Life can change in a split second. One step, physically or mentally, can determine the entire future. No one can truly ever plan for anything because life will throw curveballs out of nowhere when one least expects it. That is what life did—knocked my mom off her feet (literally) and turned my family’s lives upside down.

Hands: just another part of the body to most, but to me, they are a lifeline. Count how many times you use your hands in one day. It’s a nearly impossible task. Picture every activity that requires hands beyond the obvious of driving, writing, cooking or carrying anything. Think deeper. Try eating, drinking, using the bathroom, showering, brushing your teeth and hair, putting on clothes and shoes, using your phone, pressing a remote, opening doors, turning on lights…the list goes on. Imagine being locked in your house handcuffed for a day with food, water and a phone all within reach. These necessities would be useless in aiding your survival without the tools needed to operate them, hands. You are limited to only your feet and mouth. Now imagine going months without using your hands. That is what happened to my mom.

The day started out like any other day: a hot, summer morning in July. We had a full day ahead, and all that was on my mind was how we had to go to the shoe store later that day to be prepared for school. My mom and I were walking my dog through the neighborhood early in the day to beat the heat, and we were heading back home. A couple was walking their dog on the sidewalk, so we moved to the road to avoid a dog attack. A wasp appeared suddenly out of a bush in someone’s yard and began flying around us. I freaked out and began walking the other way, but the unrelenting wasp refused to leave my mom alone. She stopped, ducked, moved forward, moved backwards and tried to run away, but this cycle continued for five whole minutes. At that point, she started swatting the wasp, stepped backwards, and the next thing I knew, she was flat on the road. The memory of her falling backwards haunts me like a movie stuck on repeat. “Are you ok?” the couple asked. 

“No!” she yelled.

The couple glanced at her and walked off. Seriously? Having two other adults to help out could have completely changed the outcome of the situation, but now I, a fifteen-year-old, was standing there by myself with her. I panicked. I did not know what to do. My mom tried to pick up her phone, but her hands would not cooperate. It was like trying to grasp it with chopsticks. I looked at them, and it is difficult to accurately depict their appearance. Essentially, they were distorted with bones sticking out in the wrong places luckily not through the skin, and they were swelling fast. They looked inhuman, like something from a horror film. “Call 911!” she exclaimed. I shakily picked up her phone and dialed the three numbers I learned as a little kid. A lady answered, and I told her the situation. “Please explain what happened,” the lady said. My mom then repeated what I had said. “I’m sorry, could you please explain that again?” the responder said. 

“Hang up!” my mom said. I obeyed. I heard the words “compression syndrome” and “los[ing] [her] nerves”. What was that? Was something life threatening happening? “My head is not bleeding, is it?” That is when I looked at the back of her head and noticed a faint red line growing. A million thoughts raced through my mind. Did she have a concussion? Was she having internal bleeding in the brain? Was she going to have short term memory loss like my grandma when she fell years ago? 

“It is a little,” I barely managed. We began running home. While sprinting and holding the dog on the leash, she told me to call our neighbor down the street. I looked down, pulled up her contacts, and pressed on the neighbor’s number. She answered immediately, and I repeated the 911 story, but I do not remember anything she said. We made it back home only to find a locked door. “Where’s the key?” I gasped.

“I don’t know!” Neither of us could think straight, so we rummaged around throwing things left and right in the garage. 

“Here it is!” she said. I still today am oblivious to where it came from. I grabbed it from her and opened the door. I heard the neighbor saying my mom’s name in the garage. I let her inside, helped her get ice packs and watched them leave in the neighbor’s car. Silence. What just happened? My head could not process the situation. My brother was sleeping upstairs, and my dad was at work. I could not breathe inside, so I stepped back out. My first thought was to call my dad. With each ring, I became more anxious. He did not answer. I called again. The phone went through the whole ringing cycle again and ended at his voicemail. I texted him that we had an emergency. I FaceTimed my friend from school twice, but she did not pick up either. Then I began walking around outside. Where was she? What was happening? Was she going to be ok? My phone started ringing. It was my mom! “Hi,” I said in a cautiously optimistic voice.

“Hi Jaya, this is Kathleen. I just took your mom to the ER, but I can’t go in with her due to the Covid protocols,” my neighbor said.

My heart sank. I was expecting my mom to answer, and I still had no new information about what was going on. After walking around for thirty minutes, I went back home. In all the time I was outside, the ambulance never came. First responders are supposed to come no matter what. They are supposed to answer calls in situations where people are unable to talk or communicate clearly. I have forever lost faith in 911. 

Later on, my dad called. He had finally talked to the neighbor, discovered that my mom broke both of her wrists, and was on the way to the ER. She needed surgery, but since it was not an “emergency”, she had to wait four days. I hung up feeling discouraged. 

