Missing Without A Trace (24 page)

When Tanya saw her mother walking towards her bed, her first thoughts were, “She’s my abuser. I can’t move. I was shocked she was there. She pushed her way in even though she knew I didn’t want her there. She wasn’t being mean, so I let her come back and try to be helpful…. I was on a lot of drugs, so I let things happen I didn’t want.”

After the first week, Tanya was transferred out of ICU and into a regular room. Tanya recollects “a police officer at my bedside, a man with black hair. He said, ‘I’m the one who rescued you.’ I felt gratitude towards him, but he didn’t seem to accept my gratitude. He was staring at me with no emotion. He said that there were a lot of people involved. I said, ‘God.’ He asked me what I remembered. He said, ‘We tore the roof off your car. You don’t remember that?’ I said, ‘It was so nice of you to stop by and see me.’ He said, ‘I was just here doing something else.’ It was weird.”

A rehabilitation psychologist noted that Tanya “had a vivid and apparently accurate recall for the accident.” But two days later, curiously, things changed. “Today, the patient denies recollection of the accident and
the period of time she was trapped in the car…. Patient’s husband is now happy that patient does not recall the event. He is concerned about his wife’s well being should those memories return.”

Two days after this, the rehab psychologist noted, “Patient reports two nightmares…. She states that she wakes in fear but then falls back to sleep and does not remember their content…. Patient continues to deny memories of event and she states she is happy about the lack of memories.” A couple of weeks later, he wrote, “Patient continues to deny recollection of event…. She is able to recount the story again based on what she has been told without… apparent distress.” Yet, subsequently, Tanya has locked these memories away.

When Tanya first saw one of her wounds, as the nurse started to change the dressing, she became frantic. “I asked the nurse for a washcloth to put over my eyes. After that, I didn’t let them let me see it. I had them cover my eyes so I couldn’t see my wounds.” Indeed, this was a concrete symbol of what Tanya has been doing all of her life. Just as she has done with her emotional wounds from childhood and her accident, she blocks out memories so that she won’t have to “see” what really happened.

Tanya dreaded the painful, twice-daily wound changes. She “howled,” like her dog Lady, hoping it would be as soothing to her as it had seemed to be for Lady. But Tanya dreaded looking at her emotional wounds even more, terrified that they would cause more pain than howling or painkillers could muffle.

After she was at Harborview for almost a month, the surgery team asked the Psychiatry Consultation and Liaison Service to evaluate Tanya for anxiety and depression. By this point, she had had three more surgeries on her leg, another surgery to repair her clavicle fracture, and another to close her facial laceration. The psychiatrist wrote that Tanya “does not have any memory about events leading to the car accident…. She apparently did not know about the extensive media coverage regarding her case until recently…. Her husband… has appeared on many media outlets. Several
days ago he brought a DVD recapping some of the media coverage… and they watched this video together. She describes this as being incredibly sad, but at the same time quite incredible (which reinforced her belief of the amazing power of God). She feels incredibly blessed to be alive and believes that God has been playing a large part in her survival and recovery.”

After almost a month, Tanya “stood for the first time.” The rehab psychologist noted that she had “less of a vacant gaze.” She had been having problems with her appetite, since the beginning of her hospitalization. Hospital records described her as “emaciated.” Tanya recalls fondly that, “the nutritionist came into play. She helped me with my need to eat healthy foods. She got them to bring organic salads and for the cook to make me brown rice and eggs. My husband brought me food. And I drank a lot of Ensure.”

About six weeks into her stay, the rehab psychologist observed Tanya to be “crying uncontrollably” and “frustrated with (the) need for additional surgeries.” An anesthesiologist had told her, “You’re the star here in Seattle,” but it hadn’t seemed to help. Instead, Tanya said, “I’m feeling really sad right now. I want to be done with this and go home.”

Tanya had been trying to sit up. “I don’t remember how I got up. My heart got used to lying down. I thought I’d throw up when I sat up. I couldn’t sit up very long, so they put me down again.” When she was able to sit up she realized, “I had a beautiful view. There was life happening in Seattle. I felt so far away from being a productive citizen.”

