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| Miss Cindy rode ABC over to the house for Skylar to love on this week. Best therapy ever. She can't wait to get back in the saddle again.... Baby steps. |
It's Skylar and I'm hanging in there. Honestly my recovery has been incredible so far—and coming home made life way better. Without nurses giving me shots, checking my IV, feeding me disgusting pills crushed into applesauce, and poking and prodding me every two and a half seconds, it's significantly easier to heal. Mom and Hannah were so knowledgeable about my healing when we got home they took over as my nurses effortlessly. I get some pretty strong painkillers every few hours, and now I'm not in any pain at all, which is a huge blessing.
So right now I have a broken and mostly-blind left eye, I'm permanently deaf in my left ear, I have too many skull fractures to count, the entire left side of my face is paralyzed, my left arm is in a sling (so I remember not to use it while my collarbone heals), my jaw was reset and is healing slowly, my nose is healing after being broken, and my left shoulder has been messed up too. I'm kind of a wreck, but a lot of it will just take time to heal :) I also have a lot of bruises and stitches, and I'm getting used to walking and balancing again after spending so much time immobilized. Every day I feel stronger, though, and I'm slowly adapting to these challenges. I can still see and hear from the right side, and I'm insanely grateful for that.
Since we've been home, recovery has been slow but steady. I gained part of my appetite back, and now I can eat small snacks every day to supplement my energy drinks. Working with my physical therapist has helped me with balance, and now I can get around the house without a problem. I can do almost everything by myself—an occupational therapist came to visit yesterday and left early because there wasn't really anything I needed her help with :P I spend a lot of time napping, because A) sleep is great for healing, and B) napping has always been one of my favorite things to do anyway. I'll start doing schoolwork from home soon, but for now I'm still regaining my old energy (and who wants to do weeks of economics and literature homework when you can watch TV and drink milkshakes instead?).
I am so, so grateful for the crazy support we've been given in the past month. It's been painful and heartbreaking and frustrating and tragic, but the way that people have come around us has been astounding. The people who came to the hospital all the time just to sit in the waiting room and support me mean the world to me. And the prayers you all are praying have made an incredible difference. You all prayed for my eye pressure and brain fluids to stabilize radically after the accident, and they did. You've prayed for me to not remember the accident and the horrible early-hospital days, and I don't. You prayed for me to retain my regular memory, brain function, and personality, and I did. I feel so incredibly lucky for all of those things—and God's work in this mess is far from over. In that statement I'm confident.
I'm gaining vision back into my cripplingly broken left eye, which is a miracle and an answer to a ton of prayers. The retina reattached itself in all four corners without any surgery—an inexplicable and amazing thing. My eye doctor was so shocked last week when we went in for a checkup that he scheduled another appointment this week—he wants to do another evaluation with the surgeon who did the original surgery on the night of the accident, so that the first guy can explain what detachment he was seeing. My left eye vision is dark, blurry, and weirdly warped, but I can vaguely make out shapes, letters, and people from several feet away. As the swelling in my head goes down over time, it's possible that my vision could continue to improve on its own. We don't know if it will (or if it does, how much better it will get) but this is an incredible phenomenon and I am so thrilled.
My physical therapist is also encouraged by my progress in the past week- he thinks that I'll be able to get my mouth working normally again and get back to my original physical ability because I'm so motivated. I'm sick of my awkward half-smiles and I will do as many ridiculous facial exercises as I need to get better.
Please continue to pray for my recovery—I've come a long way, but I still have a crazy long way to go. I'm gaining strength, working with therapists, meeting with doctors, and slowly healing. This will take a lot of time. My mom, sister, brother and I don't understand why God let this happen or what the future will look like, but even though we're broken because of this tragedy, we have no choice but to trust in Him.
Specifically, if you could pray for the continued improvement in my left eye (and wisdom as we meet with the two eye specialists on Wednesday), the healing of my nose and jaw, progress with my therapists and specialists, and coping with our devastating loss, I would be super grateful. I also have a never-ending high-pitched ringing in my left ear that's a result of the deafening surgery, and there's no telling if or when it will ever stop. Your prayers have done so much, and if you could pray for it to go away, I give you my thanks.(Also, if you could pray that I heal quickly enough to get back to riding horses and ziplining as quickly as possible, that would be awesome. Those are two of my favorite things and I'm anxious to get back to my hobbies!)
Thank you all for the prayers, well-wishes, kind messages, food you've brought, hours spent in the hospital waiting room, loving cards, gifts, and everything else. You all have blessed our family and shown us such love in what has undoubtedly been the worst period in all of our lives. We appreciate you all so much!
We as a family are so grateful also to Grace for providing us this website to post updates, and Charlie for maintaining it so well. However, now that we're home and I'm stable, we'll be posting future updates on our family blog, Mason Adventures. So please check there after this.
Thank you all again—we appreciate you so much!
Skylar Mason
