In the midst of Nikki’s car accident, subsequent coma and traumatic brain injury, the emotions were like that of a roller coaster—up and down; up and down. Once the initial fear of death was over, there was still the worry about how well she would recover. Her age played a significant role in her prognosis. Had she been even six years older, the chances of a full recovery would have been greatly diminished, because the neurons in her brain would not have grown back.
Even before Nikki came out of the coma though, there were signs that her brain was not only working, but she was able to strategize, which was amazing (and encouraging) to me. She’d been restless and had to have her limbs tied down so she wouldn’t hurt herself. The nurse approached me one evening to tell me that the doctor decided to insert a tracheotomy into Nikki’s throat the next day. She was still on a ventilator, which was near her vocal cords and they were concerned that it would damage them. But Nikki had other ideas.
When I arrived at the hospital early the next morning, the staff was in an uproar. Still in a coma, with her hands tied down, Nikki managed to pull out her ventilator. Bells and whistles went off and everyone was running around worried that she wouldn’t be able to breathe. It was also discovered that, throughout the night, she’d chewed through her feeding tube. Once everyone calmed down, they chose to take a wait and see approach. Nikki was breathing fine on her own and it was decided that rather than reinsert the feeding tube, they’d put her on IV fluids. Although the nurses were a little freaked out about the incident, the physical therapists were thrilled. They assured me that if she could strategize to that extent in a coma, her brain was functioning very well.
Then the day after Christmas (which was when she came out of the coma) I’d decided to spend the night near the hospital rather than drive home. Nikki had been more trouble awake than she’d been asleep with her constant restless activity, and I wanted to be close by. I left the hospital for a couple hours and then went back to tell Nikki goodnight before heading to the hotel. There was a nurse there whom I’d never seen before. When I walked in, she was frantic and apologized to me.
“I don’t understand,” I told her. “What do you have to be sorry about?”
“I hadn’t had a chance to read your daughter’s chart when I first came in. I didn’t know they named her Little Houdini.”
I’m sure my face fell. “What happened?”
“I put the mitts on her hands because she was trying to pull out her PICC line and catheter. She looked me right in the eye, put her left mitt under her right arm, pulled her hand out of it and then used her un-mitted hand to tear out the PICC line. It happened so fast, I couldn’t stop her.”
These are the stories that inspired Illusions because so often truth is stranger than fiction. These are also the stories that delight my daughter, because she’s rather proud of being dubbed Little Houdini.
