Amberley Snyder-Using Her Tragedy to Change the World

     Early in 2015,  a suggestion from Instagram guided me to follow a pretty spectacular cowgirl based on others that were already in my news feed.  Instinctively, wanting to know more, I hit "Follow" and began to read her story.  Miss Amberley Snyder.  An hour later I knew this woman was going places and quickly. 
  

  

 Watching her online audience explode the rest of the year has been exhilarating.   Promptly feeling a kinship with this young woman, I scoured the web to find any speaking event of hers that was located near me.  

   


  
There are snippets of her presentation online, but I wanted to see it, more so I wanted to 

feel it.  We enjoy the same activities, both started riding horses at the age of three, both of us experienced tragedy and were now speaking of it publicly.  What I really desired was a one on one.

 

   It just so happens that my friend, farming partner and the FFA adviser of Bourbon High School felt so enraptured with her testimony at the National FFA Convention last Fall that he brought her to Missouri to speak at three of our local schools and asked if I would like to spend the day with them.   That message was sent by text so he didn't hear my artless snorts of, " Well Yeah!"

   


  Listening to her message and watching her influence decisions

that day, anyone could plainly see she was made to provoke thoughts.  She moved and spoke with ease, calling attention to ability, motivation and attitude.

     Enjoying a lunch between speaking events, I quietly studied this vision of motivation.  She has a beautiful, contagious smile for anyone who crosses her path, but it was the genuine look in her eyes that hooked me as a fan for life.  She has a naturally, honest heart of a cowgirl with a side dish of sass. 

      I enjoyed her company, I admire her fight, I praise and respect her ability to share and I loudly applaud her for "getting back on that horse."  I urge you to read her story and use it as you need for your own growth.

    


 Her positiveness is palpable.  She will continue to crush her life's challenges, succeed in influencing others and I know I will watch her compete in her dream rodeos.  I am but a minnow in her sea of followers, but I will be cheering just as loudly as the next at her new found accomplishments.   






     We all wish you well in your upcoming endeavors and will remind ourselves of your equation to prosperity. 

Ability +Motivation +Attitude=SUCCESS

     

     (Amberley's photo)

Follow Amberley

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Schedule Amberley

Website

Angry Enough to Stand: That Ugly Cry

     This day I awoke impatient and agitated.  My muscles atrophied quickly as my bones took their time healing.  Although my mind is becoming more clear as I decrease my narcotic use,  I still could not guess the date or even month we are in.  I assume it should be late April, I am hoping.  Each day I receive more clarity, is a day that my active personality slowly returns.  I find my time sitting in a wheelchair has become mundane.  Winter refuses to lessen it's grip and I have rolled around every room in the house trying to find adventure. 

     Rolling myself down the hall, for who knows how many times that day, I stop to rest near the top of our stairs.  I am exhausted from the attitude I am carrying around.  My attention is constantly compelled by thoughts of walking.   My life is in limbo and that is what I am most frustrated about.   I want to know if I will be able to stand again or should I just accept that I will "roll" forever?  Sitting deep in thought, I work myself into a frenzy.   I am angry.  I am angry because I cannot stand.  I am angry because I cannot retrieve my own plate or cup from the cupboard.  I am angry because I cannot do any activity without pain.  I am angry because I cannot visit my basement!   Basement.  Oh, yes.   I still sit at the top of the stairs, while at the bottom, leaning against the wall, are a pair of silver crutches, smiling.  Winking.  Beckoning.

     I was done with fragile lady words today.  " Oh, *%#! this!", I yell at my empty house as I slam my palms on the arm rests of my wheelchair.  I am done with this sitting on my hind end, relying on everyone to help me.  Rolling to the steps, I stare and lament.   Locating my children's step stool, I place it on the floor in front of the stairs.  Unable to lower myself directly to the floor, I must proceed to the stool, then to the floor, now to the top step.  I weigh nothing, have no strength and movement is painful.  What the hell, I've already been broken and survived, it couldn't be worse.  I've used up four minutes moving just from the chair to the steps, which is about two feet, it could take all afternoon to master the stairs. 