Later on, my brother got picked up by a friend, leaving me at the house by myself. Waiting with no idea of what was happening was the worst. My parents were gone almost all day. They came back for a short while, and I briefly saw my mom’s casts, up from her wrists past her elbows, and then they left again to go to an ortho appointment. My dad was on the phone all day trying to reach different doctors, and I tried to comfort my mom and stay positive, which did not help much. Those four days leading up to the surgery were rough. I cannot even imagine the amount of pain she was in having her wrists out of place for multiple days. She could not do a single thing on her own, not even wipe her tears. Everyone felt anxious about the surgery, but luckily, it went well with no complications. My dad took off work the first day to help out, and the three of us got used to a new schedule. I controlled her phone, as she could not hold it, much less press the buttons, and all of the relatives and friends wanted to text and call every day. We rotated shifts of sitting with her to give her drinks of water through a straw, fixing her food, and feeding scoops of food into her mouth. Every hour, timers were set for icings, elevations and medicine, so someone had to be on duty to set up and then be back fifteen minutes later to put everything away. I learned to do laundry for the family. Neighbors and people from work took turns delivering meals. Most people made dinner and delivered without asking first, and even though their intentions were good, we ended up with many chicken pot pies and pasta dishes all at the same time. Not to mention the desserts. We had more food than we could handle at once, and after the initial rush ended, my family was left to fend for ourselves. Since my dad had to go back to work, my aunt came for a week from Atlanta, and my other aunt from DC came the next week to help out in the house and drive us places. What frustrated me was the fact that I had only gotten my permit a week before the accident even though I received it as soon as I became eligible. I wished I could just drive everywhere I needed to go without having to have an adult with me because we were relying on my mom’s friends after my relatives left. It was somewhat awkward riding with people I was not familiar with who asked lots of questions.

My parents hired a caretaker to help with personal things everyday and to keep the house together and get errands done. We have gone through three so far. First, they have to be trained about how to do anything and where everything is in the house. They have to be watched carefully because we do not trust them. They get in my personal space. Over summer, it was awkward having a complete stranger eat meals at the table with us, ask what I was doing at random times, sit on the couch next to me and ask what was happening on TV, and monitor my actions. They always had an opinion on whatever I was eating if it “was not healthy”. I did not feel comfortable telling them all of the personal information about my life that they were asking. If I wanted to walk outside alone to clear my head, she would check on me, which only encouraged me to stray further from the house. I no longer could tell my mom anything in private without the caretaker listening. I know it is a million times worse for my mom who cannot do a single thing without the caregiver standing next to her. 

School is a welcome escape from the house. It provides me with a breath of fresh air and different people to be around. There was concern at first about how my brother and I would get to school and home, but we have had to make compromises. My dad takes us on the way to work, which means we have to try to leave early. If there are no activities after school, my mom rides with the caretaker, who leaves at 4:00, to pick me up. If an activity ends after 5:00, my dad can pick us up, but conflicts pop up every week when my brother and I have two different things going on at once in different places. In that case, I have to beg a friend to go out of their way to take me home. My mom has to do physical therapy as well, so if someone is taking her there, we have to find someone else to drive us to appointments or whatever else we have going on. It would be easier if we had relatives who lived in town. Sometimes I wonder if it makes it easier or harder having a nice caretaker. I am grateful that we do not have someone mean in the house, but when they are kind, it makes it difficult to justify the frustration we feel towards them.

The scars on her arms are a permanent, painful reminder of how tragedy can strike at any moment. Every day, someone rubs scar cream on them so that they will hopefully disappear. No one wants to walk around with five inch scars going down their wrists, drawing attention from strangers who pretend not to notice.

While it will take time for my mother to fully heal, she is making small strides in her recovery. She has to wait two full months before she can drive, and it will be six months before she has recovered completely. We celebrated when she was finally able to feed herself. She uses disposable utensils and cups and drinks out of straws because they are lightweight. When she could not wash her hands, she ate with disposable gloves. She can press buttons on her phone if it is sitting flat. She goes with the caretaker to pick up groceries and do tasks around the house. Since her right hand had a more serious break than the left, she had to learn to write down the grocery list with her left hand. She helped me back the car out of the garage the other day, and we are practicing driving together. With physical therapy, she can move her hands a little bit more each day, though her range of motion is limited. I can tell how determined my mom is to regain her strength through her dedication to keeping up with her time consuming exercises she completes multiple times a day. Now she wears removable splints, so she can use her arms to open doors. There is a light at the end of the tunnel no matter how far away it may be.  

From this experience with my mom, I learned that more than bones can be broken in an event of trauma; our entire family structure snapped as well. In the chaos of a crucial support beam of our foundation collapsing, we scrambled to rearrange our positions t

o hold up the fort. Healing requires coming together and joining forces as a family to help each other carry the burden. Being flexible and adaptable is key to preventing our world from falling apart. Instead of focusing on the hardships, we should envision how well we are keeping things together in the midst of uncertainty. Life will try its hardest to knock you down, but it is how you react that affects the outcome of the situation.