Starfish Sky

By Timothy Slykhuis

Imagine waking up one morning, to suddenly find yourself physically and mentally severely disabled, unable to do anything, not even to think!

Well, this is what happened to me, and Starfish Sky is that story of my path to recovery and so much more.

Recovering from a bicycle accident induced coma, at first, a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Branding LLC
• Release date: Apr 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639454068

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Like raising a child, it takes a community to fix a broken brain. In my recovery, I have been extremely fortunate to have a witness that came forward to give an aware understanding of the events that had happened on the fateful day of my brain injury accident. From there, I was lucky to have a dedicated team of doctors, therapists, and lawyers along with the invaluable support of my family and friends, who were engaged and helped to guide me along the way, while also giving me the insight, respect, and opportunities needed to support me along my road to recovery.

Over the years I have had surprisingly little contact with Kent MacLeod, the head of NutriChem pharmacy. Considering the impact his way of thinking has had on my post-accident life, Kent has had a significant influence on my life. Through him, I started to look for scientifically sound strategies to aid in my body's ability to allow true health to happen. This has become central to how I approach life.

I am indebted to my sister, Grace, who gave me the quotes along with a better insight into the troubles of her deceased husband, Jean-Paul, who suffered a brain injury long before there was any real understanding about the brain.

But most importantly, I would like to give thanks to my wife, Jolam. She enabled my project to reach completion through the countless late nights, early mornings, and endless hours of neglected chores, time that was needed for this dyslexic brain-injured man of hers to get his thoughts expressed on paper.

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Diet/Exercise Regimens: You should not undertake any diet/exercise regimen recommended in this book before consulting your personal physician. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be responsible or liable for any loss or damage allegedly arising as a consequence of your use or application of any information or suggestions contained in this book.

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Pete Townshend was the mind behind the songs for the rock group The Who. I've always been attracted to the deeper introspection that can be found in the music and songs by Pete Townshend and The Who. I believe that Townshend, through the confusing inner world he experienced as a child, inspired his songwriting talent. The deep introspection expressed through Townshend's lyrics, as a whole, spoke on a level I resonated with.

After my accident, my inner-world experiences, through my traumatic brain injury, has definitely taken me to places and provided me with observations that I wouldn't have otherwise had the sight to see. To acknowledge the increased insight gained through personal adversities, I have named all chapters in my book after Townshend's songs or lyrics.

In my youth, I didn't understand why The Who and Pete Townshend held a special place in my heart. Over time, I came to understand that we don't learn much about life through our successes. It is through adversity that we learn to observe the world and engage our mind with informed insight. Adversity helps us to see so much more.

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Part One

Embryo – Disability and Despair

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Chapter One

It's a Boy

Slowly, almost unconsciously I opened my eyes. The sun was shining through a distant window. An unusual grogginess colored my world. I tried shifting my body in bed, but nothing happened. This was unusual. I took no notice.

I tried to move again, but this time, with great concentration. My body and mind felt strangely numb, like a nonresponsive lead slug. Is this my world? It was all so foggy, so strange. All I could feel was an unawareness punctuated by confusion while I was trying, just trying to figure out what had happened and why I couldn't move. With muted reactions, I noticed that my left arm had a cast on it, and the whole left side of my body felt extremely heavy.

I had never been a patient in a hospital before, but somehow I knew that's where I was. With my face mashed down into a pillow, I couldn't move. I felt no pain, no anxiety, but there was a strange numbness to my world. Instinctively, I knew that my world had fundamentally changed.

Awareness faded away.

I awakened again with the realization that someone was standing over me. I forced my eyes to open, to focus. Finally, I noticed the doctor standing over my bed. In an authoritative yet compassionate voice, she asked, What is your name?

Obediently responding to the posed question, my mind searched frantically for the answer. I knew that I was supposed to know the answer to this question. Calmly, I searched for the answer. Time passed. I tried to speak, but my mouth didn't seem to work right. Eventually, I was able to mumble, almost incoherently, Thhim.

