MIRACLES AND GUARDIAN ANGELS

This is a true story of an event that happened to me many years ago.

MIRACLES AND MY GUARDIAN ANGELS
C 2008 JoJo

Back in the early 1960’s, I flew to St. John’s New Brunswick, to visit a friend Cy, and to meet up briefly with a man I was in love with at the time. I was only to be there for a couple of day. I was due to return to Montreal that night. It was winter, and since my host worked and my boyfriend was only due to come over that evening, I spent the day alone in Cy’s home.

I felt thirsty, so I made my way towards the kitchen, but I never made it there. There was a scatter mat in the hallway. When I stepped onto it, it slid out from under my feet and I crashed down onto the floor, hitting my forehead sharply on the radiator on my way down, knocking myself out cold.

I have no idea how long I was unconscious because I was alone, but when I regained consciousness, I had total and complete amnesia. I didn’t even know who I was. I remember wandering around the house, looking at family photos, wondering if I knew these people, who naturally, looked completely unfamiliar to me.

I went into the sitting room and found my handbag. Looking through it, I found an address book with my name in it, with (me) written facetiously next to it. I felt so silly, of course I knew who I was, but what was I doing in this house? Where was I? And why was my head pounding as though there was a jackhammer inside it, banging mercilessly on my brain?

After a while, I remembered I was at Cy’s home for the weekend and that I was leaving that night. I decided I had to buy him a potted plant as a “thank you for having” me present.

I got into my coat, hat, boots and gloves, and taking their front door key will me, walked out shutting it behind me.

There was a massive blizzard going on, but I was totally unconcerned about it. At that point and for some considerable time afterwards, all powers of reasoning were absent, and I was simply fixated on buying that potted plant.

I wandered out onto the street, and a car was coming my way. It horrifies me to think about it now, but I stood directly in its path, flagging it down. When it stopped, I hopped in and instructed the driver to drive me downtown.

Now that car could’ve been anybody’s. But miracle of miracles, it was actually a taxi, and he dutifully drove me downtown and dropped me off in the town center. I paid him and got out of the taxi in this totally unfamiliar city.

And promptly forgot what I’d gone there for.

And so I wandered around for a couple of hours in this howling blizzard, in a state of complete confusion. Strangely enough, there was no sense of panic or fear. Just the thought running through my blinding headache “What in the hell am I here for, where am I and what am I supposed to do?”

At this point, I remembered the potted plant. Walking up to a total stranger, a tall, skinny young man and I said “Could you please tell me where I can buy a potted plant?”

He looked at my bulging forehead and said “What happened to you?”

“I fell and banged my head.”

He took my hand and said “You look like you could do with a coffee. Come with me, and after we’ve had a coffee, I’ll take you to where you can buy a potted plant.”

Without a moment of hesitation I said “Okay,” took his hand and followed him blindly, like a dutiful dog would trustingly follow its master.

He could’ve taken me anywhere, and I would’ve gone. My cognitive powers were totally absent. But he was my first Guardian Angel, a good and decent man who realized I’d suffered a catastrophic blow to my head that had rendered me helpless and confused.

He took me to a restaurant and we drank a cup of coffee together. Then we went to a plant shop and I picked out a suitable potted African violet to give to my host.

“Where do you live?” my Guardian Angel asked.

I looked totally blank. “I don’t know,” I replied.

“Do you have an address book with you?”

Ah, address book – yes that evoked a memory. I fished it out of my handbag, and we thumbed through it together. There was just one address in St. John’s.

“I will drive you there,” he said.

“Okay,” I replied, and followed him to his car.

He drove me to Cy’s home. When we got there he said “Now look, I want you to go in and be sure to stay there until your friends get home. Promise me you won’t go out again.”

“Okay,” I replied.

By now the blizzard was raging, as I let myself back indoors. I lay down on the sofa in the sitting room, feeling like my head was going to burst open.

Eventually Cy and my boyfriend came in. They too noted my bulging headache, but for reasons I cannot fully understand, they decided I had to come home that evening, as planned. Maybe Cy was afraid I was going to sue him, seeing that I’d fallen in his house, due to a scatter mat which should never have been there in the first place.

They drove me out to the airport, but when we got there, we found that all flights had been cancelled, due to the blizzard that was raging. So they turned in my ticket, got a refund and promptly drove me to the train station where an overnight ticket was purchased for me, in a roomette.

I remember waving goodbye to the two of them as the train pulled out of the station. A porter came and set up my roomette, and getting into my nightie, I clambered into bed and lay down.

My headache was unbelievably bad, and I realized it was being made much worse by a noise I could hear which, when it occurred, felt like a sharp needle piercing through my head. Hopping down off the bed, I pressed my ear to the bulkhead and realized that the noise was coming from the adjoining roomette, where a loose hanger was attached to the wall and was rattling as the train was moving along.

Without a second thought, I opened my door, hopped out into the train corridor, and whipped open the door of the adjoining roomette. A man lay on the bed there in his underwear and he looked very startled.

“Excuse me,” I said “This is bothering me.” Reaching in, I grabbed the offending hanger, pulled it off the wall and dropped it onto the floor.

“Goodnight,” I said, and slammed his door shut. Going into my roomette, I had to make a beeline for the washbasin because I had to throw up but I can honestly say this didn’t concern me in the least bit.

Next morning, I got dressed, and went out into the corridor in order to allow the porter to dismantle my bed and turn my compartment into a sitting one. In the corridor, I met my second Guardian Angel – the guy whose door I’d whipped open in the middle of the night.

