Abby Stephens: Walking After Paralysis
Abby Stephen's life changed when she was paralyzed in a car accident. But she beat the odds and is now a walking quadriplegic.
Listen as she shares her wit and wisdom through her amazing journey of faith. Some of the topics we discuss are:
Why she believes in miracles
The importance of finding humor in hard situations
Growing into a feeling of gratitude vs. just listing things to be grateful for
Happiness is a choice
Don't ask "Why" ask "What"
Why we need people
You can find Abby on Instagram @abspeaks, Facebook, YouTube and on her website.
Here is the video of Abby taking her first steps after paralysis:
And here is the video of Abby leaving the hospital walking:
Here is the transcription of Abby’s podcast:
Abby 0:02
I could see my feet but I couldn't feel them. Move them. I was still confused. I remember his face come up close to mine. I blinked and I said, “Tell me this is a dream.” He said, “No, this is real.” And I said, “Then pray.”
Tamara Anderson 0:32
Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.
My guest today was raised in Cokeville, Wyoming where she attended high school and was always a physically active young woman who loved to sing and dance. In fact, she planned on receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Dance Theater. That all changed one day in 1996, where at the age of 23, she was in a car accident, which left her paralyzed from the neck down one week before her wedding. Although doctors said she would never walk again, with unwavering faith, determination, a positive attitude and a miracle or two, she was able to walk just three months later. She is married to her husband Cole. They have been married for 23 years, and have four children, including a set of twins. She's a professional speaker, singer, entertainer, full time wife and mother, and almost an author. She loves her faith, family, friends, food, and fun. I'm pleased to present Abby Stephens. Abby, are you ready to share your story of hope?
Abby 2:10
Absolutely.
Tamara Anderson 2:11
Wonderful. Thanks for being on the podcast today. I have one question that I have got to know the answer to, and that is how in the world were you able to juggle a set of twin when you really only have the use of one hand?
Abby 2:32
I would say that’s the question of the day. Yeah, that was tricky. That came along with all the other things that I had to learn how to do. Having one baby at a time was scary enough. Then those two came along, and that was just something else. I had lots of help, lots of people who were willing to serve and love and care. Just figuring things out, we all have to do that, right? Like things happen and we have to be flexible and modify and then just figure it out as we go.
Tamara Anderson 3:23
I was in a car accident when I had two young children and broke one of my collarbones and had to wear my arm in a sling for months and months and months. I could not change my wiggly boy’s diapers one handed. So I'm trying to visualize you with two kids. My brain can't even wrap itself around that.
Abby 3:53
I basically use my nonfunctional hand as a paperweight and plop it on there to hold the diaper down while I do it often. It’s just one of those things that you just figure out. I'll tell you a funny story about the changing diapers thing. When I was pregnant with my first, for my baby shower I thought it would be funny to play a game where we passed a doll around and timed people to see how long it would take them to change the doll's diaper with one hand. So we were passing this doll around and most people are struggling. My grandma got the doll and she puts that thing between her knees and squishes it to hold it still. I'm like wait, the problem is you can't kill the baby. It has to be alive when the diaper is on. Everybody was just laughing. So that was that we did to make it fun. It's not ideal and it wasn't what I had planned, to change diapers with one hand. So one of my biggest things is just to make things funny. That’s one of my tools.
Tamara Anderson 5:30
That's a great tool to use. I married a man who has a fantastic sense of humor. I've always tended to be more serious in nature, and he has been just perfect for me. He brings out the humor and we've sure needed to laugh about a lot of things, just like you have with your life.
Abby 5:54
You have to laugh, right? You have to laugh or you cry. That's one of my favorite quotes, by Marjorie Hinckley. Life is hard, and you either have to laugh or you cry. She said, “I prefer to laugh because crying gives me a headache.” Love that. There's just moments where you really do want to just break down and cry. It's okay to cry. It's okay, that's an emotion and we need that to be healthy. But definitely don't want to just like park there. To be able to twist something, make it funny, and have a good laugh, I figure that's a lot more healthy. It helps you get over it faster.
Tamara Anderson 6:41
I think that's good. Because I think that it's not just the twisting it to make it funny, but it's also being able to look at this situation from a different point of view. That is a skill that really helps put any traumatic situation into perspective.
Abby 7:00
Exactly. I think sometimes people might think, Well, how do you laugh when you've just lost a loved one? Definitely when they gave me my prognosis, we weren't laughing about that. In the moment, in the moment of trauma, or tragedy or heartache, or those kinds of things, of course, you're not going to laugh. But as you continue on, and as you're coping, and as you're trying to still function in your life through hard times, then you can find that humor element, and it instantly makes a difference.
Tamara Anderson 7:42
So let's go to a pivotal moment in your life, and it was in your young life. I mentioned in the introduction that you were raised in Coatesville, Wyoming, a very, very small town. You had a very, very traumatic event happen when you were in seventh grade. Would you mind telling me a little bit about that? Why was that such a pivotal experience for you at a young age?
