Hit and Run, Attempted Murder, 60 Operations

My mother was a victim of a hit and run in 1999. Three teenage boys chose to hit her car for no reason on a bypass. She almost died, it left her critical - so critical that she had to receive over 150 units of blood. They broke her collar bone leaving her with half on one side, her thigh bone, she lost her knee cap, broke both ankles and damaged 80% of her liver, not to mention the other injuries. They completely ruined her bile duct and the surgeons had to put her into a medically induced coma for 3 months. They told her she'd never walk again and that she shouldn't have survived something so damaging.

She received chemotherapy and lost her hair, she was fed through a tube. The first time that she'd eaten solid food was Chrismas day 2000, many months later. When she woke up from the coma - due to a severe head injury, she suffered amnesia and didn't know where she was, why or who her family were.

I remember seeing my mother in the hospital when I was 6 years old thinking that she was some kind of monster. Her skin was black with jaundice because of the liver damage, they'd cut her stomach open to operate and had used a skin graph from her leg to cover it. She was left without a belly button. Her eyes were bright yellow and there were numerous tubes coming out of her through where she'd had a tracheotomy and in her nose to feed her, out of her stomach.

The boys were never caught. The petrol garage and the source of her attack did not have film in their CCTV cameras to identify the cold souls who thought it would be funny to take a woman's life. A mother of two with a loving partner at home, putting the babies to bed.

The police did barely anything, they told her it was her fault because her car ended up on the other side of the bypass. If she didn't survive to put the story right, they may have passed it off as a suicide and I'd have never known the truth.

I lost my mother that day and a new woman was born. A strong woman, who'd lost memories of her life, her childhood, the birth of her children, her parents and the world around her. Re-learning to write and talk properly, left crippled and disfigured.

My mother was in a wheelchair for years, at one point she was bed bound. She's undergone 60+ operations since 1999 and she has more to go. When my sister and I were children she'd be drugged up in the living room and we'd have strangers - carers looking after us and making us our food. I never really bonded with my mother because of this... By no fault of her own.

People would bully me and a girl once called down to me in the street, 'your mother's an invalid' - she laughed. Ignorance. If only they'd known what we'd been through, what my mother had been through. When my mother found out she was bullying me for this reason she wheeled herself up the road to the girls house and shouted at the mother, telling her to stop her child from making my life any worse than it needed to be.

I've watched my mother in constant pain on a daily basis for 15 years, to the point where I sometimes forget she's in pain. She's taking Pethadine on a daily basis to help her...

This woman I'm talking about, my mother - she's raised my sister and I like any mother would. Like a mother in good health with a wholesome heart and more love than I could hope for. The poor quality of life that she's been left with has sickened her and it's left her depressed and empty. I watch my mother lie in her bed staring at the ceiling wondering why she left the house that night, blaming herself for everything that has happened. She rarely leaves the house because she can't stand for long without her legs swelling - not to mention that she's been going jaundice now for years and years. She gets it more frequently than a person with a terrible immune system getting the common cold. The antibiotics she takes for the jaundice make her hair fall out. I've watched her stare into the mirror at her disfigurement and her scars and as her hair falls out, crying. It's one of the most heart wrenching things I've ever had to witness.

Before the accident she was an aspiring model. She was beautiful... Her face still is, so beautiful - and she looks so young for all of the pain and stress that she has been through. Nobody cares though, none of her friends stuck around after the accident, nobody asks her to do anything it's as if she's not good enough anymore.

She's so lonely. She walks around the house talking to herself, thinking out loud and working so hard. She cleans and cooks on a daily basis to keep her going, she tells us it's the only form of exercise she gets. If I'm honest, though I should help her more, I feel as though it's good that she gets to feel normal... Like every other mother.

But she's not every other mother. This woman has endured pain that most humans cannot imagine. It's one thing to die horrifically, it's another to be left with emptiness - no recollection of the past before she was reborn, not knowledge of the outside world other than from the TV and constant aching pains in her body. She feels the only thing worth living for is my sister and I. Everything she does is for us; and yet with everything she's been through - the world has given her nothing back... But it's so quick to have taken it away from her, when she did nothing to deserve it.

It sickens me that her story hasn't been heard enough. I hear of people getting thousands of likes on Facebook for illnesses they've inflicted on themselves by smoking 40 a day all their lives, people getting thousands of likes so that their father will buy them a car.

This woman has had more operations, more pain, more loneliness, more suffering than anyone I've ever met and she still pays bills, cleans, wants to work and has a kind heart. Most people would be bitter, callous, lazy and feeling sorry for themselves or milking the benefit system.

For god sake, her story needs to be heard. She deserves a medal for everything that she does. It hurts me everyday to see what those boys have done to us - the boys who are probably living their lives normally. We're constantly reminded of it everyday through my mums suffering and her emptiness. I just wish I could do something about it and make her life beautiful.

I'm now 20 years old and the pain hasn't gone, not one bit. In fact it grows stronger because I know I won't have my mother for very long.
Her bile duct was replaced with part of her intestine and the intestine wears thin, so she's suffering constant internal pain. I think that woman has seen more hospital walls than she has landscape.

This life is not a trial run, this is it and once it's over, you never come back. Why has she had to have one so cruel and evil?
She's written a book. It's called Wasted Journey - amongst all the operations and sickness, the throwing up bile and getting on with responsibilities... She's written an account of the accident and how she was treated in hospital. It's what really happened. It took her seven years. Please read this book. My mother deserves to be on the TV more than people who have life dreams to become famous singers and movie stars... More than people who are obese and more than people who want to find romance by dinner dating.

If you want to read a real life story, one that will grip you and make you realise what careless human beings and driving recklessly can do - read Wasted Journey.

My mother spend a lot of the money she had in court on getting the book published. They only gave her half of the amount she deserved because the Criminal Justice System is tight. She deserves so much more and we're still struggling with money. All this and she still wants to give the money she gets from the book to charity. To babies who need special care, because she believes that they deserve a chance.
She wrote the book for teenagers and adults who drive to make them aware of the damage that careless, reckless driving can do.

She wants to make people aware of how valuable human lives are!
All of the pain and torment we've been through gave me severe anxiety and depression from a young age and I've been fighting it's aggressive stages since I was 17. I've attempted to take my own life numerous times, to realise that I'd be being selfish and giving my mother more pain that it would be worth. People need to know what they are capable of doing to other people.

It would put a smile on her face and I'm trying everyday to get this story recognised! Even if it kills me like it almost did her.
But just because she didn't die, doesn't mean she's suffering any less, I think she's suffering more.

There's so much more I could write, but the anger and the upset is getting the better of me.
If you've read this - thank you for sharing some of the pain...
Please show your respect for my mother, she's such a strong, beautiful woman and she would do anything for anyone, despite not receiving the same from anyone.

Thank you,

Sarah Boudreaux.

Submitted by Anonymous

Strength