We Never Saw Them Coming. I Got Mother's Whiplash

Four years ago, on a clear Saturday morning draped in brilliant sun, we were headed to pick up our newly rescued dog from a bath—a chore less than two miles from home.

We never saw them coming. Two brothers, under the influence, out for a joyride.

I was driving. I didn't see anything until the orange glow from my airbag. Months later, in therapy, we'd learn that our son saw them coming first.

The crackling sound—the crushed metal—still haunts me. It's the sound you wince at if you ever witness an accident in realtime. I hear it sometimes when driving or as a passenger, triggered by a meandering car.

It takes very little to hear it again—and again. It also wakes me from sleep.

Without knowing or honestly caring what injuries I faced, all that mattered was my son. That mama-bear instinct. His sway in the car seat came to a halt. There was no blood on him, no glass, only shock in his expression. It took him a few minutes to cry.

If you saw our car, you would assume that someone in the vehicle ended up dead.

Our SUV was totaled. Our dog waited, and our family's story was as bent as the metal before our eyes. Then, my hand was numb.

An ambulance carried us to a local California hospital. My nausea in the ambulance was stuck on the brink of vomiting. Still, I thought mainly of the midday nap my four-year-old would miss and how it would soon be lunchtime. Was he hungry, too?

The silent alarms sounded in the emergency room when I failed to return with a cup of urine.

I thought I was disoriented and kept forgetting to follow their request. I assured them I wasn't pregnant but couldn't produce a full cup for proof. That was their cue to page the head neurologist.

A Level 1 Trauma was declared, and my situation snowballed. When I went to grab a single bite of a pastry I had in my bag, the nurse leaped across the room to stop me. No food meant—surgery?

The boys went home sometime during my first scan. Miraculously, my son was unharmed, and my husband had only minor injuries. By midnight, I spent over an hour in the MRI machine. The hematoma at the base of my head was the culprit.

The MRI tech had to cut my sports bra off with giant scissors. I couldn't urinate on my own but I felt I needed to, so a catheter was inserted in me on the MRI table. Humiliating.

By 2 a.m., my best friend walked beside my gurney as they moved me to the last available room in the ICU. It was directly across from the primary nurse's station—all monitors, all crucial, all right in front of me. I'd live and cry in that room for more than a week.

My numbers weren't stable enough for surgery yet. I was starving, losing more bodily sensation, and was connected to dozens of wires and incessantly beeping monitors. I was scared to death. I was afraid of death.

What I wouldn't learn for months, thankfully, was that my son couldn't fall asleep that first night without me home. He ran to the front door and pounded on it from the inside, screaming: "Mama, where's Mama?" He hit it so hard that it left a permanent mark.

That's worse than any scar on my body. Unfortunately, my brain can't forget it.

Three days after the accident, I was wheeled to surgery. I met the anesthesiologist. He wore Yankee scrubs, and I'm from New York. Through my heaviest tears, I pleaded: "Please don't kill me. I'm a mom."

Weeks later, over a coffee in the hospital lobby, he said that was the first time someone asked that outright in his entire career. I told him that I meant it. He told me I was still alive.

During rounds, a doctor called my case a "mother's whiplash." It means that after I thrust back and forth from the impact and the airbag, I snapped my already damaged neck around to see my son—exorcist style.

My lead rehabilitation doctor, my favorite doctor, eventually diagnosed me with Quadriparesis.

Healthline states this is a condition "characterized by weakness in all four limbs. The weakness may be temporary or permanent." What could be worse? What's worse is what I am the most insecure about.

I asked my doctor why I had forgotten things, like my phone for physical therapy or grabbing my Chapstick. Examples like that. Was it the super strong meds, I wondered?

"It's not the meds, Jenni," he explained further. The information unfolded to my rock bottom.

Learning I had a Traumatic Brain Injury was that part of the car accident. Severe migraines and heartbreaking cognitive assessments verified the TBI.

Once, I cried, shouted, and wheeled myself out of a cognition test in Occupational Therapy. We were only five minutes in. If it wasn't for my son, that singular test made me feel there was no point in living.

But I prevailed. I relearned to walk, type, write, and shower alone, all while the feeling and sensation slowly returned. I couldn't bathe my son for months, but I sat in the bathroom and watched someone else do my job every night.

I won't ever have it all back. I survived this accident with an invisible line down my body, and the right side is the lesser of me. I'm used to the weakness, the pins and needles, the pain. I make every effort to have less.

In 2022, I opened a book without chucking it across the room. In 2023, I read one book a month. This year, my dream is to read one book a week. I am on track so far.

I may no longer forget my son's juice box, but I struggle to find the words to express myself.

Writing this is hard. But it was time.

Some days, when my son is at school and the sun is shining, I carry a book outside to the trampoline. I lay in the center and remember it all. Then, I read.

On other days, I take my notebook with me. That is where this story was written.

Jenni Dawn Muro is a professional survivor of a cancer diagnosis in her teens to a spinal cord and brain injury just a few years ago. Jenni also braved a career in Hollywood, working with some of the most famous talent in the world.

Now a proud mother to an eight-year-old and two rescue dogs, she lives with her family in Tennessee. Most recently, Jenni was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She leads writing workshops for cancer and health organizations, is an entertainment consultant, and is currently at work on a memoir. Her writing has been featured in Zibby Magazine and Beyond Words Literary Magazine (upcoming).

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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