Recollections: The Beginning....

IN WHICH OUR HEROINE RECOLLECTS HER FALL, HOW SHE HIT HER HEAD, AND HAD BRAIN SURGERY.


I felt healthy that morning. The sun was shining in Hatcher's Pass. I had on hiking sandals and a baby backpack---with my child inside, yes. It was glorious. All I wanted was a few more blueberries, because the easy-to-access bushes by the side of the road were not producing. My friend Kirsten and I thought crossing a small mountain stream would be so easy. It was really only 3 or 4 feet across and there was a flat rock in the middle to step on.

One second my foot was secure, and the next it wasn't. Suddenly I slipped and that was that. I hit my forehead on said rock and apparently had a seizure. Somewhere in there I also swallowed some water. Kirsten, probably the true heroine of our little story, fished my sixteenth-month-old out of the water and the backpack and wisely saved her first. Kirsten did manage to pull my face onto the otherwise treacherous rock, so I didn’t drown and afterward pulled my whole body out. Apparently it was quite an ordeal. Kirsten is small in stature though large in all the other important ways: spirit, courage, energy, enthusiasm…etc…And yes, I do occasionally feel like worshipping she who saved my life.

After rescuing Eva, Kirsten threw her up on the bank in that baby backpack and proceeded to drag me out. I’m sorry to say that her 5 foot tall frame was no match for my less than athletic self, weighed down at this point with wet jeans and sweatshirt. I had her little finger-marks for bruises for two weeks after. Not that I’m complaining. My personal Savior then did her own form of CPR, which basically involved beating my chest really hard until water came out. The lovely blue color receded from my face, and I was alive! Naturally, I remember none of this. My brain was already done for the day.