By this time, my forehead looked like a basketball, and I had two great big black eyes. I must’ve looked like a raccoon.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

I told him I’d fallen and hit my head. “You look like you need some breakfast,” he said “Come along with me to the dining car and let’s get some food into you.”

“Okay,” I said obediently, and followed him into the breakfast car where we had scrambled eggs on toast, a muffin and coffee.

He paid for the breakfast, then we went back to our compartment and sat together chatting for the rest of our journey into Montreal.

When we got to Montreal, we emerged from the railways station. “Where do you live?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied. Once again, my address book came to the rescue. My Second Guardian Angel hailed a cab, paid him, gave him my address and told him to make sure I got there safely.

After arriving back at my apartment, I was restless and very miserable. My head was pounding, and I felt lonely and wretched. Then I remembered I had a Polish/Brazilian friend, named Dana who lived just one block from me, on the same street, and so I decided to pop in and visit her.

Now, Dana was an M.D. When she opened the door and saw me standing there, it took her a moment to even recognize who I was! When she did, and heard what had happened to me, she was absolutely appalled, but didn’t want to alarm me, so she invited me in and had me sit down next to her floor lamp. She wanted to examine me without appearing to do so, lest she scare me. What she didn’t realize was that I was way past the point of being scared of anything. If a fire cracker had exploded feet from me, I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

She stood behind me, next to her floor lamp and called “Joanna.” I turned my head towards the light and she looked at my pupils to see if they were dilating. (She told me all this later – much later.)

She explained to me, very carefully, that she felt I should be examined by a Neurologist immediately, because she was a little concerned about my head injury. She later told me that my responses were very slow, taking as long as a minute in between her questions and my answers.

“Okay,” I said cheerfully. If she’d suggested anything I would’ve answered “Okay,” at that point. Cognitive thought just wasn’t there.

So she phoned a neurologist friend of hers, at the Montreal Neurological Institute, Dr. Bernard Graham, and spoke to him in my hearing, very cautiously saying her friend had banged her head, and Dana felt he should look at me and make sure I was okay. She didn’t want to frighten me, so she downplayed her concerns to the point that it sounded like I’d lightly tapped my noggin on a radiator, and it wasn’t anything really to be worried about, but it would be a good idea to have Dr. Graham check it out, just to be on the safe side.

She drove me up to the Neuro and insisted on putting me into a wheelchair and trundled me into the hospital.

Dr. Graham turned up, took one horrified look at me, pulled Dana aside and said “My God, you didn’t tell me it was this bad.”

She explained that she hadn’t wanted to alarm me, so she’d downplayed my condition when talking to him on the phone.

So I was admitted then and there into hospital and spent the next month there.

They wouldn’t give me painkillers for my crushing headache, because they’d mask the symptoms, should a haemorrhage happen in my brain.

I underwent many neurological tests including an electroencephalogram. They asked me questions.

“What’s 100 minus 7?”

I didn’t have the least idea, so I said any old number.

“And what’s that number minus 7?”

I don’t know why the number “7” figured so prominently in their questions but I clearly remember that it did. I got more and more frustrated by my inability to answer their questions.

“I’ll have you know that I had a very good education,” I told them indignantly. They were very patient with me.

One of them took a sharp object and ran it up the soles of my feet.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

“Damn right I do,” I squawked indignantly. “You cut that out!”

I spent a whole month in the Neuro. They kept telling me not to try to remember things.

“When you try to remember things, you are sending electrical impulses surging through your brain that’s been injured, and this will delay the restoration of your memory banks.”

Wonderful! You try to lie there for a month, and not find yourself struggling to regain your own identity. It’s an impossibility.

I fished out my address book which had become my lifeline, and phoned every person I had listed in it. I told them I’d had an accident. “I don’t remember who you are or how I met you, but please come and visit me in the Neuro and tell me everything you know about me, and how you came to know me.”

Bless their hearts – they all came and when they walked into my hospital room, I could recognize their faces but not their names or recall where I’d met them. They helped fill in the gaps.

Amnesia is a curious thing. On some days, I could remember chunks of my life, with what felt like cotton wool gaps in between the memories and nothing to link them together. Then on other days, I’d forget those memories, and acquire different ones, also with gaps in between.

Things remembered would get forgotten, replaced by other memories. It was confusing, bewildering and very frightening.

I remember greeting a nurse one morning cheerfully saying “Well hi there, I haven’t seen you before,” to which she replied “And who do you think brought you your bedpan last night?”

After a month, I was well enough to be allowed to go home. However, for 3 months, I had to wear an ID bracelet which read:

IF THIS PERSON IS FOUND TO BE WANDERING AROUND AND IS UNABLE TO IDENTIFY HERSELF, PLEASE NOTIFY THE MONTREAL NEUROLOGICAL INSTITUTE AT (and a phone number was provided).

I was told by Dr. Graham how incredibly lucky I’d been. If there hadn’t been a blizzard raging, I would’ve gotten onto a DC3 unpressurized airplane which, with the severe concussion I was suffering, might’ve caused a brain haemorrhage and I would’ve died on the plane.

Since I’d lost all cognitive reasoning, I could’ve stepped off that train when it was going at full speed, thinking “Ah, I’ve arrived in Montreal,” and been killed.

Then of course, there were my two wonderful Guardian Angels who protected me, and saw that I came to no harm.

And of course, there was Dana who happened to live one block away from me, was a medical doctor, and saw to it that I got the medical care I needed.

Finally, there was the most wonderful miracle of all – at the Neuro, they’d told me I would most likely regain only 85% of my memory, but in fact, I regained 100%, and made a full and complete recovery from a very serious head injury.

Please don’t anyone tell me that miracles don’t happen, because I know they do!