Unknown Speaker 8:08
So Cokeville, Wyoming, some people have heard of it, some haven't. There's a movie called “The Cokeville Miracle” I encourage everybody to watch to get the full story. It's on multiple streaming platforms. In 1986, a man and his wife came and held our elementary school hostage with a bomb. There's a lot of backstory to that, but in a nutshell, he came and held our elementary school hostage. My brother was in fourth grade in that school. In Cokeville, the teeny, tiny school is the only elementary school and there's another building that is the junior high and high school. So our entire town was involved in this. It was obviously very scary and traumatic and tragic. The reason it's called the Cokeville miracle is because, miraculously after hours of waiting and wondering and being very afraid, and yet having faith and saying lots of prayers, the bomb was accidentally detonated. There were about 155 ish people held in one classroom, children and teachers. And of all those people, no one was killed except for the man and his wife. She was too close to the bomb. She's the one that accidentally detonated it. He took his own life. So that is the very, very nutshell version, but it was a miracle. There's no other way to explain it. In the investigation of it, they found the bomb was designed to level the entire wing of the building. In the investigation, they found that only 15% of the bomb went off. There are so many stories of divine intervention and angels and so many things. That's a podcast in itself.
My little brother was in fourth grade at the school and I had seven other little cousins in there. Everybody knows everyone there. Everyone is friends, and we know everyone, and everybody was involved. It was definitely just a life changing, testimony, faith-building experience, that I, personally, was affected by. I saw a miracle. It was undeniable. I prayed and it was answered. That is why it was very pivotal to me, not knowing that it would be foundational, in the strength of my testimony, that would get me through more hard times.
Tamara Anderson 12:03
Wow. That is amazing how these hard situations that we feel we have no control over can point us to God. I think there's a choice. You can either be angry about it and kind of lash out at God, or you can turn to God and see the miracle in it. You can be thankful that it's that hard experience, and strengthen your faith and the faith of those present.
Abby 12:41
Right. I think experiences like this can shake people's faith to denying that there's a God because if there's a loving God, why would He allow these things to happen? Right? That's an option. That happens. That's obviously part of our choice, freedom to choose and make those choices. Things can be very faith shaking. But to me, it was faith strengthening. Who's to say, had the bomb gone off and killed all those children, that could have been very detrimental to a lot of people's faith.
Tamara Anderson 13:30
So sometimes God allows miracles. Then sometimes you're in a car accident and you're paralyzed. So you grew up, you loved music and dancing, and that was your love, and that was your life. It's what you wanted to do in college. That's fantastic. Take me to the day everything changed in 1996.
Abby 13:58
I had gone to college for two and a half years, at which point I decided to serve as a missionary for my church. I had gone to Florida to serve as a missionary and that is actually where I met my husband. He was also a missionary, but that's not where we started dating. Upon returning, we did start dating and we had decided to be married on June 28 of 1996. On June 21, exactly one week before, is when that all changed. While we were dating, and even before I dated him, I started getting what I guess some people would call a premonition or personal revelation or just a feeling, whatever people want to call it. I just had this thought that something was going to happen to me before I get married. That's kind of broad, and what am I supposed to do with that information? What is that? Something good, something bad. what? What does that mean? I would think about it a lot, and it would come and go. When I started dating, if I was ever to get a little more serious with anyone, I'd let them know that. When I started dating my husband, and it was serious, and I knew that this was the man I wanted to marry, I did share with that with him. I said, “I don't know what that means, I just know that it's a warning, I feel it's a warning, to be careful to obey all the laws and to not take any risks.” So we decided we'd always wear our seatbelts, and we'd just be careful. So we did.
On June 21, we were actually headed to Cokeville where my cousin was having her wedding reception. She had been married in Salt Lake that day in our Salt Lake temple. We'd been to that ceremony with all my family and loved ones who could be there. We were all traveling back to Cokeville to this wedding reception. So we were on our way and I was extra tired that day. I decided to recline my seat all the way back. We were in a little four-door geo prizm. I don't remember what year it was made. It was when the seat belts, when you shut the door, the shoulder harness slides up into place.
Tamara Anderson 16:46
Oh, yes, I remember those.
Abby 16:49
They don't make those anymore because it makes you feel like you have your seatbelt on, but you have to reach down and manually click your belt across your lap. It was kind of a false sense of security, right? I've got my seatbelt on, it slides up across your chest. But I was reclined. I was completely reclining my seat. Two things. Always wear your seatbelt and never recline in your seat when the car is moving. It’s just common sense that I didn't even think about at that moment. So we get on our way. For whatever reason, we just didn't do those lap belts. It's just one of those human moments, right? Even though we've made that commitment, we're always gonna wear a seatbelt. That day, we didn't. I think about that a lot. So we didn't do them up, we get on our way. That trip is about just over two hours from where we live to Cokeville.
