Irreversible, my life, a battle E-Book

Emmanuel Siaux

• Herausgeber: Publishroom
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 261

Beschreibung

Forty years of an exciting life, until the day everything changes abruptly.

The accident, which obliges Emmanuel, a professional motorcycle pilot, and a motorcyclist in the national police, to leave the world of valid people and join the handicapped world.

In parallel, before the accident, during his coma and even afterwards, some mysterious signs appear and interfere in his life.
Chance or synchronicity? Were these signs meant to warn him? Was the accident planned? In order to slow his life down, or make it take a different turn?

Through his story, you will discover the hidden face of the daily life of a paraplegic, with all his suffering, psychological and physical, as well as the different steps in his reconstruction, full of obstacles and setbacks.

EXCERPT

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, on 22nd February 2013, and the alarm clock was ringing.
It was time to get up, to serve and represent the French Republic. As every other week, on Friday morning, I turned into a night bird. I drove to Toulouse Central Police Station, where I slipped into my show costume, or should I say my National Police motorcyclist outfit. I joined my colleagues for the regular alcohol level tests, and we all departed together for a precise location, in order to set up the device.

That morning, like many other mornings, our spot was located at the Ponts-Jumeaux, a very good place for “catching” drunken road delinquents. My mission was simple – when I say my mission, it was more the motorcyclist’s mission: chasing the naughty drivers who refused to submit to the test, or sometimes even just drove straight into the police roadblock. This mission was one I particularly enjoyed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1973, Emmanuel Siaux was a motorcyclist in the French national police for twenty years, France Road Rallye Champion and Team Manager of the French National Police Motorcyclist team. On the eve of his fortieth birthday, an accident on duty confines him to a wheelchair, obliging him to face a new challenge: the long road to reconstruction and learning to live as a paraplegic.

Leseprobe

Emmanuel Siaux

IRREVERSIBLE,

MY LIFE,

A BATTLE

THE ACCIDENT

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, on 22nd February 2013, and the alarm clock was ringing.

It was time to get up, to serve and represent the French Republic. As every other week, on Friday morning, I turned into a night bird. I drove to Toulouse Central Police Station, where I slipped into my show costume, or should I say my National Police motorcyclist outfit. I joined my colleagues for the regular alcohol level tests, and we all departed together for a precise location, in order to set up the device.

That morning, like many other mornings, our spot was located at the Ponts-Jumeaux, a very good place for “catching” drunken road delinquents. My mission was simple – when I say my mission, it was more the motorcyclist’s mission: chasing the naughty drivers who refused to submit to the test, or sometimes even just drove straight into the police roadblock. This mission was one I particularly enjoyed. We rarely spent a morning without encountering at least one refusal to comply. It was like a game to me, which provoked a little shot of adrenaline, which would get me fit for the day.

It was now 5 o’clock, no delay in the installation, and here we were, ready for action. Everything was normal, the daily routine. The first vehicles stopped, the drivers blew in turns. We had to start a chase on two occasions that morning, for two drivers who were in a hurry, and of course, did not want to pass the test.

That morning, we had won, and in fact won the jackpot: the two runaways we not only in a hurry, they were positive to the test. My colleague and I had managed to intercept them and bring them back to the control spot. I must say it didn’t always go so smoothly, but that morning, everything was perfect.

Our mission was over earlier than usual, because our customers that morning were particularly alcoholic, and we had to bring back our “prisoners” at the police station, in order to professionally carry out the criminal procedures.

Having encountered two refusals to comply, my team mate and I had decided to carry out one of the procedures ourselves, in order to help our colleagues, which was a little more than our regular mission, which was only to chase the runaway drivers.

Of course, if the drivers took too many risks, we were instructed to let them more or less drive away, and only record their license plates. You will easily understand that this was rather frustrating for us, but sometimes the authorities were right, the game just wasn’t worth it.

It was now 9 o’clock, our procedure was finished, we’d had a good cup of coffee at the reception, and we were ready to get back on our motorbikes to go out and patrol, looking over our “Pink city”, la Ville Rose, as we call Toulouse. It was very cold that morning, but the sun was shining and it was going to be a nice day. Despite this, what was going to happen was going to change my life forever.