    My attitude plunges me forward into the task.   Each and every step, I start by placing my left foot, then my right onto the next stair down.  Gingerly I would lower my bottom down.  Reaching the bottom, I leaned forward, grabbed the crutches and hurled them as far as I could up the treads.  Looking back up the steps, it is like the hallway in a movie that grows longer the more you stare at it.  I retreated back up the stairs just as I had come down them and safely returned to my metal chariot.  Covered in sweat and sucking some wind, I glance at the clock, Holy!   The clock says it took me nearly thirty minutes to achieve this.  

     I will stand today.  I just have to figure out how.  Rolling to the doorway, I park facing the wall.   Assuming this was the tactic that was most safe, I locked the brakes of my chair.   If I were to fall, I would either hit the wall or fall back into the chair, maybe.  Lifting the footrests, I place my braced feet to the floor.   I was still wearing my original black braces that were not manufactured for standing.  Rocking back and forth in the chair, my fourth attempt landed me cheek against the wall, gripping the door frame, scrambling to find a crutch before I crashed. 

     Thinking this may be the most stupid decision I've ever made certainly crossed my mind.   I did not have permission to do this, had never attempted this with supervision and here I am doing it alone in my house.  What a half-wit I am, which is most literally true in this case.  

     Well, I am already up, I shouldn't waste the opportunity.  For whatever reason I don't feel the carpet is stable, the kitchen hardwood is just a step away.  Placing my weight on the crutches I hear my braces slide against the oak wood as I drag them forward.  I look across my kitchen and I am dumbfounded by the view and feelings that overwhelm me.   My Lord!   I am so tall!   I have not viewed anything from this level in months.  I am enormous, feeling as if I loom over the counter tops.  Deliriously happy, I break into uncontrollable laughter, it comes from so deep that my belly aches.  I did it, I stood!   

    My open mouth laughter promptly turns into sobbing.   Drooping on my crutches, my shoulders are racked with deep, anguished sobs.  My cries come in pulses, matching each sob.  I suck in a deep gulp of air as each episode ends and another begins.  The emotion engulfs me to the point that no sounds are forthcoming anymore.  My eyelids have seized shut. I sob so hard my mouth will not close, my face is contorted with the pain I have survived these past months as I still hang on these metal contraptions. 

   Many minutes later as I finally release the last of my pent up grief.  I open my eyes and my shirt is wet from the river of tears I set free.  My first real cry.  I was not sad.   This was a healing cry.  I just needed release.  Staring down at the floor, I found an actual puddle of drool.  How ridiculous that must have looked hanging from my gaping mouth as I cried like an infant.  That is what you would call an ugly cry.  Ugly, but much needed.  

     After wiping the floor of my grotesque amount of saliva, because all I would need now is to slip in it, I had to share this with my husband.   Even though it was the middle of the day and he was at work, I had to share this with my confidante.  I confessed my drama of the afternoon and he remained quiet as my voice became thick with feeling.  He may have held is head in his hands and thought, "Woman, you are surely going to give me a heart attack", but he had nothing but compassionate words for his wife.

     I would say to anyone who made a decision like this, the same as I said to myself, " That was a foolish and hazardous decision, what the (bleep) were you thinking?"   It wasn't based on intellect for sure, it was a decision based on emotion.  I am stubborn and I don't regret it and it wasn't the last time frustration won over common sense.  

     What it did, was give me was hope.   

  Strength can only give you power, but hope can give you success.

 

FaceBook
Twitter
LinkedIn

 

     

       

We Don't Call it Torture Anymore-it's Called Physical Therapy

     As physical therapy sessions approach again, flashbacks of my first session flood to my mind.  April was the month I began my first voluntary torture showdown.   Me versus induced pain.  It was a crap shoot which one was to win on those first visits.  Never having experienced physical therapy before, I had no expectations.  My bag of bones was petrified into the shape of a chair position.  Barely moving for over three months, muscle atrophy and inflexibility scolded my frail, skinny frame.  I had in this position since my car crash.   