The doctor asked me another question. What day is it?

I thought to myself. Well, it's the beginning of something. Finally I answered, January first? My lips seemed to move more responsibly, and words that came out of my mouth were now relatively coherent.

The doctor continued, Well. You were just taken outside for a wheelchair ride. It was very, very hot outside. Can you explain that?

There was a long pause. I really didn't remember the wheelchair ride. I didn't remember anything. I despondently replied, No.

Next she asked, Who is the prime minister of Canada?

Automatically, without thinking, a name flashed into my mind. Trudeau, I answered. (At this time I was referring to Pier Elliot Trudeau, his son Justin Trudeau has not yet entered the political scene.) I had some difficulty pronouncing his name, but it must have been correct as the doctor seemed to understand my answer. She looked surprised, barely masking her concerns. It had actually been years since Trudeau was last in office. Looking back, my answer was almost as much about my perception of Trudeau as a leader as it was about my incoherent state of mind at the time. No more questions were asked.

Consciousness faded again.

I was awakened by the sound of two young women walking and talking as they entered the room. Then we drove to my place, one voice said. I thought he was going to spend the night, but he just gave me a kiss and took off saying something about wanting to bicycle to work.

I didn't know these girls. But wait, the girl that was talking looked vaguely familiar. I listened more closely.

The other girl coaxed, Elaine, you know he's crazy about you.

Elaine. Yes, Elaine! She was an acquaintance, but what was she doing here? From their conversation, it became apparent that Elaine and I must be some sort of an item. It was becoming clear that my memories were full of so many blanks. I had no memory of any incident, no memory of anything painful, and no idea why I was a patient in the hospital. I was the one with the injuries and a huge memory gap, but I was the only one that didn't know what was going on.

I asked myself, Is Elaine my wife? I looked at her hand to check, but there wasn't a ring. Still we must be some sort of an item. It was like waking up in somebody else's life. A new life, a disabled life. Only, this was not somebody else's life. It was mine!

Elaine approached the bed and looked down at me lying there. Looking up, I mumbled, Wha…?

Somehow she knew exactly what I wanted to know. Elaine informed me succinctly, compassionately, and responsibly, You were in an accident, Tim. You were riding your bicycle to work. A taxi ran a red light and hit you. There was a witness. He made a statement to the police. Don't worry. The accident wasn't your fault.

This explained everything I needed to know—the hospital, why I couldn't do anything, the cast on my arm, why my body didn't work right. This explained my ever-present feelings of disconnection with reality. Some of the pieces in this bewildering puzzle were starting to fit together. The events were bizarre and disjointed, yet I knew that this was as real as life gets. This was my life!

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Chapter Two

What Is Happening in His Head?

I felt the motion of the wheelchair being pushed down the hall. I heard a familiar voice talking to me from behind. It was Elaine. She must be pushing me.

You're on your way to physiotherapy, she explained. She must have noticed that I was more conscious and alert as she continued talking to me, explaining things. The doctors and the physiotherapists believe that you can recover most of your abilities. You will have to work hard, Tim, and don't give up. She continued talking, explaining everything that was going on as we strolled down the hospital hall. As far as my memory was concerned, this would be my first physiotherapy session, even though it became apparent to me that this was part of an ongoing therapy schedule.

The cute physiotherapist greeted me, telling me her name while reminding me of my own. Obviously a teaching device. This was meant to put a confused, brain-injured person like me at ease. Soon she sat me in a chair and explained in her strangely animated voice what I was to do. With me sitting in a chair facing her, she rolled a big rubber ball toward me.

Catch it, Tim, she encouraged me.

Was that all that I had to do? Catch the ball? Catch it and roll it back, I was instructed.

My eyes were glued on the ball as it rolled toward me. I focused hard, willing my body to respond. However as the ball approached, all I could do was watch it as it bounced off my immobile body and passed me by. I was unable to react. I thought to myself, Am I so disabled that I can't even catch a big rubber ball?