I was due to finish work that day at 10:50 – we are very precise in the police! It was now 10:30, time to drive back to the police station.

My team mate and I were relaxed, satisfied to have had a normal morning, without encountering any problems. We were only two minutes from the police station and I decided to turn in the rue Salambô, a street I was very familiar with, as I very often drove down it to go back to the station.

I really knew it by heart, it was a main street, where we had priority on the vehicles arriving either from our left or our right, and there were many little streets crossing it on both sides. The drivers on these adjacent streets had to be very careful when crossing the rue Salambô, because visibility was not always at its best. I knew full well that this street was dangerous, and that’s why I was always very cautious when using it. In fact, I couldn’t understand why, in this street, there were only “give-way” signs and not proper “stop” signs. For me, a driving professional, it was unconceivable not to mark a mandatory and full stop in order to cross these junctions safely. I knew that, before the public services in charge of roadsigns started realising there was a problem, several serious or deadly accidents would have to occur, as in the rest of the country in fact.

I knew almost all the streets in Toulouse, and could only observe, powerless, that the infrastructures were largely unadapted and were becoming more and more dangerous for us motorcylists, as well as all these drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, whose number kept increasing.

In order to satisfy everyone, the Toulouse council and its road services invented incredible things every day. For example, in some very narrow and one way streets, they managed to create not only a cycling path, but one in the opposite direction to the traffic, how absurd! These people had probably reached deadlock, and wanted to please everyone. This was all very political of course, because if you managed to satisfy cars, bicycles and pedestrians, then everyone would be satisfied and a lot more people would vote for the excellent Mayor, who made his city move, move stupidly but move. Never mind if all these stupid and unsuitable transformations made the city dangerous, never mind the future accidents, never mind the future injured, never mind the future dead. Maybe one day they’ll understand that it was criminal to organise the roads and signs I such a ridiculous way. Poor Baron Haussman, he must be turning over in his grave, he who anticipated all these vehicles before everyone else, and created large roads in order to ease traffic and moves for everyone, so that everyone could find its place in the future…

I remember that, when I had been transferred from Paris to Toulouse, in January 2002, my first outings on my police motorbike had been very surprising. I regularly skidded, and had rapidly noticed that in the Pink City, all the road-marking was very slippery and dangerous for two-wheeled vehicles. Another stupid choice in the paint, since there existed some specific road holding paints, who were very efficient, like the very good one used on the roads in Paris. But in Toulouse, some idiot had probably signed a deal with a paint company without checking the features of the paint beforehand, probably because of a low price. The only thing is, you can’t allow to save on security in order to save on money. I’m convinced that many accidents could have been avoided if a wise and careful choice had been made.

That day, as I arrived at the first junction, where the rue Salambô crosses the rue Reyer, I had the unpleasant surprise to see a car appear suddenly in front of me, who had not respected the “give way” sign. He was coming from the rue Reyer on my left side, and was obviously driving straight ahead into the rue des Scouts. He seemed really keen in joining the scouts and in fact ending up more as a kamikaze, without any consideration for us. Despite my professionalism and my being used to avoiding bad drivers, this time it seemed to me very complicated. This car was just five meters in front of me, in motion, there was no way for me to avoid it, and there was too little distance left for me to brake and make my motorbike come to a halt. It was the first time in my life I felt so powerless, with no one to help me. I knew that this time the accident was going to happen.

Sometimes life is mysterious, I had been driving motorbikes for over twenty years, and had never had an accident. I had become a motorcyclist in the National Police in 1996, I had driven for thousands of kilometers in big cities, both in Paris and Toulouse, I had avoided tens of accidents with careless drivers… I had even represented the French National Police for years as a professional pilot, and you can imagine that motorcycling competition is not deprived of risk. It was incredible but true: this time there was no escape, the accident was inevitable.

Some people in this situation would have seen their life pass in front of their eyes. Not me. I just confronted this situation like the others, only knowing that I wouldn’t get out of it unhurt. I decided to stand on the footpegs of my motorbike, in order to try and save my life by not ending up embedded in the car-body of the white Citroën C3. My instinctive reaction was also to try and deviate my trajectory and aim at the car’s bonnet, since it was a lower obstacle, easier to pass than the driver cell. Unfortunately, the rest didn’t go as planned. Upon the impact, I lost consciousness and therefore didn’t control my landing. Damage is terrible when you fall like a puppet, like a dead weight.

