CHAPTER SIX - BRIGHT SUN SHINY DAYS

 In early July 2003 I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream by taking a trip to Gettysburg. Debbie, Courtney, my sister Donna, her grandson's Stephen, and Sean Haffield, along with Didi and myself all travelled to Gettysburg together. Our first stop was in Lexington Virginia which is the home of Natural Bridge. It  was also the home of Stonewall Jackson, and Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson was an instructor. Washington and Lee University is also in Lexington, where Robert E. Lee spent the last five years of his life as president of the school. He died in the president's house and is buried in a beautiful crypt in Lee's Chapel along with his wife and most of his family. His horse Traveler is buried just outside of the chapel. In 2003 we arrived too late to see the inside of Lee Chapel, or the home of Stonewall Jackson. We returned in 2005 and were able to see Lee's chapel and Jackson's home on that trip. In 2003 I found Jackson's grave where he was buried with full military honors on May 15, 1863. He died of pneumonia from the wounds he received at the battle of Chancellorsville on May 10th, 5 days earlier. Although Courtney and I had already seen Monticello and Mitchie Tavern in 1996, we went there again in 2003.

 From Lexington we went to Antietam in Sharpsburg Maryland which was also a dream come true for me. We took a ranger tour here and all had a good laugh because Didi fell in love with the park Ranger. She flirted with him the entire time. I tried to take pictures from the same angle as Alexander Gardner's famous pictures of places like Bloody Lane, Dunker Church, and Farmer Millers cornfield. At Gettysburg I would do the same thing. We stayed in the historic Mary Thompson house which had been Lee's headquarters on the first day of battle. It was a bed and breakfast surrounded by a motel. Recently the motel was razed and the Mary Thompson house is now a museum. We were in Gettysburg for the 140th anniversary of the battle. Reenactors were everywhere, which added greatly to the atmosphere. Debbie was never that crazy about visiting battlefields but she loved Gettysburg, along with everyone else. We enjoyed it so much that we came back in 2005. That year we also were able to go to Harpers Ferry and Appomattox Court House Virginia. Courtney's friend Laura Dawson also went with us that year.

 One day in January 2007 my daughter Misty asked me to take her to a pain clinic in Franklin Tennessee. She had been hit by a drunk driver a few years before and had tried pretty much everything to alleviate the pain. The doctor in Franklin was going to try some kind of nerve block on her neck. He had told her that this was a last ditch effort to help ease her pain. This was going to be done by injecting a needle into her neck. Misty had asked her daughter Courtney to take her to Franklin but at the last moment Courtney couldn't do it so she asked me to take her instead. I was off that morning and working in the yard when Misty called. She was living near Baker road and I drove over to pick her up. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and a warm for January. I don't know why but bad things seem to happen in my life on beautiful days. My parents died on a beautiful day, Kennedy died on a beautiful day, September 11th 2001 was on a beautiful day and I nearly lost my beautiful daughter on a beautiful day.

 We were both looking forward to a great day together and Misty offered to buy my lunch after her procedure. The pain clinic was west of Cool Springs mall. We walked into the clinic and I sat down in the waiting room ready to read a good book while Misty was called back for her procedure. She was the only patient there at the time and I was the only person in the waiting room. She had been there maybe fifteen minutes when I noticed several nurses and medical personnel running back and forth in a state of excitement. Knowing that Misty was the only patient, I began to panic. Every time someone passed me I tried to get their attention but I was totally ignored as they ran to and fro. This only increased my sense of panic. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a nurse, who seemed to be as rattled and unnerved as I was, came over to talk to me. She said Mr. Segroves your daughter suddenly turned blue and lost consciousness. Her heart stopped on the table while we were doing the procedure. Paramedics were called and they were able to restore her heartbeat. She was taken by ambulance to the Williamson County hospital.

 I wanted to leave for the hospital but the nurse said that the doctor wanted to see me first. She led me back to the procedure room where the doctor, who also appeared to be very rattled, led me over to a chart that depicted the human vertebrae in the neck and back. He pointed to the vertebrae where he had inserted the needle into her neck. The doctor told me that if he had done anything wrong, Misty would be having seizures and she wasn't having seizures before she left. It was his opinion that she had suffered from a very severe anxiety attack. As someone who has suffered from severe anxiety attacks throughout my early adult life I have never known anyone to go into cardiac arrest while having one. His words, however; seemed to calm my fears a little as I jumped into my car and headed for the hospital. Not until later did I realize how ridiculous and incompetent that this doctor's statements were. 

 My first call was to Debbie and I told her what had happened and that I was on my way to the ER. She was babysitting and asked if she needed to come to the hospital. I said that she didn't need to come right then. If the doctor was right it might not be that serious and she would be making a trip for nothing. Then I called her husband Patrick, that she was married to at the time, and my brother Mark. I was not prepared for what I saw when I walked into Misty's room in the ER. She was in a coma and on a respirator. She had foam coming out of her mouth and Misty was definitely in a seizure. and posturing. Her hands and feet were posturing and turned inward in a weird way. Also her face was beet red and she had beads of sweat on her forehead.

