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A Prisoner in My Own Body

“Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Brooks, your son has crushed his C5 & C6 vertebrae and is paralyzed from the neck down...”


As I slowly opened my eyes, from what I thought was a nightmare, I asked myself, “Did I just hear confirmation that I really did break my neck”? Now completely awake, I laid stiff in a small hospital bed, with railings on both sides, facing the door. There were medical machines behind me, a countertop to my left, two chairs to my right, and my parents standing a few feet away from the foot of my bed. Trying to move and call out to my parents, who were only steps away standing at the sliding glass doors to my room speaking with a team of doctors, I burst into tears.


Still in disbelief, I tried harder and harder to move and call out to my parents. “Please someone turn around, why can’t you hear me? Mom…dad, please...I need you,” I cried out! NOTHING, NO SOUND, as I mouthed the words repeatedly.


With tears flowing from eyes like a waterfall, I laid there as a prisoner in my own body