One Year of Reality and How It Nearly Killed Me: My Life Behind the Scenes (22 page)

Not only was it almost Christmas break, which meant only a few weeks were left before the end of the season, but it was almost my birthday as well. And it was a nice gesture when my staff gave me a gift certificate to a spa. One of the coordinators also wanted me to know that the line producer had contributed the lion’s share of the money toward the certificate. I was really shocked. I hadn’t realized how generous he was. Everyone asked me what I was planning to do for my birthday. I wasn’t planning on doing anything (my birthday was on a Tuesday that year), but I told them that I was planning to sleep through the weekend, if possible.

What happened the next day ensured that I’d get my wish.

Two people were injured on the show that season. The first was the PA, and the second was me.

We were filming a WWE Fear Factor. The second day was the taste-testing day, when the blender of fear would be making its debut. I was looking forward to it because I’d been able to hire a cameraman friend
of mine at the last moment. I hadn’t seen him since
Amazing Race
, and I was excited to catch up. The location where we were shooting was downtown Los Angeles in a small dance hall. Because there wasn’t too much space, the cars were parked a block or so away and the catering truck was a little farther. My usual routine was to check out the location in the morning for safety issues, and then get some breakfast. It was around 6:30 in the morning. There was some hustle and bustle in downtown L.A. that early, but I was concentrating on the preparations for the day. I crossed the street and made my way to the catering truck. I noticed that it was nice to walk on a newly paved sidewalk since most of the roads and streets were always torn up or a mess. But on that day, the sidewalk looked new and was very smooth. I then started flipping through my paperwork to see the schedule for the day.

Then, like a movie, my life went into slow motion… I was about to be face up on pavement questioning my life.

My ankle twisted. I don’t know why or how, but it just twisted out from underneath me. Normally you just twist and fall. But I fought the fall and started to twist around myself, struggling to stay upright. I was also carrying my binder and a few other things
and was trying not to drop them. I stayed up for what seemed like a few minutes, but then I fell. All I remember is that I ended up on my back looking up to the sky. Normally I could get up from a fall, but this was different. I was in excruciating pain. My right arm felt like it had been shot off. I looked over to my right and saw that my arm was twisted the wrong way, and I knew I was in trouble. My knee was on fire and my whole left side felt like it had been hit by a car. I started to yell for help, but no one was stopping. After what seemed like several minutes of just crying for help, I finally said, “Somebody in catering, HELP!”

I didn’t know how close I was to the catering truck, but I was a lot closer to that than anything else from the shoot. And at this point the pain had taken over everything. I just wanted help from anyone. A couple of my crew finally ran over to me and saw that I was on the ground crying for help. One of the more humorous aspects of the situation, as I was told later, was that one of the PAs saw me on the ground and immediately called into our second assistant director to tell him that I was hurt and yelling for help. The second AD immediately ran over to the PA, and the PA pointed down the street, telling him that I was about a block away. The second AD thought it was a little stupid of the PA not to have
done anything, but I guess the guy didn’t want to get involved. The coordinator let the line producer know that I had been hurt, and the crew was starting to help me out. I don’t remember much about the whole situation, but I do remember that there wasn’t a medic around at the time. The medic was primarily responsible for the injuries of the contestants. And on the days when we were filming an eating stunt, we saved a bit of money by having the medic come in at the same time as the contestants.

I kept saying things like “Oh, the line producer is going to be so mad;” “Oh my God, I can’t believe this;” “Get one of the bad PAs to help me out, and everyone should go back to work.” One of the PAs put a furniture blanket around me. I kept telling him nicely to take it off, until I finally snapped and said, “Take that #$###@# thing off me!” He was trying to keep me warm, but I was already on fire with all the pain.