I woke up shortly after this terrible impact, I had no idea where I was, and I could hear my colleague telling me “you’ve had accident Manu, the firemen are here, they’re going to save you, hold on”. Through my helmet, I could hear sirens coming from all directions, and I understood I hadn’t done things by halves, this time it was THE accident. I must say, I’m not usually someone who does things by halves. I tried to move, I was lying on the pavement, not a single part of my body reacted and I could feel myself leave. Suddenly, no more sound nor picture. Was I dead? I didn’t know. I was going to discover the answer fifteen days later.

Was the accident scheduled in my life? I still ask myself these questions: is our life programmed? Who are we? Why are we here? I ask myself all these questions because some signs, before the accident, had occurred. Were they linked to the accident? I do not know, but what I know is that they were here and they still are.

Indeed, for the last two years, I was perturbed by double figures, which I kept seeing every day. Each time I looked at the time, it was 22:22, 17:17… When I stopped vehicles for controls, they almost always had license plates with double figures. I was getting tired of this, and one day, I stopped in a street and asked my colleague if he could see the same as me: almost all the cars parked in this street had double numbers on their license plates. He confirmed that he saw the same, and I thought “OK, I’m not going crazy!” From then on, he could only note that this phenomenon occurred each time we patrolled together. It was really striking, in fact he was beginning to worry.

And what if I told you that the place where I had stopped on that day, with this series of double figured vehicles, was the rue Salambô, would you freak out? Let me freak you out once more, then we’ll go back to this later: I learned later on, after the accident, that my hospital room in intensive care was number 222, and to this day, 22 of my vertebrae are paralysed. Also, I was born on a 22nd, strange isn’t it? OK, I’ll keep some for later…

THE COMA

While the doctors were struggling to keep me alive, I was departing towards another world, coma. What a strange world, everything was mixed up, past, present, future. An indescribable world, I cannot put down in writing the sensations that I felt. You are in a world where you are suffering and feel very weak. You are among both alive and dead people, and others who are waiting to know in which world they are going to end up, just as I was. That must be what they call being trapped between life and death.

About this long waiting. My story was taking place in Spain. Why Spain? I couldn’t say, all I know is that, while I was in the coma, I knew exactly what injuries I was suffering from. How could I? Maybe because I could hear the doctors around me, describing them. Several organ donations were planned for me in a Spanish clinic, managed by a Korean professor. I was to be given half a body, in order to replace my legs and pelvis, and a complete rib cage, to replace my damaged lungs. It was just awful. A lady with her little girl was here to sign the donation form, since the organs were those of her husband, who had just died in a car accident. They had come to see me in order to meet the person through whom their husband and father was about to revive. This was an unforgettable and painful moment for me. I can still hear inside my head the crying of this little girl, who was calling for her father. At that moment, time was ticking, and my main problem was a breathing problem. I was lying on a bed next to two others beds, in the basement of this clinic, and a white tunnel was facing us, a strong light emanating from it. On the left, I could see some old Spanish ladies, all dressed in black, and they were signaling us to come to them, with continuous gestures.

They were watching over some kind of dormitory, filled with dead bodies, and they insisted on us coming to them. At that moment, I suppose my life was only hanging by a thread. Finally, I must have chosen the white light, and gone down this tunnel, because I’m still here.

Yes, my memory could not record the entire story of my coma, I understood that later. I suffered two cardiac arrests, due to breathing difficulties. In fact my most important pain during the coma really was the lack of oxygen. The rest of the story of my coma really convinced me that I hadn’t been hallucinating, and that there probably was an explanation to all this.