I had forgotten how to do so much. Added to that, I was struggling to remember the simplest of things. Memory blackouts hadn't happened to me before. Even when as a teenager when I drank too much, I never blacked out. Now, whatever it was that I couldn't remember had become the defining element of my life. That big gap in my memory haunted me, arousing a deep curiosity. I tried to take in every last detail. I wanted to understand. I had to understand. I had to know what had happened to me, to my memory, to my ability to do even simple tasks. I had to know who I had become.

My hospital experience was very surreal. Not only couldn't I physically do things like talk or move properly, but the way I expressed myself verbally didn't always match my inner feelings. In the early stages of my recovery, I lacked the ability to be very communicative, but much of my waking hours were spent just trying to understand what I had become and putting together the details of what had happened to me.

Still I retained a vague memory of the kind of person I had been minus the details. The absence of knowing the details of what had happened to me plagued my mind. Suddenly I'd been transformed, painlessly into the central character of a new disabled reality. Now without warning, everything seemed to be about me. All anyone talked about was how are you doing, nothing else seemed to hold any concern. What do you want? Or do you remember when? People went out of their way just to visit me. People came from far corners of my life, but all they would talk about was how I was doing. That huge void in my memory where I had become something else was now the epicenter of my life. What had happened? Everything was so strange, yet far too real. My life was now filled with new personal limitations and barriers. And it was obvious that I couldn't escape.

On the outside I must have looked like a feeble lump, slouched in a wheelchair, sometimes with saliva dribbling out from corner of my mouth which I knew only because periodically Elaine would wipe my mouth. Inside, my brain was working overtime, trying to take in everything, trying to understand. I couldn't figure out the simplest of things. But I had to understand. Yes! This disabled world was certainly new, strange, and hard to relate to.

I have very few memories of my therapies in the critical care hospital. I stayed in that hospital for the first two months. What I do remember is indelibly etched in my mind. The incident with the ball was the first occurrence of something that I would experience quite frequently. I often felt like being a third person watching from a distance as I saw myself struggling to do the simplest of tasks, fumbling with my inabilities to respond, to act.

Am I now a disabled person? Will I always be like this? These questions plagued my mind as I fought to return to the life that I was starting to remember more and more each day.

Noteworthy occurrences would sometimes stick. One time I was taken to a room and plopped down in a big bathtub like a rag doll. All I could do was sit there and watch numbly as a male nurse's aide washed and scrubbed. That limp thing was my body. As a man, nothing feels more dehumanizing than having someone else wash your balls because you can't.

Not everything was quite so hopeless. On another occasion, I was being taught how to read again. I felt like a little boy back in primary school, where the teacher stood at the front pointing out letters on a big board.

What sounds does this letter make? the therapist asked me, pointing to one letter after another.

I must have had some sense of what to do, some sense that I already possessed this knowledge. The memory just had to be dusted off and retraced. I just had to learn again what sound each letter made. The knowledge was there, somewhere, deep down. I had some sense of where this was going. There was awareness that this was something I had known. Having to relearn even these very basics skills entrenched in me how much of my former self needed to be rebuilt.

This kind of experience became my new normal. I was daily confronted with simple, everyday tasks that now appeared to be insurmountable. I was incapable of feeding myself. I couldn't even cough to clear my throat. I was unable to get out of bed or go to the bathroom without assistance. If nurse didn't answer my call, I had to lie there helplessly peeing myself. Humiliating! No matter how simple the task, it was still a task that I had to relearn. I was undeniably a fully indentured member of the differently abled community!

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Chapter Three

Who Are You, Who Who? Who Who!

When I woke up on that first day, it was obvious that the life as I knew it had vanished. Family members had come and gone, but I had no memory of their visits. Elaine told me that my father had hired a lawyer and started a lawsuit. I knew nothing of it. Others were now in control of my life. It was obvious that this was necessary.

