Is there any hope after a head injury? 

Jacky Davies was 21 when she suffered a serious head injury in a road traffic accident. The prognosis was not good, but 40 years on she works 30 hours a week, is a wife, mother and grandmother. 

Being the daughter of the UK director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Jacky was surrounded by prayer - and now wants to share how God has sustained her when life took a very different turn to the one she was expecting 

The brain is, I understand, one of the most complex organs in our bodies. The brain controls how we move, how we feel, our body’s temperature, our thoughts, our emotions and so many other areas of our lives. This means that if something happens to the brain, life as we know it will change and at times that change is quite drastic. 

In the fast pace of life now, head injuries are becoming more common and there has been more recently discussions over the head injuries football players, rugby players and boxers receive during their careers and how these affect them in later life. For example, there are a contributory trigger of dementia. Head injuries are all different and no two head injuries are the same, and I suppose it all depends on which part of the brain is affected by the injury. I feel that ‘head injuries’ in general are sort of all classed as the same and that if you have a head injury then there is not a lot of hope left for you really! 

I feel I have the right to say this because I am a survivor of a rather serious head injury that almost took my life away from me 40 years ago. But God, who is my Rock, my Foundation for life, my Saviour and my closest Friend, had different ideas.

I had my plan all set out, I thought.  When I left school, I started my training to become a Registered General Nurse. Having become a committed Christian at the age of seven, I was ready to serve God wherever He wanted me to go, do whatever He wanted me to do and to be the ‘best’ Christian I could be and work solely for the Lord! This was my plan. But, as we read in Jeremiah 29:11, the Lord informs us that He knows the plans He has for us, and that these plans are meant to prosper us, not to harm us, and these plans are meant to give us hope and a future.   

So, I was enjoying life to the full, studying hard to be a good nurse, as well as attending a lively Church of England church near where I lived in South Harrow. Everything was going fine, and as far as I was concerned, my life was all planned out.  As I grew up, had been encouraged to read several books written by missionary pioneers who had risked their lives to serve God in tough situations, and these were people I wanted use as my guides into my future service. Surely, I was doing all God wanted me to do to serve Him to the best of my ability - BUT God had a different plan/purpose/direction for my life and suffering a serious head injury was not part of my plan at all.

It was late August in 1982, and I had just started my final year of my training. I had a rare weekend off from my nursing duties and decided I would spend it beside the seaside and visit my parents on the east coast of England. As it was nearing the end of the summer, the seaside town where my parents lived was generally quite busy during the day. I had decided to leave late one evening to drive back to my flat in South Harrow ready to return to work the next day. During the drive back, I was involved in a major road traffic accident and my car was crushed by a lorry reversing out of a garage.

The next thing I remember was the sensation of someone running their finger along the sole of my foot. Surely, they knew just how ticklish I was, especially on my foot! I seem to remember asking whoever it was, rather loudly, to stop. This, I found out later, was on October 12, 1982, exactly 50 days later. I eventually discovered that I had spent 35 of those 50 days in a coma on a ventilator in the Intensive Care Unit at St Bartholomew’s Hospital; and the other 15 days on the neurosurgical ward, still in a coma but able to survive without a machine breathing for me.

I had sustained a major head injury, which, I discovered, affected my sight, my mobility, my breathing, and my brain function.  It took me several days, and weeks to begin to discover just what it meant to me and how it was going to affect me.  My personal struggle to regain the life I had previously known and enjoyed was now going to start, and only God would know how long this was going to take and what difficulties lay ahead for me.

The verse in Jeremiah, which I have already mentioned, has grown to become a stronghold over the years, and I find that I think about it often. I now had to learn to trust in God again fully, and that had to be off my own back rather than trusting through my parents. Initially, in the early days and weeks I found myself leaning on my parents trust and faith and trusting God through them. 