Then, to add comedy to injury, the paramedics arrived. First of all, they wanted to assess my situation, which meant they needed to look at my arm. I didn’t want them to look at my arm, because it would mean either taking off my jacket, which would be extremely painful, or cutting the arm off it. It was my favorite jacket, and I didn’t want that to happen.
I kept telling the paramedic that I didn’t want him to ruin my jacket, and I actually remember crying when he did it. I was waiting on medication, and no one had given me any. I kept asking for it, but all I heard was a discussion between the paramedic and the coordinator about where to send me. “Can you take her to Cedar Sinai?” she asked. “No” they said. “Well, don’t take her to County!” After hearing all of this, I said something like, “Just take me $^&#W*@ somewhere and give me some morphine.”

While all of this was going on, my life flashed before my eyes. I had no idea what was happening, no idea what I was going to do. I knew I didn’t have enough money to pay for the ambulance, let alone emergency care. My health insurance plan had been abruptly cancelled a few weeks before from the Producers Guild, so I was now without insurance. I didn’t think about it being a work related injury at all; I felt like I was going to be responsible for all the costs. So much for having a new car and a more expensive apartment! I envisioned myself being literally thrown out onto the streets.

Finally they put me in the ambulance (still with no medication) and off we went to the hospital. And given the city roads in Los Angeles, it was a very bouncy, incredibly painful ride. Each bump was
like a knife in my right elbow and left knee. I just kept saying, “God, oh God.” The pain was crazy;
I
was crazy. Finally we hit the emergency room, and I got some medication. Someone asked me where the pain was and I told them that my arm and knee were hurting the most. Then I remember a nurse or someone saying, “Should I give her something to not remember?” Meaning that they’d knock me out, but not put me under. And I guess that’s when they relocated my elbow (it had been severely dislocated) and took x-rays and such. The PA (the girl who had previously broken her nose) later told me that I was screaming at the top of my lungs, and you could hear me outside of the emergency room. The next thing I remember was that they told me I was ready to go. I asked them about my knee. They hadn’t taken a look at it yet, so I went in for more tests before leaving.

I was totally groggy and out of it. I remember four Hispanic men helping me to the bathroom before I was discharged. Turns out it was actually the PA helping me, so you know that the drugs were working.

During all that drama, someone found my cell phone and called my friend Kelly to let her know what had happened. She was a good person for them to have called since she didn’t have a regular 9-5 job,
and was able to help me. A PA drove me home, and Kelly met me there. I was still a little out of it. Later someone brought my car back to my apartment as well. In the meantime, I had a half-cast on my elbow, a can of soda, and some pills to get me through the day. Kelly went and picked up the rest of my prescriptions. I was too out of it to cry, but I was crying on the inside, scared to death of what was going to happen next. I had no idea what I would do.

I’m sure at some point Kelly called my mom and said something like, “Everything’s okay, but…” But I couldn’t think about much or even calling my mom. I sat in my rocker/recliner and passed out. My birthday was on Tuesday, and I was injured on Thursday. So I did, in fact, sleep through the weekend.

I realized on Friday that I didn’t have my glasses. The drugs were truly working as I didn’t realize I could not see anything. I have a really strong prescription. I called the production office but the coordinators were busy trying to handle everything in my absence, so I knew they were annoyed that they had to pull someone to get me my glasses. Also, the day I was injured one of the PAs had left the day’s filming in my car, so for a whole day, no one knew where the tapes were until someone figured it out.

I was unintentionally causing all sorts of trouble. The show had gotten extended for a few episodes as well, so I was excited to have a job for at least a couple of extra months. I was determined to get back to work as quickly as possible. I had to keep working; I couldn’t stop now.

The day after my accident, Kelly took me to the doctor, who asked me to list all my pains. I had pain in my right elbow, left knee, left ankle (the one that had been twisted), left hand, and the outside of my left thigh was numb. They needed to take x-rays of everything. It was a very painful experience, because they try to put you in positions that aren’t remotely natural. I was glad when the x-rays were finished. It was clear that I’d need surgery on my elbow, so they wrapped it up in a half cast. They gave me some prescriptions and told me that I could go back to work in a few days. Then we could figure out when I would have the surgery. The rest of the injuries needed to be closely observed too.

Now more than ever I needed to prove that I could survive this accident and work on the show.