About halfway, we usually stop in this little town, get a drink, and take a little break. But we didn't. I was asleep. Cole decides to just keep driving, which was fine. We were going to be late for the reception, so we just kept on our way. He looked down for a moment and realized, maybe I should just reach over and do up that lap belt. But then he brushed it off. So another lesson learned. Don't brush off the little feelings. Now again, something was going to happen to me. So if it didn't happen this time, had he done that, we don't know what the outcome would have been. I could have become worse, differently, who knows? But it would have happened eventually. That's all I know. So we went on our way.
The road is a little, tiny highway in the middle of nowhere in northern Utah. It’s sagebrush for miles. It is just nothingness. He looked down at me again, just glanced down at me for just a moment. As he did, the road was curving to our left. Because he looked down and didn't turn, the car went off the road, just a little onto the gravel shoulder. We were going 65, which was the speed limit. That woke me up, the sound of driving on gravel, all of a sudden. I sat up in my seat, and he had overcorrected into the oncoming lane. Gratefully, this is not a heavily traveled road, there wasn't a ton of traffic. I woke up out of this dead sleep. You know when you do that and you're confused and like what's going on? I see a car coming. I remember just grabbing his arm and I yelled, “Watch out!” in just that state of fear. That caused him again to overcorrect off to the right. We went off the side of the road into a little ditch. It flipped our car and we rolled one time. I don't remember any of that. We rolled one time, landed on the wheels. As I was trying to make sense of what happened, I felt like maybe I was still asleep and was having a really bad dream, and was trying to wake myself up. I was afraid, but not aware. I could hear Cole calling my name. I was trying to answer him, but I couldn't. I was trying to open my eyes. I finally opened my eyes enough that I could blink, and see my feet in the seat where I used to be sitting. My body was between those bucket seats. My head was in the backseat behind the driver’s side.
I could hear him calling my name, I'm trying to answer. He, miraculously, was still in his seat. He looked over to where I was supposed to be sitting, couldn't see me through the dirt. When it settled, he saw my feet as well. He got out of the car and came back, opened the back door and just knelt down by my head by me. I could see my feet, but I couldn't feel them. I couldn't move them. I was still confused. I remember his face came up close to mine. I blinked and I said, “Tell me this is a dream.” He said, “No, this is real. And I said, “Then pray.” Because I knew prayers were answered my whole life. Not always in the way we want our prayers answered, but I'd see miracles. I absolutely, with 100% surety knew that I would be okay. Because if we prayed, I would be okay.
So, in 1996, the problem was cell phones.
Tamara Anderson 22:31
They had ginormous ones back then.
Abby 22:36
We didn't have one, they were far too expensive. We didn't really have a way to get help. Like I said, there weren't very many cars going by. The very first car that came upon the scene had a cell phone. So when you say a miracle or two, there were several little tender mercies along the way. They are all miracles. So they called for help. Help arrived in about 15 to 20 minutes from both directions. To make a long story short, they were able to get me out of the car, they stopped whatever traffic was coming to allow for air med from the University of Utah to land on the highway. Another miracle happened while Cole was waiting in one of the emergency vehicles. They had told him he couldn’t go in the helicopter with me. They could take him back to the town we had just been through and then he could call and try to find someone to take him back to Salt Lake City. So he was praying to know what to do. When he looked up, he told the EMT to stop a car that was coming because it was my parents. They were driving back from the wedding as well and were later than us, apparently.
My mom looked at the scene and knew it was our car. So the timing was all right. I was in the back of the ambulance, waiting for the air med. I don't remember much of that at all. Another miracle was that I was able to open my eyes for a brief moment when my father stepped into the ambulance and was able to administer a priesthood blessing to me on my head. That was beautiful and heart wrenching. Then they took me away in the helicopter. Of course then the miracle was that Cole was able to hop in with my parents, they turned around and drove back to Salt Lake, stopping long enough to make a payphone call to his parents who live here, where we live now in in northern Utah and told them what had happened. They were able to get to the hospital at about the same time as the helicopter.
So I did remember a couple of things in the helicopter, but after that, I do not remember the emergency room at all. They were able to get me stabilized and intubated. I actually did breathe on my own on the helicopter, but I was struggling enough that they intubated me, took me to a ventilator. When I woke up, I was in neurocritical care. I was never in a coma or anything like that. They medically sedated me to be able to work on me and help me. They had already told Cole and my parents and his parents that I had broken my neck and had a spinal cord injury at the level of C3 and 4. That's right there up even with your jawline, and controls everything from the neck down, including your breathing. That's why they were very, actually quite surprised that I had been able to breathe on my own till I got there. So of course, this is then the prognosis they told me when I was able to wake up enough from being medically sedated. There was no hope. They said I would never walk, I would never breathe on my own. I would be ventilator dependent. If I made it out of the hospital, I would probably be moved to a full time care facility. I would probably eventually die due to complications of this severe of an injury. My body would shut down. They gave me, literally, like three to five years. Don't plan on getting married. Basically they said it’s very permanent.
