An unexpected place of healing Ramona Pierson
I’m actually going to share something
with you I haven’t talked about probably
in more than 10 years so bear with me as
I take you through this journey when I
was 22 years old I I came home from work
put a leash on my dog and went for my
usual run I had no idea that at that
moment my life was going to change
forever while I was preparing my dog for
the run a man was finishing drinking at
a bar picked up his car keys got into a
car and headed south or wherever he was
I was running across the street and the
only thing that I actually remember is
feeling like a grenade went off in my
head and I remember putting my hands on
the ground and feeling my life’s blood
emptying out of my neck and my mouth
what had happened is he ran a red light
and hit me my dog she ended up
underneath the car I flew out in front
of the car and then he ran over my legs
my left leg got caught up in the wheel
well spun it around the bumper of the
car hit my throat slicing it open I
ended up with blunt chest trauma your
aorta comes up behind your heart it’s
your major artery and it was severed so
my my blood was gurgling out of my mouth
had foamed and horrible things were
happening to me I had no idea what was
going on but strangers intervened kept
my heart moving beating I say moving
because it was quivering and they were
trying to put a beat back into it
somebody was smart and put a big pen in
my neck to open up my airway so that I
could get some air in there and my lung
collapsed so somebody cut me open and
put a pin in there as well to open up my
to to stop that catastrophic event from
happening somehow I ended up at the
hospital I was wrapped in ice and then
eventually put into it
ugh induced coma 18 months later I woke
up I was blind I couldn’t speak and I I
couldn’t walk I was 64 pounds the
hospital really has no idea what to do
with people like that and in fact they
started to call me a gomer that’s
another story we won’t even get into I
had so many surgeries to put my neck
back together to repair my heart a few
times some things work some things dent
I had lots of titanium put in the
cadaver bones to try to get my feet
moving the right way and and I ended up
with the plastic nose porcelain teeth
and all kinds of other things but
eventually I started to look human again
but well it’s hard sometimes to talk
about these things so bear with me I had
more than 50 surgeries but who’s
counting
so eventually the hospital decided it
was time for me to go they needed to
open up space for somebody else that
they thought could could come back from
whatever they were going through
everybody lost faith in me being able to
recover so they basically put a map up
on the wall threw a dart and it landed
at a senior home here in Colorado and I
know all of you are scratching your head
a senior citizens home what in the world
are you going to do there but if you
think about all of the skills and talent
that are in this room right now that’s
what I senior home has so there were all
these skills and talents that these
seniors had the one advantage that they
had over most of you is wisdom because
they had a long life and I needed that
wisdom at that moment in my life but
imagine what it was like for them when I
showed up at their doorstep at that
point I had gained four pounds so it was
68 pounds I was bald I was hot wearing
hospital scrubs and somebody donated
tennis shoes for me and I had a white
cane in one hand and and a suitcase full
of medical records in another hand and
so the senior citizens realized that
they needed to have an emergency meeting
so they pulled back and they were
looking at each other and they were
going okay what skills do we have in
this room this kid needs a lot of work
so they eventually started matching
their talents and skills to all of my
needs but one of the first things they
needed to do was assess what I needed
right away which I needed to figure out
how to eat like a normal human being
since I’d been eating through a tube in
my chest and then through my veins and
so I had to go through trying to to eat
again and they went through that process
and then they had to figure out well she
needs furniture she is sleeping in the
corner of this apartment so they went to
their storage lockers and all gathered
their extra furniture gave me pots and
pans blankets everything and then the
next thing that I needed was
a makeover so out went the green scrubs
and in came the polyester and floral
prints we’re not going to talk about the
hairstyles that they tried to force on
me once my hair grew back but i did say
no to the blue hair so eventually what
went on is they decided that well i need
to learn to speak so you can’t be an
independent person if you’re not able to
speak and can’t see so they figured not
being able to see is one thing but they
need to get me to talk so while Sally
the office manager was teaching me to
speak in the day you know it’s hard
because I you know when you’re a kid you
take things for granted you learn things
unconsciously but for me I had I was an
adult and it was embarrassing and I had
to learn how to coordinate my new throw
with my tongue and my new teeth and my
lips and capture the air and get the
word out so I acted like a two-year-old
and refused to work but the man had a
better idea they were going to make it
fun for me so they were teaching me cuss
word scrapple at night and then secretly
how to swear like a sailor so I’m going
to just leave it to your imagination as
to what my first words were when Sally
finally got my confidence built
so I moved on from there and and a
former teacher who happen to have
Alzheimers took on the task of teaching
me to write the redundancy was actually
good for me so we’ll just keep moving on
one of the pivotal times for me was
actually learning to cross the street
again as a blind person so close your
eyes now imagine you have to cross the
street you don’t know how far that
street is and you don’t know if you’re
going straight and you hear cards
whizzing back and forth and you had a
horrible accident that landed you in the
situation so there were two obstacles I
had to get through one was
post-traumatic stress disorder every
time I approached the corner or the curb
I would panic and the second one was was
actually trying to figure out how to
cross that street so one of the seniors
just came up to me and she pushed me up
to the corner and she said when you
think it’s time to go just stick the
cane out there if it’s hit don’t cross
the street
made perfect sense but by the third cane
that went whizzing across the road they
realized that they needed to put the
resources together and they raised funds
that I could go to the break institute
and actually gain the skills to be a
blind person and also to go get a guide
dog who transformed my life I was able
to return to college because of the
senior citizens who invested in me and
also the guide dog and the skills that I
had gained ten years later I gained my
sight back not magically and I i opted
in for three surgeries and one of them
was experimental it was actually robotic
surgery that removed a hematoma from
behind my eye the biggest change for me
was that the world moved forward that
there were innovations and all kinds of
new things cell phones laptops all these
things that I’d never seen before and
has a blind person your memory of your
visual memory fades and is replaced with
how you feel about things and and how
things sound and how things smell so one
day I was in my room and I saw this
thing sitting in my room and I thought
it was a monster so I was walking around
it and I go I I’m just going to touch it
and I touched it and I went oh my god
it’s a laundry basket so
everything is different when you’re a
sighted person because you take that for
granted but when you’re blind you have
you have the tactile memory for things
the biggest change for me was looking
down at my hands and seeing that I’d
lost 10 years of my life I thought that
time had stood still for some reason and
moved on for family and friends but when
I looked down I realized that time
marched on for me too and that I needed
to get caught up so I got got going on
it we didn’t have words like
crowdsourcing and radical collaboration
when I had my accident but but the
concept held true people working with
people to rebuild me people working with
people to re-educate me I wouldn’t be
standing here today if it wasn’t for
extreme radical collaboration thank you
so much