Pretty in pink

When she finally reached the surface she couldn’t breathe.

Kattie Cave’s legs were numb. The only thing keeping her afloat was her life vest. Around her, seeping through the murky lake water, was bright red blood.

1,000 knives stabbing at her colon. That was the pain she felt. She watched as her mom circled back on the Jet Ski, realizing that she had fallen off but unaware if Cave was crying or laughing.

Then she saw the blood.

Cave looked at the distance from where she was floating to the Jet Ski and realized she couldn’t swim. Her legs had no feeling; she suddenly feared she would be paralyzed forever.

Her mom couldn’t lift her onto the Jet Ski, and lifting herself was out of the question. She gripped onto a handle on the back of the seat while her mom steered them back to the dock.

She looked back at her legs floating behind her in the water. Bloodstained ripples of water, miniature waves from the Jet Ski’s propellers, washed over her. She felt weightless.

She looked up at her mom with wide eyes and told her to let her go.

“Her words ring in my head every day,” Cave’s mom said.

One mile, 2 liters of blood.

Next thing she knew, she was in an ambulance surrounded by doctors. It hit her she wouldn’t be leaving the hospital today. There was too much blood, too many worried faces.

Waves of pain washed over her body. A stab of 1000 knives, a shock wave over her entire body, then nothing—a fog.

“Trauma 1. Get here now,” a doctor with a walky-talky said.

A heart rate machine was clipped on her index finger, and she stared at the screen. As long as it doesn’t go straight I’ll be fine, she thought.

Everything was spinning, and the ambulance seemed to be getting hotter and hotter.

They turned the sirens on.

Cave was rushed into the hospital to a room away from her mom. A wall of hot air surrounded her body. If a doctor touched her, or even a piece of fabric brushed her arm, she would start shaking.

A nurse cut off her favorite white bathing suit to take her to surgery. She asked for it back, but it was beyond repair—soaked in red.

The doctors placed blankets over her, even as she screamed from the heat and yelled to take them off. Doctors rushed in and out, pushing her down hospital hallways to surgery.

She closed her eyes.

The fluorescent hospital lights reached her through her eyelids. The pattern of each light, like cars flashing on a highway, hit her fast as the doctors sped her down the hallway. Left turn. Right turn. Voices everywhere. The sound of the elevator door closing. Ding, ding, ding, ding—black.

She woke up in a cold dark room to a woman wearing a shirt that read “Pic-U” (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit). The woman walked toward her and told her she had been in surgery for 8 and a half hours.

She had been holding onto her moms life vest when the momentum of the Jet Ski had pushed her back into the water. The water pressure from the propellers had forced water into her colon, making it burst. Her stomach had expanded to look 8 months pregnant.

Cave tried to speak, but realized there was a tube down her throat. She was tied to her bed, with a ventilator helping her breathe.

Suddenly her mom sat next to her with a sticky note and pen for her to write. Cave grabbed the pen.

“Can I have a coke?”

Her mom shook her head no.

“Can I have kids?”

Her mom turned away, tears flooding her eyes, then turned back and nodded yes.

“That’s all I cared about,” Cave said. “I knew I’d be okay after that.”

She closed her eyes.

Two hours later she woke, choking on nothing. The ventilator had stopped working; there was no air.

Her Dad’s face is still a snapshot in her mind. The terror in his eyes—watching his daughter run out of oxygen. He ran out to get the nurse.

“Tell Dad and Heather I love them,” she said.

She closed her eyes.

***

In October, Cave walked into her first day of high school, after having been home schooled for 2 months during recovery. She spent the remainder of the school year sitting in crowded white cinderblock classrooms wearing baggy clothing. No one knew that underneath her shirt, she hid a colostomy—a bag attached to her side that provided an alternate way for feces to leave her body.

When summertime rolled around again, she had reconstructive surgery to fix her colon so it could operate as it used to. That surgery was the scariest, cutting open the same scar that had been healing for months. The night before, Cave looked at her mom and told her she didn’t want it to be done; she could live with a bag on her side. Her mom shook her head no.

One high school graduation and college move-in later, Cave started throwing up everything she put in her system. She was rushed to the ER while her stomach started to expand again. Scar tissue had covered her colon; she spent a week in the hospital while they tried to clean it out for surgery.

She was back in the operating room, but for the first time she wasn’t scared. A nurse came in and stared at Cave.

“So you’re her,” she said.

The nurse had been with Cave during her accident 5 years ago; Cave was her first patient. After meeting Cave, she changed her direction to be a trauma nurse. She assured her she would be by her for the rest of the surgery.

Cave decided she would deal with whatever came her way, which would come to mean multiple check-up visits, colon dilations and daily medications.

***

The day Cave was first released from the hospital she wore a pink dress. Her sister had bought it as a token of the special occasion.

The pink dress is still hanging in her closet—a reminder of the accident, but never to be worn again.

“You always plan ahead—what you’re going to do the next day or in your lifetime,” Cave said. “But you need to focus on the days you have, the ones right in front of you.”

Cave smiles as she talks about her accident. She smiles as she walks across Virginia Tech’s drill field, even on the windiest days, because she has the ability to do so. She smiles when she hangs out with her friends, because she has the ability to speak and laugh and enjoy their company.

The days before she fell off the Jet Ski mark a time when she took too many things for granted—where she assumed she was entitled to life.

“It seems cliché, but until things are taken away from you, you don’t realize how important they were to you,” she said.

Cave walked out of the hospital 5 years ago—wound V.A.C. strapped across her chest, tubes peaking out, colostomy on her side, catheter wrapped around her walker—wearing a pretty pink dress.

A princess with her (almost) perfect ending.