Tamara Anderson 27:56
How did you feel at that point?
Abby 28:00
I was drugged. That kind of takes the edge off. I couldn't talk. They told me to answer questions by blinking once for yes, twice for no. Then if I really needed to say something, they would hold up a board with the alphabet on it. They would point to one letter at a time. I would blink once for yes and two for no until I spoke.
Tamara 28:34
Wow.
Abby 28:35
Oh, frustration. I really couldn't express how I felt about it all. Inside, of course, it was devastating. And yet, in that very moment, I felt complete peace. I immediately felt peace. Most people would say, “Oh, you're just in denial,” because I was like, “No, I'm fine.” I'll be fine. I'll walk again. No problem. It's all fine. And that's really my personality, too. I'm very optimistic and very positive, which gave me the upper hand already. Part of that came from my faith, not just being a positive person, but faith filled. I knew I'd be okay. It was still scary. It was like, wow, whoa, what? This is not in my plan. We're getting married in a week. This was not supposed to happen. Then also, that thought came in, “This is the thing that was supposed to happen before you married.” It was a testimony to me. I realize people have different beliefs about this. But my belief is that we've lived as spirits before we were born. I believe that I knew and was given, and that we all are given and know what we are going to go through in this fight. I felt like that was just that little preparation I had to not be shaken. To know that I was warned about this.
Tamara Anderson 30:33
Wow. This is so incredible that you had that feeling, that you were able to feel peace in the moment of despair when they're like, “Give up now. Surrender to this difficulty.” You're like, “Heck no.”
Abby 30:53
Because what they also didn't know about me is I'm very, very stubborn. Don't tell me what to do. Ask my mom how many gray hairs I gave her because I do not like being told what to do. My mom told him, she is very stubborn and determined. You go ahead and tell her she won't. That'll just push her to do it.
Tamara Anderson 31:22
So your mom knew you well, didn't she?
Abby 31:26
Tell her she won't walk. Now you go drag her out into the middle of a desert. She'll walk back just because you pushed. So I had that too. I was positive, and I had faith, but I was also very stubborn. In my mind when they said I won't, I said, “Oh, yes, I will. You watch.”
Tamara Anderson 31:48
So what did that look like that over the next few months?
Abby 31:52
I was in the hospital for a total of three months, which was a lot shorter than I should have been with an injury of my severity. In those three months, I was in critical care for two weeks. They did surgery to fuse my neck together at three and four. Basically, three slipped off of four, which then completely impinged the spinal cord. So that's where that damage came from. When they did the first surgery, they went ahead and did the tracheotomy where they cut directly in your neck so that the ventilator wasn't in my mouth. So I could at least communicate. If it would be just a couple of weeks, they may not have done that, because that's kind of a invasive surgery to cut a hole in your neck. Butt because they said it would be for the rest of my life, they went ahead and did that trach. Then I was put in rehab after a couple of weeks of getting better enough that I was no longer critical. I could now communicate. Now when I say communicate, you still cannot make sounds because air is not passing through your vocal cords. So it's mouthing words. Still a bit frustrating. Better than blinking. Just frustrating when people can't really read lips. I did have my interpreters like my fiancé, now husband, and my mom always could interpret it. The nurses were having a hard time. I think personality wise, you can maybe understand better if you know them.
Tamara Anderson 33:55
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Abby 33:57
This was all at University of Utah. It's a learning hospital. It's a teaching hospital. People go there for medical school. It's one of the best medical schools in the country. So I had all these hordes of doctors come in. I was a case study, I guess. I made sure I told them even though the sound didn't come out, “I will walk,” every time. I made sure they saw me. I made sure they were looking me in the eye. I got lots of eye rolls and shrugged shoulders and sympathetic like, Oh, poor her. She just doesn't get it kind of looks, you know.
Abby 34:53
I had two neurosurgeons and they both basically said there was no hope. One said, “This is it, but there's this much room for a miracle.” So that's where my hope was, in the miracle. If they said physically and scientifically no way, I'm like, “Well, I've already seen miracles. So let's just go there.” I basically started from scratch. For three months, I was waiting, and they said, “If we can't make something move, but if something progresses, if something happens, we work on that. You'll strengthen it.” We were trying to get me to breathe on my, wean off the ventilator and be able to sit up without passing out. When you lay down for a long time, your blood pressure gets low. Months of physical therapy. But within the first month, still in critical care, is when I got my first idea that I could feel a little bit. They had really done a lot of tests on my feeling. They do sharp and dull tests and test different points of your body, your legs, your arms to see what you can feel. They're testing levels of paralysis. Sometimes I felt maybe a little pressure but couldn't tell if it was sharp or dull.
