Now
that she knew things were worse than she thought, and surgeries
seemed never ending, mental depression started to build
up and she needed drugs to kill the pain -- both physical
and emotional. Living
in Lake Placid, New York she had the skier's life in, without
the most important ingredient -- skiing! She watched her
friends as they went off skiing and she would sit around
and wait for them. Things were not okay. She couldn't take
the pain. Inside, she was dying an emotional death. Insult
followed injury in the hospital. At one point she went into
surgery and she was horrified to discover that they were
accidentally preparing to operate on her left shoulder instead
of her right knee. Another time they told her that she was
going to be in surgery at seven in the morning and although
they kept telling her she was next, she didn't go in until
eight that night. Having graduated from the Lycee in France
and planning two years of medical studies, she had gone
from aspiring to be a doctor, to completely losing her faith
in them. This was not the way she wanted to go
After
seeing a specialist in Vermont, another event occurred that
only made her withdraw further into denial. The specialist
had sent her to a big medical center in New York state for
her seventh knee surgery. Barely conscious from the anesthetics,
as Nicole was being transferred from the operating gallery,
her male nurse wheeled her into an empty room and raped
her. She had no idea where he took her -- she only remembered
a white wall. For Nicole, that was the beginning of giving
up -- of not trusting the world. It was also a painful reminder
of an early childhood rape.
"Should
I take cocaine or marijuana? I didn't want to die from an
overdose but I was doing so many drugs that overdosing was
always a reality. Every time I chose pills or drugs I struggled
to affirm that I wasn't meant to die. I knew that I couldn't
survive the way I was going. That's when I touched bottom.
"Just
when things would get unbearable I would get a little light:
someone nice would come to talk to me or a nurse could see
my pain. I just took it one minute at a time. Seeing somebody
smile or seeing beautiful scenery -- that's what kept me going."
Living
in Lake Placid, New York she had the skier's life in, without
the most important ingredient -- skiing! She watched her
friends as they went off skiing and she would sit around
and wait for them. Things were not okay. She couldn't take
the pain. Inside, she was dying an emotional death. Insult
followed injury in the hospital. At one point she went into
surgery and she was horrified to discover that they were
accidentally preparing to operate on her left shoulder instead
of her right knee. Another time they told her that she was
going to be in surgery at seven in the morning and although
they kept telling her she was next, she didn't go in until
eight that night. Having graduated from the Lycee in France
and planning two years of medical studies, she had gone
from aspiring to be a doctor, to completely losing her faith
in them. This was not the way she wanted to go