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THE INSPIRING STORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE'S KIM LYNCH UVM It is the first show of the 2010-2011 season, held at the University of Vermont. I am told Clovis is a very good draw. I don’t remember seeing him go earlier; the day is a bit of a blur for me. As my coach and captains help me get onto the tall chestnut and adjust my stirrups, I feel my hands begin to shake; I have to keep taking deep breaths. What is wrong with me? I don’t get nervous like this. Just calm down I tell myself as I take one last deep breath and step into the ring. When the flat class is all over I dismount and hand Clovis to his holder. I am out of breath and my face feels fire engine red. I start to walk out of the ring and the announcer reads off the results. I find myself listening more closely and walking a little slower. I won! Everyone was so excited for me. I was excited too, but I think my friends and teammates were even more so. I was more touched by the way people had reacted than I was excited about my blue ribbon. This wasn’t something that I ever thought would happen again; this time was different. About Me: Horses Growing up I was very active. Riding was my life. By the time I was 19 I had shown all over New England, New York, Florida, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania. I had gone to the highest equitation level, qualifying for and competing at the Maclay Regionals in Connecticut and Medal Finals in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. These were great accomplishments for me because although they had always supported me, my parents could never afford to buy me the best horses. I had to deal with horses that most people I was competing against had probably never even had to ride. In addition I would work at the barn on the weekends and I would groom at the weeklong shows for the people showing at my barn as well as show myself. I rode and showed other peoples' horses and rode a couple horses a day at home. When it was time to go to college I knew I wanted to ride and ended up at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) studying pre-veterinary sciences. I joined the IHSA team my freshman year and made it all the way to the Zone 1 championships. As a sophomore, I was the first rider from UNH to ever qualify for the IHSA National finals where I placed fifth in open fences. For my junior year I had set my goals high. After making it to Nationals once, I really wanted to represent our region as the top Cacchione rider. After the first semester I was within the top three; I was anxious. I was also excited to compete in the Holiday Tournament of Champions at Centenary College in New Jersey. For the first time ever UNH had been invited. I felt as though my life was right where it was supposed to be. My hard work was paying off. Looking back, that weekend in New Jersey was one of the high points of my college riding career. The competition was tough, but I was happy with how I performed and even happier with how my teammates rode. I was always someone who got more nervous watching my friends ride than I did for myself. I was so proud of everyone. For some of them this was the biggest show they had ever been to and I felt like the proud mom watching as her children went above and beyond what she ever expected. Everything happens for a reason That was in December. On January 7, 2010 at around 1:00 pm my life changed dramatically. It was a nice sunny winter day. I was in my blue Honda CR-V driving on an old back road close to home. It was a road that I had driven millions of times; in fact it was the road I used to take to the barn. I don’t remember much of that morning. I was told I had been working earlier. I don’t remember driving. I had decided to go home and say hi to my mom. Other than that, my friends and family have had to fill me in on the next four or five weeks of my life. A man in a white F-350 pickup truck never saw the stop sign on a side street that crossed over the road I was on. His truck collided with the driver’s side door of my small SUV. His truck was totaled but he was out walking and talking on the phone with his dad within seconds after the accident. There were no witnesses to the crash itself, there were only people who heard the loud noise and came running. I will never forget the lady who lived down the street and came in response to the loud crash. She visited me at the hospital and at my house much later on. She was a retired EMT and I owe her my life. She arrived to find my car squished between the large pickup truck and a few trees. She had to climb up onto the bed of the truck and break what was left of my driver’s side window to get to me. I was hunched over in my seat, the airbag in my face. She found that I was not breathing and lifted my head and rested it back on my headrest to restore my airflow. My face and head were covered in blood. I was unresponsive. The firefighters had to slide me out the back of my car. I was put in an ambulance and brought to the closest hospital (in Derry, NH) where I wasn’t even admitted. I was put on a helicopter and flown to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. They apparently had decided that my injuries were too severe for the smaller hospital. My mom, still at home, opened the door for two policemen who told her what had happened. A couple of her friends went over and drove her to Boston and my dad and brother met her there. I had already been through the emergency room and was being brought into the ICU. They wheeled me on a bed past my mom quickly and then asked her to identify me. All she saw was a girl with a bloody, swollen face and blonde hair, blood-stained pink. They identified me when she told them I had a tattoo of a horse shoe on my wrist. I was later told, in addition to everything, that I had been on the news that night. What my friends and loved ones saw and heard was that I had been airlifted to Boston with life-threatening injuries. I stayed at Brigham and Women’s in ICU for 3 days, during which time I was hardly awake. I had suffered a traumatic brain injury. Parts of my brain were bleeding and I had to have regular CAT scans to track the bleeding. I had suffered paresis; a weakness of one side or part of the body. My left arm and leg were completely useless at first. I held my left arm up so that my hand was folded at the wrist on my chest. I had lost all sense of balance. One of the only memories I have of the first four weeks after the accident was trying to sit myself up in the hospital bed and not being able to because I had no balance. I remember falling over trying to sit up, pushing off of my right arm. The doctors also said that I would later have any combination of problems with speech, cognitive deficiencies, personality changes, mood changes and I’m sure the list goes on and on. The bones on the left side of my face were all broken, the ones around my eye, dislocated. I had to get stitches all over the left side of my face as well due to the cuts and gouges from the glass. Apparently my head had gone through my driver’s side window. I also had a fractured vertebra as well as a bruised lung and a lacerated liver. The worst of it, we would later find, was that I had double vision. The doctors said that it tends to happen from trauma to the head, so it would probably heal itself.
