamant about the notion that I needed to accept my long-term limitations and lower my expectations for myself. She saw me as refusing to accept these ideas.