Ok, we are almost at the Stanford Rehab ward now. But before we get there, I just have to tell you one more story about the first place we landed in.
After Molly’s two surgeries and while she was recovering from those in intensive care, the doctor’s discovered a break on Molly’s xrays that she had sustained many years ago in the L5 region of her lower back. This break occurred while doing a yoga back bend. At the time, her chiropractor was quite concerned and sent her to Stanford where they wanted to fuse her back with surgery. Molly said no, and successfully healed this break using yoga and dance and mindful stretching and body awareness.
Molly’s intuition and personal body awareness were correct, and her injury had completely healed and her rehabilitation was extremely successful.
Molly was super-flexible and very strong.
You can see for yourself. Check out the warrior of love!
When the doctors found this old break on her xrays, they made the assumption that it was a new injury and they wanted to do another surgery immediately, and they began to set the whole thing up like they already had already discussed it with us and had our consent, which was not the case. I got a frantic call from one of our friends who had just been visiting Molly, who told me that I needed to connect with Molly right away because they were talking about another surgery and Molly didn’t want them to do it and that she was upset.
So I called down to intensive care and got the head nurse and said that nobody does anything to Molly and I am on my way there. They assured me that no-one was going to do anything. No procedures, no surgeries, no anything unless we said it was ok.
I arrived at the hospital and connected with Molly and little by little we defused the chaos and made sure the doctors understood that what they were seeing on the xrays was very old and quite healed. They had made the assumption that it was somehow related to her new injuries from crashing her car. Everybody got calmed down but man, that was kind of freaky and upsetting.
I have to say that in this day and age, we can no longer blindly turn ourselves over to the medical system when we require services from them. We must research and ask questions and, if possible, look to our families and friends and communities for support, and for people who have had similar experiences.
Definitely READ. The internet is all of the world’s libraries of information at your fingertips and then turbocharged.
If we had known then what we know now, we would not have consented to the surgery that was done. Instead, we would have had Molly put in traction and set with the Halo and continued from there. When we did get to Stanford, they in fact questioned the need for surgery based on her xrays, feeling it might have been avoided through traction. This is a controversial topic and you can see that not all medical practitioners agree or think the same way.
To add yet another component to this subject, Molly told me that when they first took her into emergency, they did put her into traction and that there was a loud pop in her neck. She said that from the inside it felt like her neck went back into place. If we could do it all over we would have stopped there.
There are no do overs in this case though.
Regardless, the push for surgery by the original doctors who, by the way, were surgeons, so surgery is what they do, was well within standard protocol at the time. Having those surgeries however, pretty much ensured that Molly would be significantly impacted for the rest of her life.
For the record, I think that medical practitioners are amazing. Where would we be without them and the work that they do?
They are not gods and they are not infallible however, and we continue to learn to trust our own experience, intuition and knowledge as much as possible. Perhaps in some cosmic way, this might explain why Molly had to go through this profound and challenging experience, so that others could see the successful results of someone who chose to follow a very different path than most after a spinal cord injury. It is difficult to argue with success.
Still, remembering and re-living the earliest days of Molly’s accident, the shock and chaos of it all, has brought up some old wounds and feelings. If you’ve watched the film Moment By Moment, then you already know that a LOT of amazing things have happened in the past 20 years.
None of those amazing things happened in that first week though, believe me. That first week, was pure hell.
Hell week is over now though, and we are on our way to the Stanford Rehab Ward.