After about seven weeks, though Tanya had worked with other physical therapists, she refused to work with one of them, with whom she felt unsafe. Tanya became anxious that she would fall. She tried harder, though she still had bad days.

A teaching hospital, Harborview is staffed by doctors and residents from the University of Washington. Groups of them visited Tanya on daily
rounds. One day, “I asked a woman resident, ‘Am I going to walk again?’ She looked at me with so much hope, and said, ‘You will walk again’.” But one of the supervising doctors pulled the resident away, dashing Tanya’s hopes with, “There’s no guarantee of that.”

Two months into her hospital stay, despite ongoing surgical procedures, Tanya was able to stand and transfer into a wheelchair with minimal assistance.

She’d gone from lying down to sitting up, to getting out of bed and into a wheelchair, and later to a walker. “It was like the two-hour workout I used to do at the gym—just getting to the bed or to the potty. Many times, I almost fell backwards. It was really traumatic to realize I didn’t have control of my body.”

Soon it would be decided whether Tanya would transfer to inpatient rehabilitation, where she could progress at a more accelerated pace, or to a skilled nursing facility, where there would be little expectation of progress. In order to be eligible for inpatient rehab, she would have to reach certain milestones of mobility. This was proving difficult for her because of her “anxiety and difficulty trusting.” Tanya had refused to take an antidepressant when it was recommended weeks before, but “bouts of tearfulness” had persisted. And, now, she needed to overcome the fears that were holding her back—before her fate was decided for her. Since the doctors would not agree to let her take her natural supplements, Tanya finally agreed to take an antidepressant (all the while, promising herself that she would resume her nutritional approach as soon as she returned home).

“The physical therapist said, ‘You either walk or you go to a nursing home.’ In order to go to rehab, I had to show that I could do many tasks. I had to do a lot of exercises with my hands and feet in bed. I had to be able to sit up for a long amount of time. It was making me dizzy and I had no cushion on my bottom, because I had no more fat or muscle there, so it was painful. I got that rubbing thing on my bottom bone—bedsores—so
I had to move around.”

Tanya’s chances were not looking good. But, when the rehabilitation medicine doctor rejected her for the inpatient unit, Tanya dug down deeper. “I was gonna get out of that victim state! But I only had a short time to go from the wheelchair to the walker.” Determined to show them that she could do it, Tanya made enough progress to be admitted to rehab less than a week later. It was the beginning of December, and she told them her goal was to be discharged home by Christmas.

“I was so happy I got into rehab! I liked the painted butterflies on the ceiling. I could see the light. Soon, I’d be going home.” Tanya’s mother visited her there, and chirped, “Your doctor said you’re a go-getter. You’ll be leaving soon.” But, when she saw Tanya was sullen, Nancy asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

“I said, ‘Yes.’ I made sure my mother, grandmother, and uncle couldn’t get in to see me. My grandmother never has nice things to say. She said, ‘Tanya looks really thin.’ They were looking at me like I’m a freak.” Although Tanya was desperate to see love in their eyes, especially at this vulnerable time, all she saw was judgment.

Once Tanya was on the rehab unit, she was seen by more rehab psychologists. They noted that Tanya’s physical therapists “report that while patient is participating in therapies, she is highly anxious and micro-manages therapeutic sessions. These behaviors are pre-morbid in nature,” (meaning that her behaviors were personality traits that pre-existed her current medical problems). She was still “very fearful of falling.” A week later, Tanya listed her accomplishments: “increased appetite, increased endurance, a successful trip to the health food store… walking up and down four stairs.” The staff commented, “Patient did note difficulty being in a crowd at the store, but believes she was able to handle it adequately.”

The day before her discharge, Tanya went on an outing and “got her hair detangled.” The accident had wreaked havoc with it. In fact, since the accident, for several reasons, she’d felt that she had “no femininity.”
Tom bought Tanya a pretty workout outfit to wear when she went home from the hospital. He bought black bell-bottom pants that could fit over her bandages, and a fancy black top with gemstones sewn in, with a large v-neck that would make it easier to put on.