But I had to trust Him myself. Basically, I knew God was somehow involved in all that was going on and that prayer was involved in some way. I was informed fairly quickly, that there were many, many people praying for me. My father was then the director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, UK, which meant that right from the early days all the workers in the BGEA across the world were praying for my recovery. My mother, being an American citizen, had family and friends across America and they were praying for me. My father was also, at that time, the Secretary of the Keswick Convention and requests for prayer were issued through the trustees for this Convention too. God even looked after my parents during this time, by enabling people to draw near to them while they were sitting by my bedside, people who could explain what was going on, support and pray with them during the first few days and weeks. God had it all in hand; and, although I could not understand it all, this was God’s plan for my life at this time.

God knew what was going on and had His mighty Right hand on my life. 

But, you know, nothing comes as surprise to God. He had it all worked out. I spent three months in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, then I spent four months in a rehabilitation unit, the Eastern Hospital, and then I spent three months at my home, back in South Harrow, just learning to live again…normally.

It all sounds so easy and straight forward, but I was very ill. Over the next 40 years I recovered a lot further than the people in the medical profession prognosed, all down to the prayers of God’s people. Life has certainly not been all that easy over the years. But the thing that has really amazed me over the time, is that I am a just an ordinary person. I am nobody special, and often I echo Paul’s thoughts in 1 Timothy 1:15, where he states, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.”  God had a plan, and that plan was that, through the prayers of many people, I would be able to do so much more than was expected.

Early on in my recovery, while I lay in Intensive Care, my parents were warned that I could stay as I was for the rest of my life…in a vegetative state.  Hope was re-kindled when I regained consciousness. Then, while I was in the Rehab Unit, my parents were informed that although I would recover, I would probably not have a mental age over a 10-year-old, 11 if I was lucky. God had other ideas though.

Forty years have now gone by. During those years I have slowly been recovering. God moved me from nursing to taking a degree course in Primary Education, and I can now place BEd(hons) after my name. Although I did not progress into a teaching profession, I meet many people each day I work, as a checkout operator in one of the big supermarket chains and am able to witness for God each day in the way I treat the customers who come to my till, many of whom I have grown to know well. I have been married to Jeff, for 32 years, and God has blessed us with three beautiful daughters, and three lovely grandchildren. 

But life is still not always easy, and I need to trust in God each and every second of each and every day. I never thought I would make it this far, but it is only through, and with God’s help and grace, that I have managed to reach my sixth decade. God has helped me to cope with constant double vision and a loss of vision on the left side. I also weary very quickly and have been advised to not do too much in the evenings.

I can honestly say that without God none of this would have happened. As I said earlier, I had my life all planned out, but God had a different plan.  My trust in Him has not been plain sailing either. Just like we have ups and downs in our lives we also have ups and downs in our spiritual lives. But I have found God to be faithful, even when I have not been. God has been loving, even when I have not been. God has always given me time, even when I haven’t given Him time, and God has always been with me and will always be with me. I thank God for every moment of the day because without Him walking beside me as I go, I would not be who I am today.  

There is a hymn that has meant much to me over the years. I learnt it on Crusader camps when I was young. I am sure that many of you know it, but the words say:

I Do Not Know What Lies Ahead,                              
The Way I Cannot See;
Yet One Stands Near To Be My Guide,
He’ll Show The Way To Me:

I Know Who Holds The Future,
And He’ll Guide Me With His Hand;
With God Things Don’t Just Happen,
Everything By Him Is Planned.
So As I Face Tomorrow,
With Its Problems Large And Small,
I’ll Trust The God Of Miracles,
Give To Him My All.

So, although we do not know what tomorrow may hold, we need to believe that God has His hand in all things, and we need to have faith that He is walking beside us through our lives.


Top image | Priscilla Du Preez | Unsplash

 

Jacky is married to Jeffrey, with whom she has three daughters and three grandchildren

Jacky is the daughter of Maurice Rowlandson, who worked for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as its UK Director 

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