Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It
    My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It
    My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It
    Ebook61 pages55 minutes

    My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It

    By Joseph Reidy

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This book is about a journey that I went on into the catacombs of being in a hospital with a brain injury. This book is based on true events that happened to me. Doing a journey like this has certainly changed me for the better at the end of the day, I believe. There is just something about having a traumatic event happen to you, it changes you ultimately for the better. it can be a struggle though, but the trick of it is not to get discouraged. I hope this book helps you through whatever traumatic events have happened to you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoseph Reidy
    Release dateOct 5, 2014
    ISBN9781310938436
    My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It
    Author

    Joseph Reidy

    I am a guy from a very small island off of the coast of Maine. I'm fairly funny, I wrote this book to help out people going through a brain injury. I've worked hard to recover from this brain injury, which is just what anyone doing this, going through a brain injury, needs to do. If I had known many of the things in this book beforehand, I feel as though it might have been somewhat of an easier time going through this. I have a lot of ideas of things that I would like to do, own a food truck, get into comedy, own a restaurant, seriously a lot of different ideas. If I've made it through this, I know I can do just about anything.

    Related to My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It

    Related ebooks

    Wellness For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Summer Snap

      Aug 5, 2021

      Summer Snap
      4 min read

    • Article

      BRAVE AUSSIE I Lost My Legs But I’M A SURVIVOR

      Sep 1, 2021

      Lauren McDonough, 23, Greensborough, Vic As I opened my eyes in bed, I felt a familiar crushing sensation in my chest. I knew if I didn’t get up, I was going to be late for school. But I couldn’t move. A black cloud was hanging over me. ‘I can’t go

      3 min read

    • Article

      Life In Pieces

      Sep 13, 2020

      Life In Pieces
      6 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Day I Lost My Mind … And How I Found It Again

      May 19, 2021

      I’m back at last … back to how I was before I lost my mind. Sitting in the tranquil Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland, I roll a ball of black sapote ice-cream around my mouth, feeling all the terrible anxiety I’ve carried for the last year

      7 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Day I Lost My Mind … And How I Found It Again

      May 19, 2021

      I’m back at last … back to how I was before I lost my mind. Sitting in the tranquil Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland, I roll a ball of black sapote ice-cream around my mouth, feeling all the terrible anxiety I’ve carried for the last year

      7 min read

    • Article

      My Contraception Was Deadly

      Dec 28, 2023

      My Contraception Was Deadly
      3 min read

    • Article

      My Warning To You

      Jun 29, 2023

      Sifting through the mail, there was one from my GP practice. You’re invited for a smear test, it read. I groaned. Having a smear test was the last thing I wanted. In January 2020, Covid was popping up on the news and I was worried – I didn’t want to

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Helping Hand

      Jul 13, 2023

      A Helping Hand
      5 min read

    • Article

      Heart Stopping

      Jan 7, 2021

      Heart Stopping
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Agony and Isolation of Tearing Your ACL in Prison

      Mar 8, 2019

      Want to feel as alone and vulnerable as possible? Try tearing your ACL in prison. It was December 2017, and from the onset, I could see that I was in for a ride thru B.S.-ville. After sustaining the injury during a basketball game, my knee had swolle

      4 min read

    • Article

      You’ve Got Mail

      Aug 3, 2023

      Touching down in the blistering heat with my girl gang, I was ready for the holiday we had ahead of us. Getting together for a hen do in Majorca, in May last year, there were at least 12 of us celebrating before my friend was due to get married. Know

      6 min read

    • Article

      Small Print

      Oct 1, 2020

      Dinara Farina, 43, Maidenhead Walking out of Heathrow Airport with my suitcase in tow, I looked at the grey London sky. It was 2009, I was 32, and I’d just moved from my home in Russia to the UK. I’d come over for a better life, but moving to a new

      5 min read

    • Article

      Thanks, Neighbour!