One day, they had just cleaned my trach, which they have to keep sterilized so you don’t get an infection. They just use a little sterile water and stuff and clean it up, and dry it off. One day, they maybe just didn't dry it off as well as they thought. I couldn't see it, but all of a sudden I felt this trickle down my chest, below the level of where I was able to feel. I could barely shrug my shoulders. The top of my left shoulder felt normal. The rest from there down was completely numb. Well, all of a sudden I felt this little trickling going down my chest, my sternum. I said to my mom, “There's something on my chest.” So she looks and there's the water that they hadn't dried off, a drip that had started running down. She's like, “Wait, you're not supposed to feel that.” So she runs out and tells the nurses. They're like, “Did you ask her if she could feel something running down?” They were wondering if it was just the power of suggestion. She told them no, so they were all very amazed. They told the doctors and they were very skeptical
They started doing the sharp, dull tests and, and I was feeling some little, tiny bits here and there. It started progressing and it started coming back. Then I got to a point where I got out of critical care. I had received a number of priesthood blessings. Those are prayers said by men in our church who hold the priesthood, one of which was my fiancé and my dad. I'd received these blessings. I also was fortunate enough to receive one from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, who is one of the 12 apostles in our church. That was incredible. That, indeed, was part of the miracle. After that, I started getting feeling back. It was painful, like when you sleep on your hand or your foot, and it's a little numb, and falls asleep. Then you get this kind of pins and needles, tingly when the circulation starts to come back. That's what I felt all over my body but times 100. It was more stabbing pain than just prickly pain. That's nerve pain, which isn't touched by medication.
I find what helped really fascinating. We, as humans, need connection, and we need people, not just medicine. Medicine is not a fix all. We need people. I am grateful for modern medicine, I'm grateful for what they could do. I'm grateful for the surgeries. I'm grateful for all of that, but had I not had love and support, and people I don't think I would have survived. Maybe they would have fixed my neck, but I don't think I would have survived. Because we need people. It was those people that I needed when that pain was stabbing me all over, that I needed literally a person on each limb, and they would rub and rub and rub. And that would just kind of take the edge off of those stabbing pains.
Tamara Anderson 40:47
How long did that last?
Abby 40:49
It was maybe two or three days of that until it at least subsided enough that I could cope. There's just so many things that happened in those three months. But that kind of started that process of the healing and my body coming back.
Tamara Anderson 41:16
What an incredible story. This is just it really is a miracle. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back, we're gonna have Abby tell us a little bit more about learning to walk and lessons learned through all the ups and downs of this challenging situation.
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Tamara Anderson 42:45
And we’re back. I've been talking to Abby Stevens about the car accident that changed her life and left her paralyzed. She was able to gain a lot of feeling and movement back. So Abby, let's talk about that movement and some of the lessons learned.
Abby 43:03
One of the lessons that I've learned from this and throughout my life, is gratitude is huge. If you're going to overcome tragedy and trauma and hard times, you must, must, must be able to find gratitude, and live in a space of gratitude. That's one of the first things I felt when I first woke up. One of my first thoughts was how grateful I was that I had people. My family was there, and I was alive and completely paralyzed. But I was grateful to still be alive. You take the hard part and then you've got to look at the good part. If we dwell only in the sad, and horrible, and hard, that's all we will ever feel. Who wants to do that? You can't survive that. We're not meant to survive in that mode of sadness, and sorrow, and pain. We have to find the gratitude to balance that out.
When I was feeling those stabbing pains, it was painful. Yet in my brain, I'm like, “Ah, but I can feel.” I was grateful to feel because they said I never would. As things continued, there were the hard times and the times I was crying. People are like, “How were you happy through all of that?” I'm like, “I wasn't.” I teach people and I talk to people about how to be happy through adversity and find joy through adversity and trials and how to choose to be happy. There are daily ups and downs and there are big ones and little ones and everything in between. In every one of those moments, we have to find a way to choose the good part, or we'll be overwhelmed by the bad and the negative.
That was just a roller coaster ride of days of just sobbing and thinking, “Why? Why now?” We all question why. Then it became, not a matter of why, but what am I supposed to learn from this? What am I going to do with it? We did make a choice, not a conscious one, but a choice that day to not put on our seatbelts. It was a mistake, and we all make them. But it was still a choice. Nobody made us not do it. There's a consequence to that choice. If you're in an accident, you could get very hurt, and I was very hurt, or you could die. From that choice, though, I had a choice as to how I was going to react to it, and what I was going to do with it. I chose to be grateful. I chose to look at the positive. I chose to keep my faith strong. Those were the commitments.
Tamara Anderson 46:12
So instead of asking, “Why?” you asked, “What can I learn?” and made the choice to be grateful. I love those.
Abby 46:23
Yes. I just spoke to a group a couple weeks ago, and the topic was gratitude. I looked up a few things and I found several talks. One talked about not just listing the things you're grateful for, but living in a space of gratitude.
