Skip to Content
All Stories
All Stories

Chelsea Rose

December 21, 2011

Personal Story
by: Chelsea Rose
 
January 7th, 1996

I was taking a shower in my home, when the pilot light in our bathroom went out. It had been a faulty installation, and they left out a backflow valve. The gas therefore simply leaked into the room. Since there were no windows or vents, eventually I inhaled all of the oxygen and started on the carbon monoxide that had taken its place. I lost consciousness and I very nearly died. My Mom was told that I was within a few minutes of death. If my Mom hadn’t come in to check on why I was taking such a long shower, I probably wouldn’t have made it.

To further complicate matters I was living in central Europe, in the Czech Republic. My Mom did not speak the language, and so she had to call her Czech boyfriend who called the ambulance.

The first thing I can remember is waking up in the hospital not knowing where I was. I saw Cartoon Network on the television that was mounted on the wall in the upper left corner of the room, and became convinced I had somehow gotten to America. It took a long time for me to realize that I wasn’t in America, though I still spoke Czech to the nurses automatically.

I was in various hospitals off and on, for two months, all over the country. While I am very grateful for the hospitals bringing me through the intensive care part, I wish I had been sent home straight after that. The hospitals and staff were, for the most part, brutal. They knew nothing about brain injury. I thank my lucky stars that Mom was there and had the strength to fight for me. She fought every doctor we came in contact with, who tried to force things on us that didn’t feel right, even though some of them told her once that she was killing me by taking me out of a hospital.

I had so many injections and IV’s that one time when they were looking for a place to stick me they couldn’t find anywhere that wasn’t already bruised. My arm was in a cast and I couldn’t remember why. One of the doctors decided to take a look, since they couldn’t find anywhere else. They unwrapped it and I saw a needle in my arm with a colorful screw part for it to be attached to an IV or syringe. On the one hand I was relieved, having developed a great fear of shots by then. On the other hand, I was horrified that I had a needle sticking in my arm that everyone had forgotten about.

Once I left the hospitals was when the battle for recovery came. Everyone in the hospitals, and any doctors we talked to had no advice. They flat out told Mom one time, “We can only really help with the immediate care, we don’t know anything about recovery.” So we were on our own. At the beginning, I don’t remember much. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t even know what was going to be a problem.

My most severe problems were short-term memory loss, fear, and depression. As we moved along the pathway to recovery we discovered numerous other problems that were not immediately apparent. In math I would have inexplicable errors. I could redo the problems and get a different, still wrong, answer. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to do the problem, because I could explain it perfectly, the answer just wouldn’t come out right. Sometimes I would forget to eat. I would get lost easily.

I felt very alone. No one understood what it was like, to remember the person I had been, and know I could never be that person again. If nothing else, I could never leave my new knowledge of mortality behind. I felt like I was just “different”. I had been different anyway, an American in a foreign country, but this was more of the undesirable different. 

Now I am 18, and it has taken up nearly 6 years of my life. I am so very grateful to have had these 6 years. It brought my family close together in a way that can never be undone. My Mother and my brother really pulled through for me. I don’t know how I would have made it without them. Alex, my younger brother, had to grow up and take care of me. I couldn’t go anywhere without him for a very long time. I didn’t want to for a lot longer after that. 

I have finally recovered to the point at which it is safe for me to have my driver’s license. I am a fencer as well, which challenges my brain to work in new ways. If I have only one thing to say to people who are just starting out on this path of recovery, it’s to keep searching. Keep trying the things that are challenging. And never give up the dream of full recovery. Be specific about what recovery is. It is different for everyone, since everyone functions at a different level anyway in different areas. If something is important you can find a way to make it possible.

I know that I am not where I want to be yet. I also know that I’ve come a long way, and I’m still moving, despite periods of time where I thought I wasn’t. I know that other people don’t always see my difficulties anymore, and I still find that drive inside me, telling me that I’m not through. And I think I will probably continue to work on myself for the rest of my life, even when it’s not directly related to recovery. So, was this a curse, or a blessing in disguise? I think that it’s definitely a blessing, though sometimes I forget that it is.

​Have a Story to Share?

​Every brain injury is different, yet there are lessons we can learn from the experiences of others. No matter whether you are an individual with a brain injury, a family member, caregiver, or clinician, your story is important.

Tell Your Story