Like movie '50 First Dates,' every day is Feb. 14 for Shelby County man after concussion
Published: Sunday, September 23, 2012, 10:50 AM
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| Clark and Brittney Flowers are a Shelby County couple living a 50 First Dates experience are shown with their dog Wendell.(The Birmingham News, Hal Yeager) |
When Clark wakes up in their Shelby County apartment complex on Double Oak Mountain, he thinks it is Feb. 14. But when he gets to the bathroom, his toothbrush has changed. When he dresses, his old shoes are gone, replaced by a new pair. And when he steps outside expecting cold and brown, he sees summer's last green.
He remembers all of his life before he fell off a ladder and injured his head on Feb. 13, the young couple say. So he knows Brittney and their first two years of marriage. But every morning, his wife says she has to calmly tell him the same things -- do you remember that you had an accident and a concussion? Now you can only remember about four hours back in time. Today's date is so-and-so, and that noise you hear in the rest of the apartment is your parents, who came to live with us in May.
"It's weird," said Clark, 28. "It's like a really bad, weird dream.
"I wake up and I think it's February. ... I remember the grass -- it's cold, it's dead. But when I walk out it's all green."
The accident
Clark and Brittney say Clark was at work on a ladder in a freezer room when he fell. He was found unconscious about an hour later by another worker. At the emergency room he was conscious but could not move his neck. After about six hours he was sent home with a neck brace that he would wear full time for the next month.
Clark says he remembers what he had for dinner that night -- ramen noodles and a grilled cheese sandwich. He went back to work about a week later.
But Brittney says she soon found he was forgetting what she told him, and sometimes he would walk away in the middle of washing dishes and not come back.
"One day he said, 'I don't remember my afternoon. I don't remember a four-hour span,'" said Brittney.
Brittney told her mom, Kim Mims, about the forgetfulness.
"As we were talking on the phone," said Mims, "I said, 'Brittney, what's that noise?' She said, 'He's honking his horn with his key, to try to find his car.'"
Alan Flowers, Clark's father, came in from Oklahoma for a week in March and stayed with Clark and Brittney.
"I had not realized how bad it was," Flowers said. "Every morning it was, 'Dad, I'm glad to see you. I missed you.'"
Coping
Clark's parents -- both retired military with a home in Colorado -- graduated from Bible college in Broken Arrow, Okla., in May.
"They came to the graduation," Arrie Flowers said of her son and daughter-in-law, "but he doesn't remember it."
Clark's parents immediately moved into Clark and Brittney's apartment to help the family keep going as Brittney continues her job at the Jefferson County Domestic Relations Court as assistant to Judge Julie Palmer.
"While she's at work, we can take him to appointments," said Alan Flowers.
Clark's parents are both working part-time jobs to help with the bills -- Arrie Flowers at Walmart and Alan Flowers at Outback Steakhouse. Brittney's parents, who live just over the mountain in Chelsea, are also on hand to help.
Brittney says she has turned her early-morning explanation to her husband about the accident and its effects into a ritual that begins when she wakes at 5:30. To help, Clark writes emails to himself to read the next day, or makes journal entries, as a way of trying to remember backward.
"I will send an email tonight that my sister had a baby," Clark said in August. The infant is now a month old, but Clark remembers his sister as being in her first trimester of pregnancy.
He doesn't like looking at family pictures taken after the accident. "I feel I wasn't there," Clark said. "It's like a parallel world -- that's not me."
Clark wants to work again.
"It's just that I'm a man," Clark said. "I want to know that I can provide for my wife. I want to know I can put food on the table. It's a very humbling experience to go through something catastrophic in your life and not know how to get out."
Yet Clark looks fine.
"I guess the average person would find it hard to believe he's having problems," said Clark's father-in-law, Roger Mims.
"We can't see the amnesia," said Brittney. "It's like the wind -- you can't see the wind, but it's there."
Moving on
Still the days continue, one following another.
Friends have held fundraisers for Clark and Brittney. Three times Clark has passed out and had to be taken to the emergency room. He has continuous headaches. Brittney keeps a heavy tote bag filled with 19 neatly kept files of Clark's medical tests, all the dates of medical events, his medications and so on.
In some ways Clark has not changed.
"He's fun and happy; he jokes and cooks," said his mother. "Still he's Clark, the loving Clark. If you met him, you'd never know."
Clark seeks a purpose for his injury.
"I want God to use me for people who are going through a hard time," he said. "People with memory loss or teens with disabilities. Right now I'm asking God to heal me, but while I'm in the healing process, I want Him to tell me how He wants to use me."
He has had a "Walk in Faith" T-shirt made that says, "He may not be able to remember yesterday, but he knows who holds tomorrow."
Brittney has taken on a new challenge, one she had put off because of the accident. She has started nursing school at the Hoover campus of Jefferson State Community College, believing that she will need a stronger income. Her three classes -- health assessment, intro to pharmacology, and microbiology -- meet four nights a week.
"It's hard," she said. "I go straight to school from work. When I get home, I get a bite to eat. I stay up to 12 or 1 at night studying, and then the alarm goes off at 5:30."
That worries Clark.
"I know how stressed she is," he said. "She's got so much on her plate right now. If I could work, I could help."
One night as the entire extended family -- Clark and Brittney, and all four of their parents -- sat at the dinner table, Clark said of his wife, "She's my hero. She's my absolute hero."
"She's my hero too," echoed Arrie Flowers.
"Mine too," said Alan Flowers.
Love
Brittney and Clark say they were best friends before getting married in 2009. They are something more now.
"It changed our relationship," said Brittney. "We don't argue over the small things. Yes, he's not going to remember tomorrow, but it's really not important. ... When we wake up, we try to focus on the positives. Or I can sit in bed all day and sob.
"When you get married, you don't think you could love this person more than you do," said Brittney. "But the love is indescribable now. I'm his advocate. It's a scary situation for him to be in a different month and not know it. I try to reassure him it's going to be OK. It takes a lot out of you."
Clark feels a deeper bond.
"When you get married they say, 'in sickness and in health,'" he said. "She's proven to me there's nothing I will ever go through that she will not be there for me."
They have an uncertain future, balanced by deep dependence on faith and daily support from family and friends.
"There are a lot worse things in life," Brittney said of the amnesia. "You learn to stop griping and be thankful. You learn to let go of things that are not important."
"We don't know how long this will last," said Clark. "It could end next week. It could end next year. It could end in five years."
"Or," he said, "it could never end."
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