Finally, on December 21, 2007, after a three-month stay, Tanya was discharged from Harborview. She had reached her goal of being home by Christmas! Her discharge diagnoses were listed as: polytrauma with multiple wounds; shoulder dislocation; left radial nerve palsy (wrist drop); left foot drop; deep vein thrombosis; anxiety; depression; and pain management. She was discharged on twelve different medications, including “significant amounts of pain medication” and the antidepressant.

By discharge, Tanya had progressed to being able to walk household distances with supervision and a cane. She could independently move from a sitting position to a standing one, and go up and down stairs if assistance was nearby. She could partially dress herself and could prepare a light meal, but she could not go back to work yet. She still needed a visiting nurse as well as physical and occupational therapy. Her wounds still needed cleansing and dressing. And she would have to make an endless stream of doctor visits.

When Tanya came home from the hospital, these worries dissipated upon seeing the snowwoman Tom had made in their front yard. It made her smile. And something else made her smile even wider. “Tom said that, when I woke up in the hospital, I asked him where my Honda Element was. He knows how hard it is for me to buy good things for myself. Tom asked what kind of car I wanted. I said I wanted the same car. Before I got home, he bought a new blue Element—one year newer than my last one. We kept the same name for the car, Skywalker. I name cars because they’re part of the family, and they get me away from things.” Indeed, one would think that the last car that Tanya would want would be the same car that had trapped her. Perhaps it can be attributed to an idiosyncratic form of Stockholm Syndrome, where Tanya fell in love with her captor—a blue
Honda Element.

Although she was smiling when she got home, the cycle of sleep-pain-wound-change, sleep-pain-wound-change, sleep-pain-wound-change that had droned on throughout her hospital stay like a broken record, was not over.

A month later, Tom accompanied Tanya when she was seen in the Rehab Clinic. She “appeared anxious and irritable… fearful, jumpy.” Although she was gradually progressing physically, she was not doing as well psychologically. The nurse practitioner wrote, “She stays home by herself during the day when her husband goes to work.” Tanya reported “Occasional night dreams…. She gets pretty drenched with sweat…. She does not want her husband driving too close to another car, as she is ‘not comfortable.’”

During her wound-care appointments, Tanya was referred to an outpatient rehab psychologist, who wrote in the progress notes that Tanya “complains of nightmares that… leave her with a funny feeling…. She is currently pondering the meaning of this accident and is grateful she is alive.” She also “emphasized that she is fortunate that the ‘love of her life’ still finds her attractive and, therefore, she is not concerned about her appearance.”

Less than nine months after the accident, Tanya was able to walk without a cane and had begun to drive. But her injuries, especially the open wound on her left hip and thigh, still necessitated treatment.

The rehab psychologist wrote that Tanya “has been in and out of the hospital” since she was originally discharged. “Pain is especially bad since she has returned to work and is on her feet.” Tanya had returned to work at Nordstrom in December 2008, fifteen months after the accident. Though she continues to be plagued by wound infections, pain and other problems, she is still grateful to be alive.

Road to Recovery

Now, Tanya is heading down another road—the road to recovery, which has as many twists, turns and precarious spots as Highway 169. She has both physical and psychological injuries from which to recover. The scars from her physical wounds are more apparent. But the psychological scars are deeper and more painful, which is why Tanya doesn’t want to remember them.

“I’m not gonna remember those eight days. I’m gonna set the line…. I look at what happened to me down there as evil. Evil can take control of me. I don’t like anything to control me.”

Untangling the origin of Tanya’s memory loss is a complicated affair. Part of it may be traced to traumatic amnesia. This could have happened as a result of brain injury from the concussive force of impact of the accident, or as a result of changes in the brain that caused a disruption of its memory circuits while Tanya languished in the ravine.

Undoubtedly, her psyche is repressing painful memories and perpetually pushing them down into her unconscious, as a psychological defense mechanism. But, certainly, by her own admission, a significant part of her memory loss is willful, conscious ‘forgetting’ because she simply doesn’t
want
to remember. This is also evidenced by her spurious memory lapses. Since the accident, she has at times spoken of her recollections and, at other times, denied recollecting anything.