Macaroni and Cheese I was sent to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston to work on my brain function. There I received occupational, physical, and speech therapy. I was determined to get back to my old self from the start. I started relearning how to walk using a walker. After a few days with it I just picked it up and walked with it when things were in the way. My therapists yelled at me, but I think my friends were relieved to know that these things happened. They knew that the real me was still in there somewhere. In occupational therapy I worked on the coordination I had lost on my left side. Learning to cook macaroni and cheese was a step in my recovery. At one point I forgot my left hand on the stove when I went to get something by the sink. I had to think about how to work my left arm and leg. Speech therapy was quite frustrating as well. In the beginning my speech was very slow and sounded labored. It slowly got faster and back to normal but it was the cognitive problems that were the worst. I couldn’t always think of everyday words and had difficulty remembering many details in a series. Even memories of my life before the accident were missing. When I first heard all the horrible symptoms that effect people with brain injuries I told my parents not to listen because I just knew that they wouldn’t happen to me; I wouldn’t be like that. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my attitude had been different. I should have been scared by the things I saw at Spaulding, but it only made me more determined. If I were ever asked what went through my head while I was in Spaulding, if I actually thought about healing as fast as I could or if I had ever told myself to be determined, the answer would be no. It wasn’t something that I thought about and told myself I would do; it was second nature. How I lived my life was the same way. I started my life again and got my life back on track; the only way I knew how. My parents came to see me every day. I slept pretty much all of the time that I was not in a therapy session. When my parents would come I would try as hard as I could to stay awake, but sometimes it didn’t work and I would wake up to them having gone home for the night. I felt bad for my parents; for what I had put them through. I thought the least I could do was stay awake and visit with them after they came all the way to Boston after a full day of work. I still feel bad for everything they had to go through. I can’t imagine how they must have felt, thinking they had lost their daughter. I have always been the type of person who lives to please her parents. I felt I had failed this time. There were many nights I would cry myself to sleep, because if I let myself think about it too much, I would get scared. I realized I couldn’t think that way; I needed to keep a good attitude. I couldn’t think about what I was missing out on or how my life would be changed forever. I needed my friends and relied on them every day when I called them. I couldn’t say what we talked about or what I asked about; I just know that I woke up everyday thinking about when I would call each of my friends, planning it around my therapy schedule for the day. The first surgery on my face was a couple weeks into my stay at Spaulding. The dislocated bones in my face had healed as they were and you could see that the structure of my face looked different on the two sides. They had to go in and re-set the bones. When it was all over I ended up with two titanium plates and a handful of screws holding my face together. Today, I am completely grateful and satisfied with the outcome of the surgery, but after it I was miserable. I have never, that I actually remember, been in so much pain. I could only sleep on my right side. My left eye was swollen shut for three or four weeks and my face was so swollen that my glasses barely fit on my head. Even my right eye was black and blue. After a couple months of healing the left side of my face was still slightly swollen and black and blue. The second surgery was much less extensive. I had one plate put in and a few more screws. What now? I was finally discharged from Spaulding six weeks after the accident. I moved home, but slept most of the day for a couple weeks. At one point I went to Walmart with my mom and we joked that Walmart was my big outing! Eventually I needed a nap only once a day, but I was still sleeping at least 12 hours a night. I still had a hard time with my balance and walking. I fell down the stairs a few times and I had to finish physical and speech therapy as an outpatient at Northeast Rehabilitation Center in Salem, NH. By the end of February I was healthy enough to spend an afternoon at UNH for one of my best friend’s birthday. However I still wasn’t driving or riding. Not being able to ride was something that I thought about every day. It haunted me. My entire life before the accident had been about horses. I was used to riding every day. It was like a part of me was gone, like I was lost and didn’t know what to do. My friends and I at the barn growing up had always joked about what we would do every day if we didn’t ride after school and we never could figure it out. I was living that now. It was even harder, emotionally, being at home than being in the hospital. In the hospital I couldn’t see the world going on without me. I didn’t see my friends continuing with their lives and trying to reach their goals, whether academically or in riding. It was so much harder for me to be there and see it all happening around me. One of the hardest things to watch go on without me was my team. As much as I loved my UNH teammates and loved being a part of something so special, I also felt left behind. I watched the team win almost every show in the region and be in first place through the fall shows. There was a chance they would compete at the Zone 1 Finals as a team for the first time. I wanted that. Since I was a freshman that was the one thing that I had wanted more than being the top Cacchione