Tamara Anderson 46:48
What do you think is the key to living in that space versus just listing?
Abby 46:55
I think it takes practice. A lot of times, all we can do is find a list. I have this list of negative I'm going to list. So then we consciously go, “Okay, I'm grateful for my family. I'm grateful for…” and you start listing the things, the sunshine, whatever. I'm not sure that I was in that feeling or space of gratitude at first. It was more like daily going, “Okay, I'm going to get through this, but I’ve got to find something to be grateful for.” I did the list of things. As you do the list of things, it creates the feeling. It's a process, and we can all do it. Some take more time than others. Some might naturally just be that person who lives in gratitude all the time. I think being a positive person, it maybe was easier for me to get there. Having the faith and being grateful to my God for my life, my blessings, these miracles that were happening and that I expected to happen helped. It took time, but I feel that there are just moments when I'm incredibly sad, or struggling, and yet the overarching feeling that I go back to is gratitude. It's a matter of perspective. We're talking about that switching something to funny, having a different perspective, looking at it in more a grateful lens, a grateful view. Let’s break down 2020, for instance.
Tamara Anderson 48:53
Let's do this.
Abby 48:56
Who is not in a full on stress about everything? Not just COVID, not just the pandemic, not just the election, but still everybody is still dealing with other illnesses, other people dying. It has been insane. I felt this overwhelming heaviness. My family, we're doing great. We're all thriving. No one's been horribly ill. My kids are still okay. They're going to school where we're doing the things. We're still doing 2020 things. My girl’s high school is in a soft closure for two weeks. My husband just tore his ACL several weeks ago, and we're waiting to have surgery. It’s in those moments that you're like, “Oh, that's frustrating,” where I go to the feeling and perspective of gratitude. Because then I say, “But wait, I'm so grateful for feeling. We're okay.” It’s just a feeling, not even listing. We have to get back to that perspective. It could be so much worse. Look at the people that are grieving the loss of loved ones. In their perspective, maybe they're like, “This is horrible. I'm grieving a lost loved one.” But maybe even they can look outside of their grief and say, “It could be worse.”
Tamara Anderson 50:32
Yeah. So it is that perspective and finding the blessings amidst the hardship.
All right. So you do have to tell us how in the world, you are a walking quadriplegic. Seriously, girl, I'm still blown away. I can't wrap my brain around that thought, but do tell me how that miracle happened.
Abby 51:01
I started getting feeling, and then I eventually was able to wean off the ventilator. That was around six weeks. That was another miracle. It's just so coincidental. My cousin was head of respiratory at the hospital. All the other respiratory therapists would come in on their shifts, but he being connected to me, would come in more to me than his other patients, but just to visit, and then when he did that, it was like this huge mind game to be able to get off the ventilator, because breathing is essential.
Tamara Anderson 51:44
Oh, yeah.
Abby 51:45
There’s nothing more scary than thinking about coming off a machine that’s keeping you're alive. This was huge. I had this mind battle of, “Can I do it?” So they turned the knobs and things and turned down the oxygen and turned down to this and that, to see if I could breathe on my own. My cousin would come in and another therapist would tell me, “I'm turning this down. Now you're going to breathe on your own. They would see how long I could go or whatever. I was weaning off and getting better and getting stronger. Well, he’d come in, and he’d just mess with the knobs like everybody else. I didn't even question what he was doing. Then he would just sit and talk to me. One day, about 10-15 minutes later, he's like, “By the way, you have been breathing completely on your own.”
Tamara Anderson 52:34
So he didn't even tell you. He just he just sat and chatted with you.
Abby 52:41
Yes. So I did get off the ventilator. That was still scary. My lungs weren’t extremely strong, I had to do lots of work with that. I had a feeding tube that we had to get rid of. I had a picc line for giving me medicines and stuff. It got infected, and we had to take it out. There was all the ups and downs of any other hospital stay in a horrible injury like this. But there was always progress. That was kind of one of our “themes.”
Cole came to the hospital every single day. He would come and at the end of the day, we would pray always. Then he would say, “Show me something new tomorrow. Progress is progress, it doesn't matter how big or small.” Whether it was getting one teeny, tiny tube out, or breathing longer on my own, or whatever that looked like whether it was huge or small, we counted it. We counted those blessings, looked at the progress, and looked at the positive. We just made sure there was something literally every day and if it was hard to find we still found it. We continued that process.
We would have date night every night in the hospital. Our nurses were kind and they would let him stay after visiting hours. We just kind of had this special, different situation. He would sit and massage my feet and we were watching TV. It was the summer of the Atlanta, Georgia Olympics. We'd watch those. We were watching TV one night, and he's rubbing my feet. All of a sudden he says, “Abby, did you do that?”