     Pure terror consumed my mind over a stranger touching my ankles.  Unable to bear the thought of multiple strangers working on me, I asked to be scheduled with one therapist only.  Trust was essential in my participation.  As I sat in that cheap, blue contraption known as a wheelchair, my therapist asked what I wanted to achieve from therapy.  My desperate answer, " I want you to challenge and push me.  I want to live as closely to my previous activity as possible.  I want to walk," I declared.  Examining my x-rays and listening to me reveal my last three months made us both sigh.  "What is he going to do with me?" I speculated.  "What am I going to do with her?" he reciprocated in his own mind.  (he later divulged this to me)

     Transferring to a cot that butted up against a concrete wall, I was advised to lie on my back.  "Flat?" I asked incredulously.  My waist and pelvis were rebelling against the action.  Each part of my anatomy liked the position it was in, they didn't moved independently anymore.  Leaving my knees bent and lowering myself down to my left side, I met the white cot with my shoulder and rolled to my back.  I'm sweating.  My 'inducer of pain'  pushed my knees to the mattress and my lower back revolted by awkwardly arching upward. 

      "Roll to your stomach," was his next instruction.  My face went blank as if I didn't understand what he was saying.  "On my stomach?", I am appalled.  First off, my legs are in braces, I haven't rolled anywhere in months, my pelvis and lower back pain is atrocious and he wants me to roll over?  Terrible, just terrible is what this movement was.  To make it worse he asked me to then push up on my elbows.  He measured the angle my torso was able to bend.  I had barely moved. 

      "Are we done yet?", I prayed.   Perspiration rolled in droplets down my spine.  Plank like, I rolled to my back again and he announced he was going to stretch my ankles.  Like hell!  Oh no.  NO, NO NO NO and NO.  Don't go there.  Stay away, don't touch them.  Don't even look at them.  No. 

      "Okay," I sulked instead.  Just removing my socks was a time consuming chore as he stared at the damage.  As I sat upright with my legs stretched out to the end of the cot, he spelled out that he needed to extend my ankles downward.  Pushing down on the tops of my feet was the only way to regain movement.  I am panicked.  I don't want to do this, My God, I don't want to do this.  "Let's do this,"  I state with false enthusiasm.   

     My eyes squeezed shut as hot pain seared from my ankles up to my lower legs at the lightest push.  His hands shifted my feet downward even more.  My palm met the concrete wall to my right with a smack, sweaty with fingers splayed apart.  "Dear God!" I screamed inside.  The sound of my bones moving was nauseating as if they were breaking apart all over again.  Reciting internally that I could handle this was the only thing I could do to keep from sobbing. I wanted to sob, it was right there ready to bellow out.
 

 I can describe the feeling only as if my ankles were encased on old, crumbling concrete for a decade.  Now they were being removed from this unforgiving home.  Popping, grinding and my own gasps engulfed me.  Taking myself back to the pain that fateful night as I awoke in the car, I thought that surely today's anguish couldn't be as dreadful.  Could it?

     My nose began to run with tears that I refused to let fall.  A half sob, half laugh escaped me as my fingers clawed at the cold, beige  wall while he held my stretched ankles down for ages.  "That's enough for today," he admonished.  Air rushed out of my lungs as I sighed with relief.  My shoulders slumped and my head leaned against the wall as he strapped my braces back to my legs.  Throwing a narrow side glance his direction as he asked how my first visit went, said as much as if I had uttered the words aloud.  

     Leaving with sheets of exercises to perform at home, I started making my goals list as Mom wheeled me to the truck.  Determination set it's long talons inside of me right then.  Today, I have stopped surviving this trauma and started recovering from it.
Let's do this!

 #PCRMC Success Story!

Carey Portell 2011

My accident occurred on December 29, 2010.  I was hit by a drunk driver that luckily only left me with severe bone injuries.  The most severe were a pelvic ring fracture and severe bilateral ankle fractures.

All bones in my left ankle were broken and dislocated, causing the nerves to tear.  This left no feeling from the ankle down.

I had an open tibia/fibula fracture and all bones were crushed so severely in my right ankle that the physicians could not save all of the splinters.  I still have gaps that are trying to grow back in.

After many surgeries and lots of metal installed, I was put back together and able to start therapy.  With the help of my therapist, I was able to start stretching out my body from being in a wheelchair for so long.  Most exciting was learning to walk again.  Just to stand on my own two feet was exhilarating.

My choice of coming here for therapy is a confident one. The therapists have not just helped me physically, but mentally as well.  Some days are a challenge and you just need to hear someone else tell you that you can do this, then show you that you can.  I am in pain every day, but look forward to therapy days because I know I will be met with a smile from every staff member & I will be challenged to progress in my #recovery.  I leave with a feeling of accomplishment & that I can win this fight.