My favorite thing about this blog (and life in general) is hearing people tell their stories. Everyone you meet has lived through experiences you know nothing about. And for each of those people, there is a particular sequence of experiences that carried them to that point where they met you. Alexa’s life course changed direction drastically when a close family member suffered a life-threatening, and life-altering, accident, and she decided to uproot her career.

Alexa was 26-years-old on Easter weekend of 2014. That Friday, April 18 (Good Friday, for those of you who prefer that I reference the Liturgical Calendar), she went out drinking with some friends. The bar was near her parents’ house, so she slept at her childhood home for the night. Early that next morning on Saturday, April 19, she woke up to the sound of her dad on the phone. “You could tell something was wrong, like something out of a movie,” Alexa recalled. “I walked out of my room and he said that my cousin, Danny, who I am super close with, was in an accident. My mom asked, ‘He’s okay, though…right?’ My dad got choked up and said, ‘No, he’s not.’ And that’s when we got dressed and went to the hospital.”

I asked Alexa to tell me what she remembers from that initial encounter. She shared:

“I just keep remembering that it felt like something out of a movie. My family and about thirty cops were in the waiting room. His wife, a nurse, was beyond hysterical. The trauma surgeon came out and said he had a traumatic brain injury (TBI). He told us that Danny’s skull was ‘smashed into a million pieces,’ and that only two people at a time were allowed to go see him. My stomach was at my feet while we stood outside of the Surgical ICU doors. We didn’t know what to expect.”

Alexa and her family exchanged information on the details of the event. Danny was a police officer. He was on the job and training a rookie the night of the accident. The rookie pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway and Danny pulled over next to him. A few moments later, a drunk driver plowed into his car. It was the epitome of “wrong place, wrong time.”

Danny spent over three months in the ICU.  “Every single day we congregated at the hospital,” Alexa said. “I liked having our family together because it felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone else about it. Because nobody else could relate. The hospital was the only place I felt okay because I knew everyone who was there with me understood how I felt…because they were feeling it too.”

Danny’s recovery was anything but linear. The doctors prepared the family for Danny not to make it. They had hoped he would, but his prognosis was too poor. A priest came to read Danny his last rites after his doctors spoke to the family about terminal extubation. Alexa sighed and said, “We really thought he was gone. I didn’t even shed one tear that day. I was in total shock.” But time passed as spring turned to summer, and Danny kept defying the odds as he slowly began improving. Meanwhile, his nurses became a vital part of Alexa’s family (Note: pun always intended.)

Alexa was previously a Senior Account Executive at a PR company. Essentially, her career was centered on developing brand strategies to garner media attention and press, while managing day-to-day media relations. She laughed in reflection of what she once believed she was going to do for the rest of her life, and said:

“I was never once interested in healthcare. One of my cousins is a nurse and every single one of her stories grossed me out so much. That was not the career for me. My interest had only ever gone as far as Grey’s Anatomy. I was a big-shot PR girl working in the city with my hair and makeup always done. My career was super fun. I thought I was so cool. But after Danny’s accident, I started realizing that saving a life is cool. Helping other people is cool. Making other people feel better is cool. I was working a lot, yet what I was doing wasn’t rewarding. There was no fulfillment. I would throw an event and celebrities would come and magazines would write about it, which felt awesome for a minute or two. But then I would wonder, ‘What’s next?’ That’s when I came entirely out of left field and said that I think I might want to become a nurse.”

She began to reflect on her knowledge disparity at the time. Educating herself is what primarily led her to taking the leap from PR to ER (which just so happens to be the name of her own blog!) Alexa shared:

“Each day on the train to work, I’d research different things online that I heard Danny’s nurses talk about. I’d take the train back from work to the hospital, or to my parents’ house for us to go to the hospital together, and I’d read more. And then when I got home from the hospital, I would keep researching while I couldn’t sleep. You would think that all of the Googling would have made me stress more, but it actually helped. I have a really hard time dealing with unknowns. I feel like my family solely relied on what the doctors said. The information they received was sufficient to them. But I needed to fill in the missing pieces, so I started focusing all of my energy towards that.”

Alexa noted how quickly she caught on and how impressed the nurses and doctors became with her medical terminology.  She recalled:

“It really started clicking for me even just by week two or three after the accident. Things were actually making sense. I remember walking into his room, looking at the monitor, and finally being able to read it myself. I didn’t have to ask the nurse what the different numbers meant. Instead, I could identify that his blood pressure had improved and his ICP was lower on my own. Also, I remember the ventilator’s noises startled me for a while. By the time he was trached, those alarms didn’t scare me anymore. I knew which one meant he just needed to be suctioned. It went from me not recognizing any of the noises, to understanding which alarm was sounding and why. And that calmed my nerves. It went from ‘He’s not breathing, OMG’ to ‘He just has secretions.’ That helped my anxiety a lot.”

Alexa noted that this decision to change her career did not come easily to her. “I had so many panic attacks, made several pro and con lists, and lost sleep over it,” she admitted. However, once she registered for classes, there was no turning back.

Despite easing some of her nerves by equipping herself with knowledge, there was still a tremendous amount of emotional turmoil. Alexa reflected on some of her biggest challenges:

“Not knowing if he was going to survive was the main one. And I felt like I could not even talk to my friends about it. I felt like nobody understood how I was feeling or what was going on. I completely secluded myself from everyone and stopped seeing my friends. Something I also really struggled with was guilt. I felt super guilty that the night it happened I was out partying while he was fighting for his life and I didn’t even know it. I felt so bad that I was out drinking while a drunk driver nearly killed him.”

Danny continued healing as Alexa eventually began nursing school after resigning from her career. Seven years post-accident, she doesn’t think about it much anymore, but its ramifications are forever in effect. I asked her how this experience impacts her presently as an ICU nurse. She said:

“My first day on the unit, I heard a ventilator alarm. That was the first time in a long, long time that I heard that noise. It jolted my nerves. Honestly, it felt a little bit like PTSD. I asked myself, ‘Can I do this?’ It made me freak out a little. I remember going to the bathroom on my lunch break, crying, and calling my mom. I eventually carried on with my day. And that still happens to the best of us.”

(Boy, can I attest to that.)

Alexa continued:

“Sometimes, I look at the parents of our patients and they remind me of what my aunt and uncle looked like. It makes me upset. I picture my aunt and uncle and what they looked like while thinking that they were going to lose their child. Yes, he was an adult. But he is still their son. Then, there were times that I would walk through the shortcut that led me from the old parking garage as I went to and from work. It passed right through the Surgical ICU wing. I would look at the double doors, and in through the waiting room, and my heart would sink for the families sitting in it. We were them.”

I sat with that response for a bit before asking the most important question: How is Danny now? By his strength, the grace of God, and innovative medicine, he fought like hell and was discharged from the ICU to Kessler Rehabilitation Center in late July-early August. “He really came a long way,” Alexa noted. They are still close. But just because you survive an injury, does not mean all of its effects are rectifiable. “I know it sounds selfish, but I miss him and the way he was. All of our lives were changed from his accident. And he’s not quite the same, but our relationship is still there. The point is that he’s alive…and smiling.”

And now, I hope you all are too. I know I am.

If Alexa’s story inspired you to share one of your own, please email anothersunrisestories@gmail.com and include a brief summary. I will respond back as soon as possible to plan a time for us to speak. I want to hear what it has been like for you to have another sunrise.

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