CHAPTER 11

THE BEST INJURIES I’VE
EVER HAD OR GIVE ME
SOME MORPHINE!

I
have been injured several times. I remember breaking my arm while in the middle of a roller derby when I was twelve (I was tripped and hit by the opposition and went flying off the rink). When I was little, I ran into a television set and hit my head. I was also injured when I fell after climbing on top of a garbage can, catching part of my thigh. Then, of course, I sprained my ankle falling out of that tree. Once, I had a car accident that was so bad I had to crawl out from underneath the steering wheel (something that wasn’t easy for someone my height).
All in all, I have some great stitches and scars that tell relatively stupid stories. After the incident while I was working at
Fear Factor
, I had many more stupid injuries to add to my collection. No, they hadn’t been earned honorably in battle, but some of my colleagues told me that I should at least embellish what had happened. I could say that I’d been injured in the shark tank or while testing a dangerous stunt. Anything other than that I fell while walking to the catering truck to get breakfast.

When I arrived at work on the Tuesday morning following my accident, they were having a fire drill. My colleagues were hanging around the parking lot waiting to go back into the office. So for a brief moment, I fantasized that I was in a ticker tape parade as a hero returning from war. I emerged from my car, wearing my half cast on my right arm and using my cane in my left hand. I wanted to work at the same pace and act as if everything was normal. But I did have some restrictions that the most daunting of which was that I couldn’t write very well. I’m right handed, and it was painful to tense up my fingers and hand to write because my elbow was killing me. So I had to use my left hand. And the only way I had ever written with my left hand was backwards. So every time I wrote something, my notes were backwards and right to left, not left to right.
At least I could type with minimal pain. I’m not one to take a lot of pain killers unless pain is paralyzing me. Luckily Christmas was coming up soon. We all needed the break, since we had worked very long hours up until Christmas Eve.

Everyone felt bad for me, and I was pretty much trying to laugh it off. I do remember the medic and I talked about what had happened. He told me that if he’d been there, he would’ve given me some morphine. I remember that the medics didn’t give me anything even though I was in excruciating pain. There was one shining light at the end of this tunnel.

I was excited for my New Year’s Eve plans.

I love New Years. I generally don’t celebrate it because many of my friends don’t—usually we would just sort of hang out and watch MTV. But this year Kelly and I were going to Vegas, and we weren’t about to cancel our plans because of my condition. Another friend of Kelly’s was joining us as well, so it seemed as though we would have a fun threesome. I made hotel arrangements as well as dinner reservations at a really fabulous restaurant at the Venetian. It was expensive because it was New Year’s Eve, but I knew it was going to be worth it. I just wanted to party.

While I was finishing my work before Christmas break, I found out my elbow surgery was on January 8
^th
. I figured that I’d get a cast and could be back at work within a couple of days to finish the final episodes. It was my goal, but I knew even then that it wouldn’t necessarily be a smart thing to do. All I could think about was finishing the job, though. I had to finish the job. The line producer was fine with all of this. He didn’t question my resolve when I assured him that I was committed to finishing the shoots.

Also, we got some SWAG for the holidays. The network gave us really nice jackets with the NBC logo in red, white, and blue (in memory of 9/11). We could order shirts and whatnot as well. Well, since I was earning some dough, I bought shirts and jackets and hats for my aunts, uncles, cousins, and second cousins on my mom’s side of the family. I ended up spending Christmas with my Uncle and his family, and it was really cool that my entire family had
Fear Factor
gear. All of my little cousins were curious about my cast. I was too, so my little cousin and I unwrapped my elbow and removed it to see what my arm looked like.

I thought I was going to throw up.

Now I’m not grossed out by anything (clearly), but my arm looked really grotesque. It was pure black from the middle of my upper arm to halfway between my elbow and wrist. And there were flashes of red in there as well. I was staring at it like you stare at a dead person. I don’t think I realized just how bad my injury was until I actually looked at my arm. Lisa, my cousin’s wife (and a great mom-nurse) helped me wrap up the cast again to cover it.