The clinic consisted in five levels, and the top floor was destined to families visiting their loved ones, with a big restaurant. That day, all of my family was here, and I was sitting with them, they were all chatting together, looking very merry, while I was encountering terrible breathing difficulties. I didn’t dare say anything, until I couldn’t go on anymore, I really had to go back to my room to rest, with an oxygen mask. I was talking to my brother, who was sitting just next to me, but couldn’t hear me, neither could my father, and the others members of my family were sitting behind me, all excited, but none of them could see my distress, not once. I could see my brother and father stuffing themselves with food, without taking any notice of my calls. I couldn’t understand why no one was answering. A little later, my grandmother sat down next to me, and starting eating too. I looked at her and said: “You neither you, Mamie, you don’t want to listen to me, you all prefer to eat and let me agonise!” “What are you talking about?” she answered. “I would never let you suffer”. The day gradually passed by, my family finally left the restaurant, and my aunt, Marie-Hélène, one of the last ones to leave, called my grandmother to drive her home. My grandmother refused to follow her and told me that her path was elsewhere now. I couldn’t understand and felt as if I was dying. I was chocking more and more, and suddenly, I just left myself go. My breathing had stopped. I understood later on that at that moment, I was suffering my second cardiac arrest, but I understood a lot more: why was my grandmother the only one answering in my coma? Like I was, she was probably between two worlds, and as she had just told me, she was about to go down another path, the Great Beyond.

Before the accident, I was a complete atheist, I didn’t believe in anything, but no I’m not sure anymore…

After waking up from the coma, I understood, a few days later, that my grandmother was about to pass away. Indeed, she died a few days later, and was buried on 22nd March. Another double figure, weird, isn’t it? And it was also my sister’s birthday. And what’s more, Mamie Eugénie died of breathing complications. I even wonder if my grandma didn’t sacrifice her lungs to give them to me, in order to help me survive in between worlds, she was so generous. I will never know. I just hope she didn’t, since in certain serious situations, it is better to pass away. If someone had told me one day, that I wouldn’t be able to attend the funeral of my dear grandma, I would never have believed it. Sorry, Mamie, I really couldn’t make it that day, but don’t worry, I’ll see you in paradise, I think I deserve to go there.

My coma really was an ordeal, and will always remain as such, since some nasty scars never disappear from your mind.

Regarding my past, my coma enabled me to go back briefly to moments when I was a kid, super fit, running around, one positive thing at last. But regarding the future, I didn’t see the winning numbers for the lottery unfortunately, but a big problem between the Western and Arabic worlds, and guess when? During year 2022. Wait and see.

I feel anxious about 2020, with its double figures, it’s a unique year. Its number of centuries and number of years are in harmony, twenty centuries plus twenty years. The next similar phenomenon will only occur in 2121…

THE AWAKENING

It was beginning of March and I was about to wake up, I could see the in between world moving away, and everything seemed to be becoming real again, or almost. A familiar beeping sound confirmed that my heart was beating and that I was alive.

What an awakening, I was totally droopy, connected to cables running all over me as if I was an astronaut undergoing tests, except that I was not at the NASA, but in a hospital room, in intensive care. A lot of people were coming and going around me, wearing white coats, particular a black lady, who was passing some cocoa butter on my dry lips.

I could see a familiar face, my mother’s, smiling as she saw me gradually regaining consciousness. My mind was slowly coming back, and I began to understand that I had been very seriously damaged. I tried to observe myself as well as I could, and started to try and test my body. I tried to move my lower limbs, but despite my insisting, they did not respond. I then tried with my abs, same thing. I ended with my arms, but only one seemed to be working, the left one. “Phew”, I thought, as I am left-handed. I went on testing myself, and could see numerous tubes plugged in direction of my face. I had undergone a tracheotomy, which made me understand that I could not breathe by myself, as my lungs had been damaged. I wasn’t at all surprised, it fitted in with the story of my coma.

I went on with the inventory, and was eager for it to be over. Two tubes in my nostrils were meant to feed me. I had a drip in my left arm and I could see a drain on my side, evacuating my blood. Finally, a splint was maintaining my right shoulder and arm, both numb. The inventory was reaching an end, I had probably left out some details, which I was in no hurry to discover. I was fighting to remain in the real world, I had suffered too much psychologically in the other one. But I couldn’t do anything about that, because of all the tranquillisers they were injecting into me all day long. I rapidly fell back asleep. I was really too weak.

