CREVE COEUR • Sometimes after the young woman drifts to sleep, she sees herself walking again. In one dream, she stood on her own, then scouted the closet for a nice outfit. Just last week, she had another like it.
“I had a hospital gown on and realized I could move my body,†said Tamara Collier, 25. “I got up out of the bed. I started jumping up and down, saying ‘Thank you, Lord!’â€
Then Collier woke up at the latest stop in her recovery journey: a room at the end of a long hallway at a nursing home in Creve Coeur. It’s the kind of place where she used to work as a certified nursing assistant.
Now a motorized wheelchair waits beside her bed, ready to be figured out. The chair is controlled by her sipping and puffing through a straw.
“I can’t drive it worth a damn,†Collier said.
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But she can speak, chew and breathe on her own. She also celebrates the discovery of any new body movement or twitch that might signal her nervous system is firing into new territory.
If only the emergency responders racing around her on Sept. 1 were part of a dream.
Two gang unit police officers wounded by gunfire were already on the way to the hospital. Then Collier, a third victim, was discovered and needed to go.
“Hey!†one of them yelled. “Tell the medics to hurry up!â€
Collier was doing laundry at her mother’s town home in the 1400 block of North Ninth Street when a stray bullet, apparently intended for police in the parking lot, , then Collier’s neck.
Unable to move until help arrived, she lay on the floor. Her playful 1-year-old daughter scuttled over and became covered in her mother’s blood.
Neighbors gasped when Collier was rushed out. Her arm, dangling from the side of the gurney, looked lifeless.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ University Hospital treated the crushing gunshot injury. Paralyzed from the neck down, she was at the starting line of a grueling recovery that will require a lifetime of care.
A month and half later, Collier was at Kindred Hospital in the Central West End. After a night of poor sleep, she seemed to only be in control of her eyes.
Her spine was molded back together, but her nervous system was going haywire from all the bleeding and swelling. When moved, her body struggled to stabilize. She was anxious and in pain.
A machine hummed from the side of the room, adding moisture to an air line that fed into a trachea collar. Hoisted out of bed by a hydraulic lift, she whispered only a word or two at a time.
“Please,†she said. “My neck.â€
Trying to cut the tension, Gina Missel, an occupational therapist, admired Collier’s choice of yellow fingernail polish with splashes of glitter. But Collier couldn’t muster a smile.
Where is the pain?
“Everything,†Collier said.
Pain in her arms was a sign to Missel that there was possible nerve regeneration between Collier’s spinal cord and muscles. If Collier could use her arms, she’d be able to do so many more things on her own. Sometimes it takes years before movement happens.
Missel tried to improve neural pathways by using an electric stimulation machine. Only this day in October, the device was hooked up to massage Collier’s muscles, to release pain. Other times, it’s used to initiate movement.
With the arrival of lunch, Missel switched to feeding. She held up a plastic bottle of chocolate Ensure while Collier sipped from the straw.
Collier struggled to keep her eyes open as a nearby television tuned to the Hallmark Channel promoted fall harvest recipes. A few smiling tasters were lined up in the show, feeding themselves delicious food.
It pained Collier to chew soup and salad.
“Your jaw hurts, too?†asked Missel, leaning in to massage her face.
Of about 50 gunshot victims she’d worked with in the past decade, only two were women. Many of the patients were men who participated or were targeted in gun crimes. This was a bad day for Collier, but she stood out as an innocent bystander with a notable good attitude.
“She’s trying to take what happened to her and use it in a positive way,†Missel said. “The other patients usually have a lot more resentment, a lot of anger, a lot of blame. It’s amazing she’s not placing a lot of blame.â€
Collier eventually gained enough strength to move to the Rehabilitation Institute of ºüÀêÊÓƵ, where patients must be able to handle at least 15 hours of physical, occupational and other therapies a week.
During one visit in December, she was proud to be sliding her right arm across a table. And to cover two miles on a stationary bike that moved her feet for her.
“My journey continues,†she said. “I feel myself getting stronger every day.â€
While most patients go home from there, Collier was moved to the nursing home in Creve Coeur right before Christmas. Her health insurance no longer covers intense rehab. She gets about 30 minutes of restorative therapy three days a week that’s aimed at maintaining muscle mass.
It’s work she used to help patients with as a nursing assistant.
“Anything is better than nothing,†she said.
She wants to build on her progress. Her shoulders shrug. She can lift one hand to her mouth. She said she feels her toes.
It’s unclear where she’ll go next or when, but she’s not ready to go home to her son and daughter.
“I want to be able to walk in my door with my children,†she said. “That’s my vision.â€