      Jun 22, 2023

      Sitting down in the campus cafe to catch my breath, I gulped my sixth coffee of the day. I’m still exhausted, I thought. I was dehydrated and my heart was racing, making me anxious. But I was busier than I’d ever been in February 2019. In my first ye

      4 min read

    • Article

      My Story “Journey From Paralysis To Hope”

      Jan 26, 2022

      I was 27 and had been working exhaustingly long hours as a doctor in training after graduating in Medicine from the University of Melbourne. I’d see patients who were paralysed or paraplegic. They had this crestfallen look; this unwillingness to comm

      4 min read

    • Article

      What Not to Ask Me About My Long COVID

      Feb 15, 2023

      This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       Before I got long COVID, I tuned out virtually all stories about

      7 min read

    • Article

      You Won’t believe this

      Oct 6, 2022

      As a familiar ache radiated through me, I clutched my stomach, wincing. Not again. I’d been experiencing cramps on and off for months, and my periods were becoming more and more irregular. At 59, I knew what it was. It was the menopause. After Googli

      6 min read

    • Article

      Precious Sound

      Sep 3, 2020

      Laying in bed, I placed my hand on my chest. Thump, thump, thump – I could feel my heart beating. It was 2001, and at 16, my life was filled with friends, family, school work, chores, music and plenty of laughter. They were all things I was very grat

      6 min read

    • Article

      (The Quiet House)

      Feb 10, 2022

      (The Quiet House)
      17 min read

    • Article

      ‘I Beat COVID’

      Oct 7, 2021

      ‘I Beat COVID’
      5 min read

    • Article

      Unexpected TWIST

      Aug 26, 2021

      Unexpected TWIST
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      My Nightmare...And How I Woke From It - Joseph Reidy

      My Nightmare...

      and How I Woke from It

      Joseph Reidy

      My Nightmare...and How I Woke from It

      ©2014 Joseph Reidy

      Smashwords Edition

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in review.

      Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting

      Published in the United States of America

      This book is dedicated to my family.

      Without you I don’t know if I could have done this. I also would like to thank Carol Moran-Brown, who helped so much with college after my accident.

      Table of Contents

      PREFACE

      CHAPTER ONE - The First Weeks After the Accident

      CHAPTER TWO - I Thought I Was in a Dream

      CHAPTER THREE - It’s Hard Just Being Human

      CHAPTER FOUR - Learning Everything All Over Again

      CHAPTER FIVE - People are the Most Valuable Thing

      PREFACE

      When I was eighteen years old, I was involved in a very serious accident—one that forever changed the course of my life.

      My Nightmare ... and How I Woke from It is my personal account of that accident, and the thoughts and feelings I had about my life in the weeks and months that followed. I believe that, during that time, I changed from a boy into a man. And My Nightmare ... and How I Woke from It reveals how that happened.

      The accident occurred on September 9, 2011, when I was a newbie freshman at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. Looking back on that time, I really didn’t have a clue about most things. Yes, I had been to many countries and regions, including Germany, England, France (twice), Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Caribbean, and different parts of the U.S. So I was worldly in that way and I loved traveling. But I was pretty naïve and inexperienced otherwise, and I had lived a pretty sheltered life, growing up, as I did, on Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine.

      So what happened came as a huge jolt.

      It was on a Friday, and I had been feeling really good that day, emotionally and every other way. I was adjusting well to college, and things just felt nice. I had finally gotten to a place where I belonged. But I was out doing something I shouldn’t have. I was getting beers and other types of alcohol for a bunch of people in my dormitory, worrying how I’d carry it all back to them. Soon I had much more serious worries.

      As I was making my way back to my dorm, I was crossing the street when I was struck on my left side by a Volkswagen Jetta going 30 to 35 mph. The next moments were a total blur, but— bottom line—I soon was in the hospital. And that’s where I began writing this book—not only about the experience of recovery from my life-threatening accident, but, more important, to reveal how that experience changed me as a person.

      CHAPTER ONE

      The First Weeks After the Accident

      The first week after the accident I was in a coma in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit of Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont, and they weren’t sure if I was going to live or die. They had to give me a lot of medications to control the inter-cranial pressures (ICP’s) in my head. (I was told this later, but I remember none of it.) I also was later told I had to have a thing called an Arctic Sun put on me. An Arctic Sun is a machine that runs cold water through pads placed on the body, to lower your temperature. In my case, my high temperature was caused by brain swelling; it’s a typical response to brain injury. Then I had a tracheotomy to help me breathe. I was then finally stable enough to have an external fixator put on my left leg, to hold the broken bones in place. I also had an external ventricular drain (EVD) put in my head to help relieve my high ICP’s, since the medications weren’t working to keep them down.

      Twelve days after my accident, I opened my eyes for the first time. At first just my left eye opened, and then the next day both of them opened. At that point, they put my feeding tube (gastrostomy tube or G-tube) in. I had to have the G-tube to make sure I was getting enough nutrients.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1