The Story of Channon Rose: Lessons between the Lines (12 page)

During my stay at the hospital, I shared a room with a girl who needed a heart transplant. We became good friends because we spent every waking hour together. I felt so sad for her; I wanted to help her so much that I wanted to give her my heart.

While I was in recovery, I had good days and I had bad days. I think that’s fairly typical though. One day I was physically feeling pretty good and I wanted to go down to the gift shop in the hospital to get my roommate a gift. My mother asked one of the nurses if I could go down with her to the gift shop unsupervised (meaning without a nurse) because I was not allowed to leave my room without a nurse or a physical therapist. If I left my room, it was hospital policy to always have a staff member with me because of my extensive injuries in case something happened. The nurse never looked at my chart; she just told my mom it was fine and wouldn’t be a problem if I was feeling up to it. My mom took me down in my wheelchair and I got my roommate a really cute stuffed animal and a bracelet so that she could hide her ugly hospital wristbands that we all had to wear.

Once we got back to my floor on the way back from the gift shop, I asked my mom if I could try to walk back to my room. My mom thought that since the nurse had said it was okay, I would be fine. I hadn’t walked without my physical therapist yet so I was a little nervous. I lifted myself out of my wheelchair with the help of my mom and slowly started walking back to my room. We were almost back to my room when all of a sudden, I lost all feeling in my legs, and I collapsed to the floor. I had temporarily gone paralyzed. My fall was really bad and I hit the hard hospital floor with my legs twisted in really awkward positions. I was so scared and started crying thinking I had somehow become paralyzed again. My mom panicked and yelled for a nurse. Two nurses came running over and helped me back up into the wheelchair. I ended up breaking my ankle and cracking my kneecap. Seconds later, I got feeling back again so I felt the pain from the fall. I was so happy and relieved when I got feeling back in my legs. As if my recovery wasn’t already hard enough, now for the rest of my hospital stay I had to relearn how to walk with a broken back, broken ankle, and a broken kneecap. Not fun at all. To this day, I still panic or freak out if my foot or leg goes numb because I think I’m going to be paralyzed again. I have never been diagnosed with it, but I am convinced I have PTSD from that accident. I have major panic attacks in cars, and I freak out whenever we get too close to the back of another car. I also go into a major panic if I feel like something is physically wrong with me etc.

When I was released from the hospital I was in a big back brace, which I had to wear for 6 months. I also wasn’t allowed to drive which sucks when you’re 16 and supposed to be getting your license. I had to use a wheelchair anytime there might be significant walking as my back was still very fragile and I had to keep limited in my movements. I was in constant physical pain, but I tried my hardest to power through it. I remember being at home and waking up in the middle of the night with awful back spasms that would last hours. I would wake up screaming and sweating from nightmares from the accident. It was a tough recovery, physically and emotionally. I was home schooled for awhile since I couldn’t go back to school because I couldn’t walk around for too long, and I wouldn’t have been able to sit very long in a classroom at a desk. I loved being home schooled. I learned more in those few months of home schooling than I had learned in private or public school up until that point. I learn a lot faster in one-on-one environments. My homeschool teacher made learning fun.

After months of a grueling recovery, I was finally ready to go back to my private school at Los Angeles Baptist. I still had to wear my back brace though, and I was very self-conscious about it. I wore big hoodies to try and cover it up so the kids at my school wouldn’t see it. I was so scared that the kids at school would make fun of me or think I was ugly because I had to wear a big ugly brace. I was back at school for only a few weeks when my biggest fear would come true. One day I was standing at my locker and Kevin, a popular football player, started making fun of my back brace in front of a bunch of people. I was so mad at him and completely humiliated that I took my full water bottle and threw it at his face as hard as I could. It was a stupid idea because I really hurt my back when I did that. I played softball and had a really good throwing arm so my water bottle ended up hitting him right in the middle of his face breaking his nose. I didn’t mean to break his nose, I was just so angry and didn’t think about it before I did it. I showed him right? Not really, guess what happened? If you guessed that I got expelled, you’re right! Another school I got kicked out of and back to the mental hospital I went. Fortunately, I was only in the psych ward for a few days because with my injuries it wasn’t a safe environment for me to be in. Besides, my threat to kill that stupid football jock was just a silly threat, I didn’t really want to kill him, and I’m sure they couldn’t have taken me too seriously coming from a girl with a broken back in a back brace!

Chapter 9

B
y this time, my parents were absolutely done with trying to put me in another expensive private school. So it was back to another “special” school for me, but this one was different. Surprisingly, it was much better than the last one and I actually liked it. It was the continuation school for Montclair College Prep. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because I was kicked out of that one as well. They had opened a continuation school for kids that were bad and needed extra attention.

I loved this new school because I was able to take an art class with Montclair and I loved my art class and anything to do with art. I looked forward to that class and always had a love for most things art related. It was a simple thing that made me happy and it had always been a creative and expressive way for me to deal with things, whether they were good or bad. Not long after the semester started I was finally able to take my back brace off. My recovery was still slow but going quite well considering the extent of the damage. Life felt pretty good, I felt like a normal girl again, which most of the last several years were anything but good or normal. I wasn’t on drugs anymore and I wasn’t on any prescribed medicine either. Things were really looking up for me and in a positive direction. Even Misty was completely out of the picture now because of the incident of her accusing my dad of molesting her daughter. She was finally out of my life for good and I would never have to face her physical and mental abuse ever again. Since I was now happy about my life, and I was happy about the new school I was at, I wanted to try and make an effort to do well and get more involved. It was my last year of high school and I was a senior so I really wanted to make it count and push myself during my last remaining time in high school. I had missed so much of a normal, fun, high school life that I wanted to do it all this last year. I joined the co-ed softball team and the co-ed football team. I was more involved in this school than any other school I had ever attended. I even became activities coordinator and class president.

