Chad J. and Emily K. Klosterman: From Darkness Into Light
It is said that sometimes we must experience the darkness to appreciate the light. I know this to be true because I once hit rock bottom and spent some time in the darkness. What made it even worse was the fall I had to experience in order to hit rock bottom. When the dust had cleared and all was said and done, I lost my career, my marriage, and my self-worth. It hurt and it left its scars, both physically and emotionally; however, I now know the warmth of the light and wouldn’t trade my time in the darkness for the world.
It all started on a beautiful summer evening in July of 2000 when I was taking my four-wheeler for one last test run before selling it the next day. I don’t remember the accident itself or even most of the details about it; all I know is that three months later I awoke from a coma after suffering a traumatic brain injury from my head and body hitting a concrete drainage culvert the night of that last four-wheeler ride. Along with the traumatic brain injury, I suffered bleeding and swelling of my brain, multiple skull fractures, leakage of spinal fluid from my ears, a paralyzed left arm, a broken collar bone and shoulder blade, a blind eye from a severed optic nerve, an amputated pinky, eight broken vertebrae in my back, a damaged short-term memory, a ruptured and removed spleen, a collapsed lung, a complete loss of the sense of smell, and other injuries and near fatal infections like pancreatitis, pneumonia, peritonitis, and septic poisoning.
I spent two more months in hospitals before going home to continue my recovery with my wife and family. It wasn’t long before my determination set in to learn how to walk again and to become more independent. After spending three months comatose, my muscles, especially those in my legs, had atrophied so much that they couldn’t even hold up my body weight. It took many hours of physical therapy to help me simply hold myself up in a standing position for a short period of time. Such therapy made up much of my time during my last month in the hospital.
Within a month of my release from the hospital, I was walking. I also learned to tie my own shoes with one hand, a “trick” that still impresses those who aren’t used to seeing it. I worked hard to regain my ability to care for myself, pass a driver’s test to get my driver’s license back, and get a job.
Little did I know how hard it would be to get back into my career field and get back the job I had lost. I learned to deal with the fact that my arm was paralyzed and that my eye was blind. I could not, however, accept the fact that my career as a mechanical engineer was over. When the accident happened, I was three months into a new job as a mechanical engineer in a job I loved and in a career field that at the time had huge opportunities for advancement. When I recovered enough to return to work, my job was gone, and so was my confidence that I could ever get or maintain a job in the engineering field again.
The traumatic brain injury had caused my brain to lose some of its ability to retain information and access short-term memory. While I worked jobs in retail sales that paid less than half of what I had previously earned in engineering, I returned to college to refresh my memory in order to someday work in drafting and engineering again. College had been easy the first time through before my accident; I attended it full time while also working full time and serving in the National Guard. The second time was harder; I was barely able to pass many of my classes even though I only attended half time, worked half time, and had help from instructors before and after class. I made it though; in June of 2004, I graduated with a 2nd Associate’s Degree in the engineering field and started applying everywhere I could in order to get my foot in the door of any engineering department of any company within an hour’s driving distance.
After a few short-lived, contracted jobs and four years of rejection from most applications and interviews, I had given up. I decided that there was no way I would ever get another shot at an engineering career again, and I settled into my low-paying job with no chance for advancement. That’s when it happened; it fell right into my lap: my dream job.
The company hadn’t really advertised the job opening, and I hadn’t actually applied for it. An individual who worked for the Veteran’s Administration and who knew that I had training in drafting and in the engineering field also happened to know of a small family-owned business that was looking for just such a person but hadn’t really started advertising it. Within a week, I had an interview and was hired.
A few years after my accident and a few years before my dream job fell into my lap, I had told my wife that my dream job would be sitting at a computer and drawing auto parts all day. That is exactly what I do now, and I love it. I use computer-aided drafting to design brake parts for cars. After having lost what I thought was my dream job, I now have an even better one that I couldn’t have imagined.
In addition to losing my career to my accident, I also lost my marriage. After the accident, my relationship with my wife wasn’t the same. She became my caretaker full time and resented me for it. When we divorced, I thought that I would never find a woman who would be able to love me, crippled and disabled, broken and without a career. It wasn’t until I experienced some bad attempts at relationships, ones with women who couldn’t offer anything even closely resembling what I really wanted in a relationship, that I found Emily.
Emily was a teacher who was never married, had no kids, didn’t smoke, had good morals, was a Christian, and actually liked me for me, scars and all. She wasn’t scared off by my injuries; instead, she loved me even more because of them. She didn’t look down on me because I didn’t have a good job; instead, she encouraged me throughout my endeavor to get the job I really wanted. We met online and were married six months later. We now have a beautiful two-and-a-half-year-old son named Keegan and have a loving marriage that has lasted almost five years and looks to stand the test of time. After losing one marriage that wasn’t really all that happy to start with, I now had the family I had always wanted with a loving wife and a son who warms my heart.
It took a long time, but eight years after the accident, I also have my self-worth back. I no longer feel undesirable and unlovable. My scars have healed: both the physical ones and the emotional ones. My wife and son, my supportive family and friends, and all the prayers offered up to God during my crisis have helped to rebuild the life that I once thought was over. I thank God for all of His blessings and for bringing me back into the light; however, I also thank Him for letting me experience the darkness so that I would appreciate His gift of life even more.