I said, “Do what?” Because I didn't do anything. He said, “Your foot moved.” There is a reflex in the bottom of your foot that they had shown us because they do it as a part of the testing, that if you rub something up the bottom of your foot, it will flare. It's called the Babinski reflex. He had done that a number of times, because it was funny to make my foot move. So I'm like, “Did you do the reflex thingy?” He didn’t do it this time. So he's like, “Your foot moved, try to move your foot.” So I'm looking down at the bottom of my bed. I'm trying, and trying, and trying, and trying. It shouldn't take that much effort, but it did. I'm trying to send this signal. In a few seconds, my big toe moved.
It was one of those moments where you are just speechless. Then I moved my whole left foot at the ankle. We were so excited, and didn't even really even know what to do. He's like, “Maybe I should go to the nurses.” I'm like, “Yeah, probably.”
Sometimes I still think, “Why didn’t I try before? Why didn't I try sooner?” I think I did, it just wasn't that big. Every day, I'm laying there going, “Gosh, I wish I could move,” and just couldn't. I sent the signals and nothing would happen. At that moment, it just went right up my left side. I was dancing again, because I was a dancer before, so I was dancing in my bed. He tells the nurses, we call our families, and that was the start of that.
Long story short, movement kept coming back and went up my left side. I could move my fingers before I could move my muscles, which is totally backwards. The doctors were like, “She is not textbook.” My mom was like, “Remember, she does things her way.” I tried my right side that day, and I could barely barely get a teeny, little movement on my big toe. It took longer. Over those next several weeks, I was able to get a little more movement out of the right. Eventually though, I got my body to where we were doing more physical therapy, and we were strengthening the muscles that were coming back. And we were doing this hard work every day. They were teaching me how to be independent in a wheelchair and transfer and do all of those things, just in case I wouldn’t be able to walk, and they assumed I wouldn’t.
A week before I got out of the hospital, I was standing in the parallel bars doing physical therapy. We were strengthening my left leg as it was basically back to normal movement, taking steps and strengthening those muscles. I said to my physical therapist, “I have a week till I'm supposed to get out of the hospital. I have told everyone I would walk out of this hospital. So we've got to work on my right side a little more.” She's like, “Okay, let's do it.” So we were trying but I just could not get that right leg to cooperate. She said, “Hold on, I have an idea.” There is a video of this, by the way. Now remember, this is 96 when we didn't have our digital cameras on our phones. We didn't have social media, we didn't have blogs. We didn't update and video every little thing I did every single day. So seriously, I have very few pictures and I have just these couple of videos that they used the hospital camera that was like a dinosaur.
Tamara Anderson 1:00:10
That's all we had back then.
Abby 1:00:12
So we ran and got a camera, they took me out into the hall and got this cool walker with these armrest things that I could hold on to. My therapist sat on a stool with wheels in front of me. We started walking down the hall. Cole was there, got me up out of the wheelchair stood me up on this walker. I started taking these steps. Left foot, great. Right foot, struggle. It wanted to cross over and wanted to drag behind. She'd helped my right foot and then left foot, great. Right foot, struggle. We walked about 50 feet down the hallway.
Tamara Anderson 1:00:56
I would’ve been in tears.
Abby 1:00:59
So stressful, and so hard. Such hard work. It literally felt like running a marathon. Cole stayed behind me with the wheelchair, just in case I got weak and needed it. He came up behind me. She had me stop and stabilize myself. Then I got a little wobbly. They sat me down and watched this video. You can see the relief in my face as I just go. I did it.
It was not just me though. Remember the people, remember the faith, remember the hope. I cannot say, “Look what I did.” That would be completely hypocritical. I would be afraid of being struck down. There was literally faith and angels in every footstep, both seen and unseen. Because my physical angels were there, and my unseen angels, giving me strength. I know that and I can't deny it. The week later, there's more video of that. I walked from the doors of the hospital to the car. Still with the walker, but one week later, I was so much stronger. I didn't need nearly as much help from my therapist. My right foot was doing a lot better. We walked out and I got my car and we went home.
Tamara Anderson 1:02:45
Oh my heart.
Abby 1:02:47
That's a miracle. There is more. Of course it took several months of physical therapy. I still was in that wheelchair. My mom asked me early on when I wanted to reset the wedding date.
Tamara Anderson 1:03:05
I was going to ask you about that.
Abby 1:03:07
Miss optimist and positive pants here. I was in the hospital in June and I say, “How about August?” Of course they weren't going to shut me down. Okay, let's shoot for August, August came and went, “Okay, now what do you think of September?” I got out Friday the 13th, September 13. They said, “Okay, now when?” I said, “How about November?” We worked for it, you know, and I just wasn't physically strong enough. My goal was to walk and not need the wheelchair to be married. We gave it several months of hard physical therapy. We were married the following May 22 of 1997. 11 months and one day from the accident. I walked, and I still walk. 24 years later, I am getting older and so our bodies get more tired and so I need to do more exercise and stay strong. I have noticed a little more weakness in my legs but I still walk. I do need help. Sometimes I use a cane when I'm in public by myself. When I have my people, they just hold on to me. Sometimes if we're going too far I do still use my wheelchair. I call it my speed and agility chair because I'm not fast.