The days passed, one after the other, and my condition was stable but didn’t evolve. I was getting more and more conscious that it was going to be very difficult to recover. I was in a constant state of anguish, thinking that maybe I would never be able to walk again, never be able to breathe again without a machine. My life would only be linked to my mind, which was intact, and to my left hand. I tried not to think about it but I couldn’t help it.

During the rare visits that I was authorised to receive, people would timidly smile at me, and I would feel obliged to smile back and let them see that a new competition had started for me, because Manu never gives in. That was the image people had of me, and I did not want to deceive them. In reality, Manu was now a totally different person, and I only wanted one thing: to die, to die. I tried to grasp to something that could have given me the will to stay, but even thinking about my daughter, which I loved more than anything, wouldn’t give me the will. It was horrible.

After a few days, my condition started to degrade itself, after being lying in bed for so long, a bedsore had started developing on my sacrum and was getting bigger and bigger, my temperature was rising and had almost reached 40°C. I really had difficulty breathing and the doctors couldn’t identify the cause of this fever. After a week of suffering, they diagnosed a septicemia. Apparently, I hadn’t suffered enough, all I needed was the cherry on the cake.

In these moments, you just pray, not in order to stay, but in order to depart as soon as possible. I didn’t know one could suffer so much in life. But apparently, they didn’t want me up there, even if this time I thought it was the moment, but no, maybe next time…

I was beginning to hate the doctors, who were working away furiously to keep me alive. I couldn’t understand why one would try to save someone at all costs, someone who, in any case, would never return to a normal life. Life is already so difficult when you are valid.

I really felt as if I was going crazy, and I was getting more and more nervous. The breathing machine was terrible, it wasn’t beating to my heartbeats and I felt like I was chocking at each breath I took and at each exhalation. I pressed the call button regularly, but for the nurses, nothing was unusual, I was not desaturating. When night came, I was terrified of ending up chocked and I couldn’t sleep, despite the huge doses of tranquillizers I was receiving.

The most terrible of it all was that I couldn’t express myself. Caroline, my partner, had brought me a writing board belonging to Charlotte, with a felt pen, in order to write, since I couldn’t talk. It was pathetic, I couldn’t even write correctly. The pen felt like it weighed a ton. I really was terribly weak physically, but unfortunately my brain and my conscience were intact. Together, they understood that my life had changed. They were both trying to control my body, which wasn’t responding anymore, or if so, with a clumsiness and a weakness never encountered before. What a shock it must have been for them, when they had been used to pushing that body to its physical limits, without it ever weakening!

I used to be someone who loved challenging himself physically, with an incredibly strong will. I just loved that, I loved surprising and surpassing myself. In fact, just before the accident, I had taken up running, as if I had felt that my legs were going to be stolen from me.

I was a competitor. In fact, I was, since many years, a high-level sportsman in the Police, I had even been France champion for motorcycle road rally. This discipline demanded great rigor and concentration, as we were not entitled to any mistakes, since the slightest road leaving could easily lead you into a tree or a gully. All my life long, I had been a sportsman, in many sports, continuously calling upon my body physically. I just loved to feel fit and strong, and I loved being independent.

I was regularly helping out people around me, they all knew they could count on me. I loved helping, but I hated the opposite, I preferred to handle things by myself and not bother anyone.

I was now confronted with the tough reality: I was going to have to re-learn everything, taking into account all the after-effects of my accident. Me, a great sportsman, I might be stuck on a wheelchair for the rest of my life, with the need of a helper, what a shock!

I had no choice, I was a prisoner of my own body, I had to try, I had to see. As the days went by, I began to rebuild my spirits a little bit, and I started to try and repair my body, knowing full well that the road was going to be a very long one.

I was beginning to understand that mental force could have a great influence on the body, so I decided to start a competition against myself, trying to mobilise the few resources that were left inside me. In these moments, when you are in the middle of rebuilding yourself, I can tell you one thing: you are not afraid of death, but of life. It is a lot easier to die than to exist, and I think that’s the reason.

