Читать книгу This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Deborah Collins Stephens - Страница 19

“When we finally arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, where I was immediately taken into surgery, I had developed gangrene, and surgeons debated whether to amputate my leg. After four hours of surgery, the nurse wheeled me out of the surgical ward, and there stood my mother, who had traveled from San Francisco to be with me. They told her that they needed to transfer me to the Baltimore Shock/Trauma Center to attempt to stem the spread of gangrene. I begged my mother and the doctors to transfer me by ambulance, fearing I would die on another plane flight.

“The shock/trauma center was lit with incredibly bright lights. Numerous IVs were hooked up to me. I remember asking the nurse how many calories there were in all the stuff that was flowing into my body.”

“Three thousand,” she replied.

“I said: ‘Oh, my God, I am going to get so fat!’ Interesting, isn't it, how we can lose perspective in the middle of trauma?

“After yet another surgery, I was returned to my hospital room. The surgeons had repaired my body, but my hair was still matted with dried blood, Guyanese dirt, and dead ants. In an act of love I will never forget, my brother tenderly washed my hair.

“The doctors remained very concerned about the gangrene in my wounds. In a last-ditch effort, they began a series of hyperbaric treatments that required me to be placed into a chamber that resembled an iron lung filled with antibacterial microbes and oxygen. Each time they removed me from the chamber, I vomited violently. Unfortunately, they had to repeat this process several times.

“Confident that they had beaten the gangrene, they transferred me back to Arlington Hospital, where I was placed under twenty-four-hour protection, with US Marshals posted outside my door. Threats had been made against my life by individuals associated with the People's Temple. They blamed the congressional investigation for the mass deaths in Guyana and wanted to retaliate.

“The surgeons performed skin grafts on my legs. The gunshots had blown apart my right arm, and a steel dowel was inserted to hold together what remained. The radial nerve in my arm was damaged, and I could not use my fingers or lift my arm. The first time they tried to get me on my feet to walk, I fainted. After being hospitalized for nearly two months and enduring ten surgeries, I was finally discharged and flew back to San Francisco.

“The days ahead were a flurry of interviews about the Jonestown massacre. I was not allowed to stay in my home because of the death threats, so I lived with a friend. I still carried two bullets in my body that doctors had deemed too risky to remove. I never appeared in public without layers of clothes to cover what I had begun to believe was my hideous, disfigured body. In the following years, I would endure months of physical therapy to regain the use of my arm.

“I was twenty-eight, a single woman who could hardly feed herself and whose body was maimed and scarred. One day, I realized that if I was going to get over this—if I was ever going to move forward—I had to figure out a way not to wallow in self-pity.

“The exact moment I came to terms with what had happened in Guyana occurred years later, on a crowded beach in Hawaii. The disfigured body I walked in was mine. The joy I felt at just being alive had become greater than my insecurities. I had come to realize that a person's body was irrelevant and physical beauty was a shallow concern. I was disabled, but I did not believe that a disability of any kind prevented me from living a full and wonderful life. If anything, my disfigurement had opened my eyes to the bias often harbored toward those who are different.

“I put on a bathing suit that day and walked across the Hawaiian beach as people stared at the scars of my gunshot wounds. I just kept walking. And I learned with every step that, as difficult as it may be, you just have to take the next step. You just have to force yourself to do it. In the jungle on that November day, it was not my turn to die. But certainly now was my time to live.”