Here we are, with four kids, twins, and a beautiful life 24 years later, and it was all because of faith and hope. We cannot let go of hope. Because what is the definition of hope? It's something forward. It's not in the moment we're experiencing. Hope is looking forward.
Tamara Anderson 1:05:12
Yes.
Abby 1:05:12
I hope this happens. I have hope for better days. I have hope that the pandemic will end soon. I have hope for my children's future. I have hope that they will all be able to get married and have children. Now it is a little scary. I'm like, “Well, do I want them to have children in this crazy world?” But I know that we still have quite a few years. You and I were talking earlier, and I kind of wish Jesus would come tomorrow.
Tamara Anderson 1:05:45
Here's hoping.
Abby 1:05:48
But I know we have several years and we have to look at it through the perspective of hope, and gratitude, and humor, and laugh when we fall. There's so many stories of me falling and putting dents in the wall with my head. I fell in my garage and got a great big goose egg on my head and it drained down and I had this massive black eye. I fell up against a toilet once and broke the tank and flooded the bathroom. We just have to laugh. We make sure nobody's hurt and we're okay. Then we laugh. My point is, I have the opportunity to share this with a lot of people. The comment I get most often is that it gives them hope. It gives them perspective that their life isn't that bad.
Let's go back to that survivor's guilt thing. I have a hard time talking to people who are still in a wheelchair, who had the same prognosis as I did. I feel guilty that I'm walking in there and they aren’t. The couple that I've talked to about it, they're like, “No, that's your journey. This is our journey.” Maybe there are those that are bitter and went for that other place of being bitter and hateful and denying God in their tragedy, and I feel sad about that. I received a miracle. I don't know why. Why do some receive miracles and some don’t? I don't know. Our job is to have faith that it's God's will. We have to trust whatever God's will is that we're going to learn from it in our personal journey. What does it teach others? We're not in this by ourselves. It involves all the people. Sharing this with people and giving them hope, and helping them gain perspective, and helping them find humor, and helping them learn gratitude, and how to choose joy, and happiness, and overcoming. That doesn't mean you can't cry, because I have my days. Oh, let me tell you. We all have the days where we just have those meltdowns and cry, and that's okay. Then we pick ourselves back up, and move forward. That's a choice.
Tamara Anderson 1:08:25
Now, that's beautiful. So let me ask you, is there been a Bible verse that has become particularly meaningful to you through all of this?
Abby 1:08:35
Yes, and I have several. In the Bible, my favorite is Philippians 4:13. “I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.” I hope that through me telling this you've heard that underlying message, that faith. Faith in Christ is where I find the strength. It's where I find the ability to choose joy over the trial, and the heartache, and the pain.
Tamara Anderson 1:09:18
Oh, that's beautiful. That's actually my favorite one. It's one of those verses that really does instill the hope that no matter what, I can do all things. Not in my own strength, because there are days when you don't have the strength to do what is required of you. But God does. That's fantastic. Oh, my goodness. Well, Abby, there's going to be people who want to connect with you after listening to just this one little piece of your amazing story. Where can they find you?
Abby 1:09:56
All over the place. I am on Facebook and Instagram. Instagram @absspeaks and Abby Stephens on Facebook. Abby Stephens, motivational speaker. I have a website, AbbyStephens.net. I do have a YouTube channel where you can find those videos. I have a couple of videos of me speaking, and little things like that. So very excited to hear from people. I would love to come share with any groups.
Through the pandemic, one of my things I chose to do to share hope and goodness was to just sing a Sunday song every Sunday, and then it became sporadic. But I have several of those on there. Songs of faith and hope and uplifting messages. You can hear me sing there. And I also do sing when I come and visit and speak to groups.
Tamara Anderson 1:11:13
That's incredible. Thank you, Abby, for taking us through the ups and the downs of your life, and for sharing such an incredible message of hope.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. I know that there are many of you out there that are going through a hard time and I hope you found things that have been useful today. As you listen to the podcast, if you would like to access the show notes from today's podcast, visit my website. That is storiesofhopepodcast.com. That is where you'll find favorite quotes from today's episode and shareable memes. Those are fun because you can share them with your friends on social media. You will also find the links mentioned throughout today's episode so you don't have to remember what those were, as well as all the tips that were shared. Sometimes tips are shared so much throughout an episode you forget and wonder, “What were those great things?” So go to the show notes, storiesofhopepodcast.com to look up these fantastic resources. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this with them. Maybe there was a story shared or a tip that they really really need to hear. So go ahead and share this episode with them. May God bless you, especially if you're struggling, with hope to carry on, and with the strength to keep going when things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help bear that burden. Above all else, remember God loves you.