The fresh memories of the coma would come back to me often at night, and I would start cogitating. I thought a lot about the encounter with my grandmother, and a flash came to my mind one night, about ten days after I’d woken up from the coma. I deduced that if she was the only one able to hear me at that time, it must have been because she was in between the two worlds, and then surely she wasn’t feeling well at all. The next morning, while I was being washed, I asked the nurse for the writing board, in order to inform my mother that my grandmother was really poorly and that she was probably going to die. At the look on my mother’s face, I understand she knew that already, and was forbidding herself to discuss this with me, so as not to add extra pain onto me. It was Apocalypse inside my head.

My grandmother was my “Mamie”, the one and only one. We had an extraordinary complicity, and she was a model for me. She was a very great lady, generous and intelligent, and she had a lot of humour. She had accompanied me all through my life. She has taken a large part in my education and has passed life’s essential values on to me, thank you Mamie.

I knew, and I was now convinced, that the world in between really existed, that Mamie Eugénie was going to leave us soon, that it was just a question of time. It was like receiving a blow on the head, I felt stunned, I had just realised that one of the people I loved most in the world was about to pass away, without me being able to say goodbye to her. Indeed, Mamie Eugénie, nicknamed Manette, passed away two days later. I had prepared for this, and had prepared a little playlist for her burial. I had chosen Bach’s Aria and Albinoni’s Adagio, two of my favorite pieces.

I couldn’t understand how I could suffer so many ordeals, I probably must have had too nice a life, and it was time it changed. It was true, I had a rather happy life, a job which I enjoyed, a pleasant partner – with tense relations recently, like all couples – a lovely little daughter, Charlotte, my 4 year old princess, and my little family and I lived happily in a beautiful house.

When would the next punishment fall upon me? I didn’t know, but I had to go back to my rebuilding job, with an extra pain now, Mamie’s death, Mamie whom I would never see again. I tried to comfort myself by thinking that the last time she had seen me in the real world, I was entire and fit. I did not know, on the other hand, if her last memory of me would be the one in-between worlds, when she was looking at me suffering and chocking, or the one of me fully fit, in the real world. All this thinking was driving me nuts, I was beginning to wonder if wasn’t going crazy.

I obliged myself to think about something else, and started thinking about my daughter. I really had to fight for her, now. A page had just turned, Mamie was now up in Heaven, and I was going to start a new life, as an invalid. What a promising programme…

The neurologist had come to see me during the day, to announce some rather non-fun news, while my grandmother’s funeral was taking place, in Sainte-Thérèse church in Tarbes. It was 22nd March, and Caroline, my partner, had stayed with me in hospital, while all my family was at the funeral.

The neurologist had come to announce that I would probably never walk again, that maybe I would get my right arm back and maybe also my lungs, but of course, all this with a big question mark. I realised at that point that, unlike most of my other organs, my lachrymal canals where functioning perfectly, in fact I was crying so much that I thought I could see the level of the drip feeding me rapidly getting lower.

Even today, I realise that the organs inside my body still function perfectly. Nature is really well thought, it leaves you with the organs which you need when you are in sorrow…

I had the full picture now, the specialist had announced the verdict, but I refused to believe him and was determined to prove him wrong. I absolutely needed to get my arm and lungs back. I knew that it was going to be very tough regarding my legs, since he had operated on me and had seen that my spine and spinal cord had been seriously damaged.

I had a lot on my plate, two challenges: on one hand a big lung problem, or to be precise - medical terms are so elegant - a “pneumothorax with a bilateral pleural effusion”, together with a “bilateral lung contusion on the fore part of the superior lobe”, and a “pneumo-mediastin with no tracheal gap”, and on the other hand, a “brachial plexus lesion” combined with a “fracture of the clavicle” and a “fracture of the humeral head”, and last but not least, a small “spinal cord compression”, which probably was the reason the top right part of my body was paralysed.

I loved challenges, but this time I had to go all out and defy science. I refused to give in, even if such a trial had never come upon me in my other life, I comforted myself by thinking that science was not always exact, and that I was going to prove them wrong.

I could see the night falling, and I knew that Mamie had by now met up with Papi in the family grave, and the getting together must have been magical. Caroline was about to leave room 222 in Purpan hospital, and I was going to be by myself again, alone in the night, celebrating my first month in hospital. It was also my sister’s birthday, Alexandra, who was turning 41, poor thing, her future birthdays will not have the same excitement anymore…