Outside of the medical angles, Elaine seemed to be the person in charge. In fact, she had been named as such. No members of my family lived nearby. I had lots of friends and acquaintances around me, but no next of kin. We'd only been dating for a month, but Elaine voluntarily stepped up to the plate to be my guardian in a very complete and devoted way. She also happened to be a nurse, which made her job easier. She knew the hospital system, and they respected her.

Elaine kept a constant vigil on my progress. This was very fortunate in many ways. For example, if a patient isn't breathing on their own after two weeks on a ventilator, they are summarily given a tracheotomy. In most cases, punching a hole in your throat and inserting a tube to allow unassisted breathing is a good thing. However, there could be a downside. Your airways may be damaged, possibly leading to trouble with breathing or speaking. Thus, it is better to avoid a tracheotomy if you can.

After two weeks, I was still connected to a ventilator and not breathing on my own. It was time to perform the procedure. Elaine just happened to be by my bedside, as she so often was. She encouraged the nurses to see if I could breathe on my own. They gave it a try. I did breathe. Consequently, I was able to avoid the tracheotomy.

Even though my immediate family wasn't nearby, they were still very much a part of my life. I was still living in the house in Ottawa where my family moved when I was three. My third sister, Dorothy, lived near Ottawa but was in the process of moving to a suburb of Montreal. Two of my three sisters and younger brother lived in British Columbia where my parents had moved thirteen years earlier. I stayed behind and purchased the family home. A year later, I married my high school sweetheart. And so at twenty-two, it looked as if I had everything well in hand.

Glenda, my new wife, had a scholarship to study at Carleton University. I had intended to go to university, but with my dyslexia, it would be a struggle. To ensure stability in the life ahead, it seemed logical for me to work while my wife was getting an education. The idea was that, when she was finished, she would be able to support me through my education. This arrangement bobbed along for seven years. She obtained her commerce degree. Then, while articling for her chartered accountancy, our plans floundered. The stress got to her. She ran away from our relationship and someone else was allowed to take my place in the perfect marriage.

Left with a mortgage and a broken heart, I took in boarders to help make ends meet. I had hated my job as a lab supervisor, but now acted as a buffer. My work was not taxing. As I dragged through working uninspiring day after day, I could swear I was losing mental sharpness.

I started working as a general laborer. Being a conscientious employee, I was rewarded with a series of promotions until I became a supervisor in the technical department. I hated the adversarial relationship between the workers and management. This wasn't going to be the defining employment of my life. I wanted so much more from life!

Both of my parents were university graduates. My dad had a PhD and an interesting career as a research scientist for the Federal Department of Agriculture. Being paid was just a side benefit for doing something that he loved. My job, on the other hand, was a work your shift and take your money home kind of thing. My work wasn't challenging. However, being a boss gave me a certain level of flexibility. The routine nature of the work allowed me to function well through a string of emotionally upsetting events: the death of my mother from ALS (a degenerative motor neuron disease), my divorce two years later, and then the breakup with my next girlfriend. Each successive blow became a heavier personal cross to bear.

My job did have a lucky side to it. If the machines were running well, I could leave over the lunch hour. In the summer, I would cycle to the Byward Market to buy my groceries and soak up some atmosphere. In the winter, I could be in the Gatineau Hills in ten minutes, cross-country skiing with nature all around me and not a building in sight. Exercise was my salvation!

During the year leading up to the accident, the loneliness of single life weighed heavily on me. I hadn't nurtured outside interests during my marriage. When my wife left me for another man, there was little left in my life. There was only emptiness. I started dating a friend's sister, but after two years, the relationship ended. The Christmas before the accident was the first one that I had celebrated alone.

Soon after, I met Elaine. We quickly hit it off as friends. After several months, people were asking me why I hadn't asked her out yet. I couldn't put a finger on why. Something about her was holding me back. I didn't know what it was. Elaine was an attractive, happy, adventurous nurse and fun to be with. She was my date at a friend's wedding where she kept up with my desire to dance all night long. She had a youthful exciting nature with a willingness to explore and enjoy life. She was everything that I thought I was looking for.