My grades drastically improved, and I got to do fun school projects. I liked the teachers I had, and we had smaller classroom sizes where I could get the one-on-one help that I needed to learn and excel. The only thing I began struggling with was my eating disorder a little bit but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before. It’s not something that I was proud of, but I pushed myself to do a lot of other things well and move forward.

Things were good with me, but not so much for my parents that year. There wasn’t any crazy drama, but they just weren’t happy together so they decided to split up again. It was for the best, besides I had already dealt with that in the past so it wasn’t as big of a deal for me this time around. I was more disappointed than anything, but I wanted them to be happy.

By this time it was spring and almost graduation time. I was so excited thinking that I would be graduating from high school in just a couple months! I was also looking forward to our camping trip to Buena Vista. It was our spring trip we did almost every year. My friend Erin and I drove out to the lake, which is about 2 hours away from home, and we were meeting my dad and some other family out there. As usual, we had so much fun out there waterskiing at the lake and camping. While we were there I met this guy named Joe. He was the hottest guy I had ever seen and he was into a lot of the same things that I was into. He rode dirt bikes and wakeboarded, and he was totally my type. We hung out a lot when we were camping, but I was really excited because he was from the same area that I was, the valley! I really liked him and knew we would be able to see each other when we got home too. Everyone camped at the lake for a few days and we all ended up having a really fun trip but it was now time to head home.

I drove my friend and I back, and as we got about half way home, we started over this mountain called “The Grapevine”. It’s a long steep mountain north of Los Angeles that you need to drive up and over. Suddenly as I was driving, I felt like I was dying. In an instant, I went from being completely fine to drenched in sweat. My heart began pounding fast and hard inside my chest. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t calm myself down. I thought this was the end, and everything in my body and mind said prepare for death. It was the scariest feeling I had ever felt, and I couldn’t control it. I didn’t know what was happening to me. In a panic, and within seconds, I slammed on the brakes stopping the car in the middle of the freeway. I didn’t stop because there was traffic or another car in front of us. Nobody was in front of us. As soon as the car came to a stop I jumped out of the car, stood there panicked and staring at everything, yet nothing at all. Erin had no idea what was happening and she began to freak out and kept yelling at me to get back into the car. “What is wrong with you?! What is happening?!” she said. I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know. I was frozen in a panicked state of mind. I thought I was dead, or dying. It’s a hard thing to describe. I felt like I was having a heart attack! A highway patrol officer saw part of what was going on and he pulled his car over to assist, but that didn’t help me or go well. He thought I was on serious drugs. I hadn’t taken any drugs though, and hadn’t had any alcohol. Fortunately, he did help us because our car was still in the middle of the freeway. We caused a huge scene but thankfully nobody was hurt. Eventually I was able to calm down. We could only assume it was some sort of panic attack or anxiety attack. I had never had anything like that happen to me before and I had dealt with some serious sh*t in the past. That was the start of my panic attacks, which I still get to this day. Luckily, I didn’t get arrested, nor did I get in too much trouble with the officer which was a surprise considering my behavior and the danger to others that I could have caused by stopping the car like I did. Erin ended up having to drive us home because I didn’t feel safe enough to drive. We made it home safe and alive but now with a new fresh set of issues to deal with.

Soon after our camping trip was my senior prom! I was so excited, this was my first prom ever that I would be going to. As expected, Joe and I were now boyfriend and girlfriend and he was now the love of my life. I was very interested in art and fashion, and I wanted to be a fashion designer and was going to try and apply to get into Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising once I was out of high school. Since I was so into fashion, and since I wanted my prom dress to be a one of a kind I decided to make my own dress for my prom! I made a light pink high low dress and wore a backwards Dickies trucker hat with a white bow tie and white heels. Joe wanted our outfits to be matching, so he took his white tux and spray painted it hot pink and then stenciled skulls and stars on it so that it matched my dress. It was my first and last prom I would ever go to, so how could it be any better? Would you maybe say being Prom Queen? Yep! I was Prom Queen at my senior prom. What a night, it was so much fun, and after so many schools and expulsions I got to enjoy a real prom with a real boyfriend. My senior year flew by so fast, and of course shortly right after prom was graduation day. I had somehow stayed in school long enough to graduate. There were so many times when I didn’t even think I would live to see 16, let alone graduate from high school. My parents were so happy and proud of me; they couldn’t believe I was graduating, and neither could I. It felt so good to be on stage when I was given my diploma, it was one of the proudest moments of my life. I had felt like such a failure and a screw up in the past. This was a big accomplishment for me. After my graduation ceremony, I walked outside and there was a car with my name on it and a huge pink bow wrapped around it! My dad bought me my first car as a graduation present. It was a white Chevy blazer and I loved it. I had never been happier in my whole life!