rider for the region. I wanted my team to have all of its hard work pay off. The only thing that makes it alright is the friends I have on the team. They are so supportive and encouraging that I regret being jealous of the opportunity that they have. They keep me going (Editor's note: Without Lynch the University of Vermont re-took the Zone 1, Region 2 lead that had gone back-and-fourth during the fall - When Lynch had been competing - to claim a narrow 286-280 margin of victory and a second-consecutive Zone 1, Region 2 region championship). Back in action Finally in July I was given clearance to get back on a horse. Even before I got on things felt strange. I had been tacking up to ride my entire life so I did things a certain way and in a certain order. Yet I found myself forgetting things or doing it differently. When I got on the saddle and reins felt foreign to me. I couldn’t figure out what length I liked my stirrups at. I wasn’t scared of falling off like my friends and family were. This was what I had been working so hard to get better for: this moment; the feeling of being back on a horse. I could have ridden for hours; I was so happy to just be back on but my body felt differently. I had lost all of my muscles, including the riding ones. I was in so much pain after the first ride; even my butt muscles hurt and I didn’t even think that was possible. I knew it was going to take a lot of hard work to get back to where I was before the accident, but I was ready and determined. I’m lucky that my aunt is a trainer in New Hampshire and I could go to her facility two days a week and ride some of her horses. I was also attending practices for the team at UNH twice a week in the fall. I had so many great people around who were supporting me and providing the help I needed. The worst of it, unfortunately, is that I still had double vision. The doctors had assured me that after the facial reconstructive surgeries that it would get better. But six months after the accident the double vision was not healing itself. I’ve been to every eye specialist in Boston; none of them said there was anything they can do. They said that the double vision seemed to be due to the brain injury. The brain is what has to put the two images that each eye sees together. If a brain is going to heal itself it will happen in the first two years. My brain could possibly still be healing; it’s been barely a year. The double vision could potentially still fix itself, but I’m not getting my hopes up. I want to get on with my life; I’ve already figured out how to live with double vision. If this is going to be my life, I want to live it! However it’s something that many people don’t understand. They can’t see it by looking at me and they can’t say they understand because they don’t. And fortunately it doesn’t affect my school work; it just affects everything else in my life. I don’t see the world clearly anymore. It is hard to even describe. I can’t see to put my makeup on. I can’t see people’s faces clearly. What if I never see them clearly again? The only way to see anything without the double vision is to close one eye. But that’s no way to live life, seeing half of everything. When I drive I have to tape over one side of my glasses so I only see out of one eye. I ride the same way. I like to say I’m not embarrassed, but when I visit a drive through I take my glasses off when I get to the window. With double vision there is no depth perception. I close one eye walking down the stairs or stepping off the curb. With one eye, even though there is some depth perception, it is different than with two eyes. I used to fall down the stairs a lot or walk too close and hit a table or a wall on my way by. That’s what makes riding so hard now. Because of my vision I have had to learn how to find a distance to the jumps all over again. When I was competing in IHSA I hardly ever missed a distance and now I can’t see anything. As I have relearned how to jump with the new depth perception, sometimes I just completely miss and even crash! I am learning to adjust to seeing things in a new way and to the new depth perception but it’s different (harder). I watch my fences round from the Tournament in New Jersey on videotape all the time. I would do anything to be riding that well again; to see such perfect distances and ride around without glasses with tape on one side of them.
Looking back at how much my life has changed in the last year I have a new perspective. When I think about how close I came to losing my life and not being here anymore it makes me more grateful for the things I used to overlook. I used to have so many things that I wanted in life; I was never satisfied with what I had. I wanted to win finals and now just being at the barn and having the scent of horses on my clothes makes me happy. The competitor in me will always be there but now I seem to have a sense of fulfillment. For once I am happy with where my life is and what I’m doing with it. I think the biggest change in my life, perhaps, pertains to my loved ones. After all of this I see people more clearly now. I see who my true friends really are. They are the ones who were calling me every day in the hospital and sitting by my bedside to grab me if I tried to get up and run when I couldn’t even walk. They are the ones who would drive into the city and stay late into the night just to sit with me when I wasn’t even awake. They drove me everywhere when I was too scared to drive. I wish there was some way I could repay them, but I can’t. The things they did will just stay with me forever. So at that first show of the fall season, as I walked out of the ring with a small smile on my face, I was greeted by my friends yelling and jumping on me. Even the other coaches, who used to view me as the competition, gave me a big smile of congratulations. I think my friends are the ones who kept everything in perspective for me. I don’t think I could have come back without them. --Kim Lynch
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