I remember taking Elaine to a local bistro that May. We talked about us and our relationship.

Where do you want this relationship to go? I asked her.

Elaine replied, I don't know. If we date and it doesn't work out, we can't be friends anymore!

Not quite following this reasoning, I acknowledged the risk. We decided to give dating a try anyway. On one level, I was hesitant. On another, for some reason, I just had to go out with her. Where this feeling came from, I didn't know.

Well, if we were going to change the nature of our friendship, I felt that we should mark it by having a first date. We'd already planned to go on a white-water canoe trip with friends the next weekend, so we put the first date off until the following weekend. The canoe trip was great! I respected my personal boundaries of not being in a relationship yet. We slept in the same tent, but in separate sleeping bags. It rained. Things got wet. The bugs were ferocious, but we were free of any cares. Everyone had the right attitude, and there were no worries.

On the following weekend, our first date went off with one minor hitch. To make it special, I'd arranged for one of those student rickshaw rides to pick us up at Elaine's apartment. The rickshaw didn't show. No big deal! We drove to a special restaurant, and dinner was everything a first date should be! We enjoyed a good bottle of wine. The conversation was ripe with anticipation as we drank in each other's company. All was right with the world. There was excitement in the air. I started looking with promise to an exciting future. In the month that followed, we grew closer and closer, falling passionately in love with each other, or at least that was what I was told.

One month later, on a Friday night, we decided to go shopping before going out for dinner. When driving Elaine home at the end of the evening, Elaine asked me, Do you want to stay for the night?

Looking back, I cannot explain my response. Being recently divorced, I understandably had cravings for sexual intimacy. But my answer was quite the opposite. No, I answered. I want to bicycle to work tomorrow. With that, I kissed her good night and drove off.

As I turned the corner from Elgin Street onto Gladstone, I suddenly questioned my response. Why did I say that? No, I want to ride my bike to work tomorrow. That was my very last memory!

According to what I've been able to piece together, I had invited all my friends to my house for a pool party the next day in order to meet my new girlfriend. I didn't have regular hours of work on the weekend, but I was responsible for monitoring the work of testers who were recording chemical tests on the machines.

Saturday, July 8 was a beautiful sunny day. At 7:15 a.m., a taxi driver was finishing his shift after a long night. On some unconscious level, his next move would not only cancel my pool party, but it would also change the course of my entire life. He had been stopped at the previous red light. The driver of the car behind was the owner of a local muffin shop, going about his morning rounds. There was no one else in sight so early in this sleepy Westboro part of town. The traffic light changed to green, and both cars moved forward. Approaching the next intersection, the muffin shop owner could see that the taxi in front of him wasn't going to stop for the light that had just changed red.

That's when I came into the picture. I was bicycling down the hill with a green light ahead of me. Buildings obstructed my view of the approaching vehicles at the intersection. Not being able to stop in time, I slammed into the passenger side back door of the taxi. The driver didn't stop right away. At first, he didn't even know what happened. With glass flying, he eventually stopped and remained at the scene. The owner of the muffin shop didn't particularly like cyclists, but he saw the events with crystal clarity. The cyclist had done nothing wrong and would need a good witness. He remained at the scene and became my savior and made a statement to the police.

If there are guardian angels, mine was obviously on duty. A fast ambulance response saved my life. With two collapsed lungs, my left arm broken, mangled and almost torn off, a cracked vertebra, and broken ribs, Tim was a very lucky boy. He survived. I survived. Fortunately, internal damage was minimal. Other than my two collapsed lungs, no other major organs were affected except, of course, my brain. It had sloshed around in my skull. There wasn't outside damage or scaring to my head, but consciousness drifted away as my body slipped into the critical, self-protective state of repair, called a coma.

The owner of the muffin shop lingered at the