Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 2, 1995 TAG: 9505020090
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MELISSA DEVAUGo{LEAD} HN Two months ago today, Christiansburg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It happened less than 400 yards from our newspaper's office. I heard the rescue calls on the police scanner as I worked at my computer and heard the sirens pass by the office. But I had no idea who it was (her name was not given out over the police scanner).
Besides extensive leg and foot injuries, Machincia, a popular fifth-grade teacher at the school, suffered severe head injuries. When I heard the details about the accident, I immediately thought of my younger sister, Mary, who received head and leg injuries in a similar accident three years ago.
Like Mary, Nancy's injuries were so serious that there were times when her doctors, friends and family wondered if she'd survive.
After Mary's accident, our family sat huddled around a private emergency room at Roanoke Memorial, waiting, wondering if we'd ever see the youngest of our family alive again.
I kept imagining that scene with the Machincia family - her husband, John, and the couple's two children, Jessica and Brad - as they waited for more news about their wife and mother. It kept me awake at night and dominated my thoughts for days.
The community was concerned, too. So concerned that the Montgomery County Education Association put daily updates of her condition on its telephone hot line. The number received hundreds of calls.
But you'd be surprised how much things can change in two months.
Our family was.
In two months, Mary went from the neuro-intensive care unit at Roanoke Memorial, to a private room. Finally, she was sent to Roanoke Memorial's Rehabilitation Center. (One of her hall mates was George Bell of Blacksburg, who was running for the Republican nomination for Congress in 1992 when he suffered head injuries in a car accident on Interstate 81. He is doing well today).
At first, Mary's memory was iffy at best. I'd come to visit her and she'd say enthusiastically, "Hi, Melissa! I haven't seen you in so long." We'd talk for a while and I might get up and go out in the hall, come back a moment later and she'd say (enthusiastically) "Hi, Melissa! I haven't seen you in so long."
The therapists would show her a series of picture cards and ask her to identify them. She might know what a comb was, but a picture of a cat might confuse her. A flower might be easy to identify, but she might stare blankly at a baseball bat and say, "I don't know."
That's just how it is with head injuries. Slow, unpredictable recoveries and lots of patient waiting by loved ones.
Nancy Machincia returned home last Tuesday. Her husband says she walks around now with the help of a cane and "she's adjusting real well to being back home." Remnants of her injuries remain, and they're still affecting her, but the slow healing process has begun.
When Mary came home, she carried around a large red strip of rubber, tied in a knot at one end. She walked aimlessly around the house, stretching the rubber band as instructed by her doctors, trying to strengthen her injured arms. I would watch her walking in circles around the house and wonder if she'd ever be on her own, if she'd ever be the Mary I grew up with and the Mary she had become before the accident.
When I talk to John Machincia, I hear a tired man, who has spent countless hours enduring the hard task of watching someone he loves fight her way back to some form of normalcy. I want to tell him "I know how you feel," but I don't know if it's the right thing to say.
Instead, I can just share my story and hope that his family survives like the DeVaughn family did.
Mary drives a car now. She just finished college and she loves her job at the library.
And in May, my little sister, no longer the broken young woman of three years ago, will be married.
by CNB