Column: A woman in a wheelchair redirects a routine Saturday morning

By Miriah Griffith

December 20, 2007 | My husband and I have our Saturday morning routine pretty much down. Sleep in until 10 a.m., run errands at 11, home by 12:30. Like clockwork. What we didn't expect on this particular Saturday morning errand run, was a two-hour delay . . . right in the middle of the road.

Pushing herself backwards in a wheelchair in the middle of a very busy intersection, completely unaware of the swerving cars and directed glares, was a woman I would soon call DJ. She wasn't old; her hair wasn't gray, at least. She seemed to be in her late 50s. "Pull over," I tell my husband. This woman was going to get herself killed.

As I approached her, wondering which nursing home she'd escaped from, she stopped her slow progression north. We eyed each other wearily.

"What are you doing, honey?" I ask.

"There's no sidewalk," she snapped. "What am I supposed to do?"

At least I knew she had her wits about her. Cars were now swerving around me, and it was cold. I convince her she isn't safe out here, and that my husband and I will drive her wherever she needs to go.

Looking at DJ, you wouldn't notice much was different about her (other than the wheel chair). She has a pleasant smile and sharp eyes. You may notice, after a while, that her left side is stronger than her right, a few muscle twitches or some slurred speech. But you'd never guess that this woman woke up from a six month coma; a coma from which the doctors said she would never wake.

"I was wild when I was younger," said Debra Jeanne Chipman. DJ (as she prefers to be called), who was studying in San Diego California at the Pacific School of Nursing, was the life of the party. "No one could tame me down," she said.

DJ blames a lot of her drinking on her mother. "She drank all the time and was always gone." The memories she has of her mother include more fights than anything else. DJ said they were both so stubborn they could never see eye to eye. So they argued and tried to stay out of each other's way.

DJ led a very active lifestyle in her college days. She loved riding motorcycles, body surfing and partying. But DJ's partying would come to an end when she was only 21 years old.

After drinking heavily one night, DJ got on a motorcycle with a friend who had also been drinking. The driver wore a helmet, but DJ didn't. Another drunk driver in a black Volkswagen hit the motorcycle, smashing DJ's head into the driver's helmet, and throwing them both from the bike. She suffered severe brain trauma and was comatose for the next six months of her life.

"The cat scans didn't show any hope of her ever being more than a vegetable," Carol Ann Gwilliam, DJ's sister said. "We had no reason to believe the doctors were wrong. We never thought we'd talk to her again."

Gwilliam, who was living in Canada at the time of the accident, said she was surprised to get her mothers call saying DJ was starting to wake up. "It was like a miracle. That's what I thought -- it was a miracle."

Gwilliam said while nurses were performing range of motion exercises with DJ, she started yelling at them. "I think it gave them quite a scare," she said. "Here is this woman with a feeding tube in her stomach, who has been completely non-communicative for six months, and she just starts talking!"

"I guess God didn't want me yet," DJ said. "Because I lived!"

But it wasn't a matter of simply opening her eyes and going home. DJ had to learn everything all over. She had to learn to crawl again, and then to walk. She had to learn how to talk again. She had to learn to shower in a shower chair. It was an uphill battle for months.

"I had to go through speech therapy, physical therapy. . . . I spent a long time in the hospital for rehab," said DJ.

Through it all DJ didn't lose her spark and fire. "One time in the hospital," she said, "I got so sick of the feeding tube that I just yanked it out and told the nurses to bring me some real food!"

As her abilities started to come back, DJ realized she would never be able to do all the things she used to. Despite all her hard work and progression, she would be in a wheelchair the rest of her life. She would never have the capacity to finish school or even hold down a job. Neither she nor her family could afford to pay for her living expenses. It looked like DJ might be stuck in a nursing home the rest of her life.

"For a while I got really depressed," DJ said. "I was even on suicide watch for a while. I just couldn't understand why God was doing this to me. Maybe it's God's payback -- it's all I can figure out." She feels some guilt for her partying.

DJ's late mother, Blanca McGuire, did some research and found a way for DJ to afford to live independently. According to California state law, any bar that allows a person to drive away so drunk that he or she causes an accident, can be held liable for damages. "If it weren't for our mother," Gwilliam said, "DJ would have nothing. She'd be in a nursing home somewhere having a terrible time."

McGuire sued the Howl bar in San Diego on behalf of DJ and won monthly annuities for the rest of DJ's life. Because of that lawsuit, DJ has been able to live in her own apartment for years, and move on with life.

"She's come a long way," Gwilliam said. "But her story just goes to show you what alcohol can do to you."

DJ moved to Logan in April to be closer to her sister Gwilliam, a nurse at Logan Regional Hospital. After their mother died in 2003, Gwilliam tried for years to convince her to move to Utah so that a family member would be close by to help with things she couldn't do for herself. When she finally agreed, Gwilliam found an apartment that was close to the bank and to Wal-Mart so that DJ would have everything she needed within a distance she could manage in her wheelchair.

"I've never liked riding the bus," DJ said. "There are too many people on them and they stink." So she wheels herself manually to the places she needs to go.

DJ's niece, Gwilliam's daughter, comes once a week to help her with some of the cleaning she can't do on her own. "I can do most things," DJ said, "but things like changing the bed sheets are really hard to do from the chair." She has had to adapt cleaning methods most people take for granted, like vacuuming. A small hand-vac on wheels with an extended hose sits in the corner under the table. When it's time to vacuum, DJ plugs the cord in, takes the long hose, and crawls around the floor with it, vacuuming as she goes.

Although she can no longer ride motorcycles or body surf, her new favorite hobby is beading necklaces. She even won a first place prize in a beading competition in San Diego.

"The left side of my brain was hit, so the right side of my body was affected. But I'm left handed, so it's not a problem," DJ said. "I have to turn it into a big joke; otherwise I'd be depressed all the time."

Gwilliam said she makes a daily effort to make sure DJ avoids negative thinking, doesn't get lonely and has everything she needs. "Negative thinking patterns are very typical of traumatic brain injury patients," Gwilliam said. "I try to remind her of all the wonderful things in her life. She has a wonderful apartment in a beautiful part of the state."

"I love it here," DJ said. "I thought I would miss seeing the ocean every day, but the sunsets here are so beautiful. I think the sunsets are better- all those orangey-pink colors. They don't have sunsets like that in San Diego."

As my husband and I drove away from DJ's apartment, neither one of us spoke for a very long time. What was there to say? Here we were, concerned about how long it would take to drive to the store, walk in and buy milk and then drive back home. I thought in terms of time, not ability. I'd never had to stop and think if I had the strength or energy to push myself in a wheelchair to a store not more than 400 yards away. Somewhere between our house and the grocery store, our lives were changed. A profound story of hope, courage, and beating the odds found us -- right in the middle of the road.

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