I called Debbie and told her to get to the hospital immediately. Mark had called our preacher and they were both enroute to the hospital. My sister-in-law Judy was the first to arrive on scene. Debbie had called her earlier and she had come straight from work. Her reaction was similar to mine. She was not prepared for what she saw. When Mark and the preacher arrived I met them in the parking lot where I lost it as I tried to tell them what had happened and sobbed on Mark's shoulder like a baby. So far I had held my emotions intact pretty good until that moment. Debbie arrived soon after that.

  A doctor came in and said that Misty needed a CT scan of her head but Williamson County hospital was not equipped to do it while she was on a respirator. He wanted to send her to one of the larger Nashville hospitals that were equipped to do that. By this time Patrick was on the scene and he made that decision since he was legally responsible for her. Debbie and I wanted her to go to Vanderbilt but it was not to be. We would have some bad moments due to his decision making in the coming days. Misty was loaded into an ambulance and Debbie climbed into the front seat. With red lights and sirens blaring the ambulance sped from Williamson County hospital to Centennial hospital ER in Nashville. When I arrived at Centennial Misty had already been taken back. I was overwhelmed by the sight of so many friends and relatives in the waiting room who were already there to greet me when I arrived. There was hardly any room to maneuver because it was so crowded and most of the people in the ER waiting room were there for Misty.

 After a long wait that lasted late into the night the neurologist, who was also a surgeon, wanted to talk to her husband. We insisted on being involved and walked with Patrick and the doctor into a small conference room. The doctor stunned us with the news that Misty might have a brain tumor. This news was not what I was expecting at all. He showed us what looked like a growth on her brain in the x-rays. In a mental funk Debbie and I spent the night in the waiting room seated next to each other. Reality seemed to be hitting Debbie hard at that moment and I tried to comfort her the best I could. She was shaking and crying as we went to sleep holding hands that night. On the second day Misty remained in a coma. Later that night a different neurologist called us into another small conference room. He threw us another curve ball. This time, according to him, Misty did not have a brain tumor but had a blood clot instead. I was relieved somewhat because a blood clot sounded better to me than a brain tumor. 

 I had to go to work the next morning and left Debbie with Misty at the hospital. Later that day Misty finally woke up out of her coma and I said a prayer thanking God. Debbie told me to prepare myself for the fact that Misty was not herself yet. All I wanted to do at that point was to hug her and never let go because I was concerned that she might never have come out of that coma. When I walked into her hospital room the first thing she said was " Daddy, how do you feel about being a granddaddy again? In her mind she thought she was in the hospital giving birth because the last time she had been in the hospital was when she gave birth to her youngest child Lydea. I think before it was over with she had at least 83 imaginary children. We couldn't help it but we laughed until we cried sometimes at the things she was saying. It was sad and funny all at the same time. If you didn't know her that well you would think that she was okay when you talked to her. She could hold, what on the surface appeared to be a normal conversation, but we knew she was talking out of her head. At one point she scared a friend when she told her that she had a double mastectomy. 

 After a while the doctor told her that she could go home. He believed that she would recover, because as he explained it, the blood clot was more like a bruise. And just like a bruise it would eventually go away. I felt very uneasy about this. If it had been up to me I would have taken her straight from Centennial to Vanderbilt but her husband wanted to take her home. Misty had gotten a financial settlement on the car wreck that had caused her the pain in the first place, and all he seemed interested in was how much her hospitalization was going to cost him. He was dead set on getting hold of the money that Misty had in her account from the wreck, which he was eventually able to do. He did this by taking advantage of her weakened mental state. We were vastly more interested in her welfare than he appeared to be. Misty was supposed to see the doctor a few days later in order to determine if her so called brain bruise was going away. She had a CT scan before going to the doctor that day. I was a nervous wreck sitting there in the waiting room with Misty and Debbie waiting for the doctor to see her. Two women sitting nearby were telling horror stories about how incompetent this brain surgeon was. I was about ready to abduct my own daughter and take her away from there.

  The CT scan revealed that instead of diminishing the blood clot was expanding into her brain. Emergency surgery was scheduled for that night. Misty had hundreds of people praying for her and the surgery went better than we expected. The blood clot was removed and a metal plate was placed in her head. After a few days she was released from the hospital. We basically had to babysit her everyday for a while. Her kids were small and she could not be left alone. She was not yet capable of taking care of herself, or her children. I hate to say it but mentally there was nobody home. All she wanted to do was eat at Red Lobster. We could take her there and thirty minutes later she had forgotten that she had been there at all and wanted to go back. 

 I will never forget the emptiness I saw in her eyes. After about six months she began evolving into the Misty that I always remembered. She will tell you, however; that a whole year is gone from her life. She can barely remember anything about that year. I regret that I didn't document that period on my movie camera just so she could see what she went through. I did film some of it but not very much. Misty still suffers from some short term memory loss and it has affected her ability to do her job sometimes. Misty is a walking miracle and very fortunate compared to people I have known who have suffered brain injuries. The worst day of my life was the day I lost my parents at the young age of 12 but losing a child would top that. For a long time I just wanted to hold her whenever I was around her. I thank God for his mercy.