Injury Won’t Stop Graduate

As a part-time, grade-A student since 1982, Gerijean Dahlberg Mynxx has loved taking classes at Orange Coast College. Receiving a diploma at graduation ceremonies tonight has been the stuff of great anticipation.

So the fact that she is sitting in a hospital bed today, paralyzed from the hips down since a fall 16 days ago, is not going to stop her.

“I made my doctor promise that I’d be out of here for graduation,” the legal secretary said from her bed at Humana Hospital-West Anaheim. “He had to break that promise, but he did the next best thing, he got me a pass.”

Doctor Sees Ceremony as Therapy

Her neurosurgeon, Anselmo R. Pineda of Long Beach, said Mynxx’s trip out for her sheepskin will be therapeutic.

“This will be good for her morale,” said Pineda, who determined that Mynxx is strong enough to tolerate the outing and that it is unlikely to cause further damage.

“Others would be lying there feeling sorry for themselves,” he said. “This lady is very determined, and I’m happy for her.”

Mynxx became paralyzed after she fell down stairs at her Anaheim apartment complex May 9.

Among her first concerns, she said, were her rapidly approaching final exams and the graduation ceremony. Her instructors sent her the exams, some of which she completed flat on her back. Coping with a raging lumbar headache from a spinal tap, she wrote answers during the moments when painkillers did not make her too woozy.

Even after she got Pineda’s permission to attend graduation, there was some temporary uncertainty. For a while it appeared that Mynxx would be transferred to St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton today, which would have meant she would need to persuade her new doctor there to let her attend graduation. Now it appears that she will be transferred Friday.

Mynxx said a transfer was not about to stop her, anyway: “I’m going to be at graduation if I have to sneak out of the hospital.”

That same attitude will help her deal with her paralysis and, she hopes, eventually get her back on her feet. Although doctors say her chances for walking again are as yet unclear, Mynxx said she is “not going to be in a wheelchair forever” if there is anything she can do about it.

Wearing a lavender striped dress and her blond hair pulled back into a braid, the 23-year-old woman said she is eager to start rehabilitation so she can get back to her husband, her work and her studies. The paralysis is something she had not bargained for, but Mynxx is as buoyant as the helium balloon that bobs at the foot of her hospital bed.

Two Choices Only

“You’ve got only two choices,” she said, “to have a good attitude or a bad attitude. One won’t help me get better any faster.

“Oh, I’ve cried a few nights. I get blue. But I can’t let it stop me. I’ve got a long road ahead of me, and I want to get moving on it as soon as possible.”

Her faith in God has helped, she said: “God didn’t call and ask me about this. I wouldn’t have chosen this, if I had the option. But I’ve decided that God is taking care of me, even if that means I’m going home in a wheelchair.”

She remembers little of the accident that put her in the chair. “The only thing I know is that I was at the top of the stairs and then at the bottom,” she said.

Mynxx had been walking gingerly because she was recuperating from abdominal surgery and because she had just recovered from a bout of mumps. Her husband was at her side and tried to catch her, but all he got hold of was her clothes.

She spun around as she fell down, she said: “I’m lucky. I could have fallen on my head and broken my neck.”

Baffling, Different Symptoms

Her neurosurgeon said tests have not definitively determined what is causing Mynxx’s paralysis. Damage to the spinal cord usually produces a different pattern of paralysis and symptoms other than the ones she has, Pineda said.

It is possible that an infection from the mumps virus may be involved, although tests have not confirmed that, he said.

“It’s difficult to say at this time” what Mynxx’s prognosis is, he said, although her determination certainly is in her favor.

Rehabilitation is grueling, and recovery “takes a great deal of self-determination.” Pineda said. “The mind can do many things in recovery.”

Mynxx did not allow her mind to rest for a moment after the fall. Her teachers offered to give her an “incomplete” grade for her classes so she could finish later, but she wanted to be a full-fledged graduate tonight.

She expects to be in the rehabilitation center a week or two, learning how to cook food on a stove from a wheelchair, how to get in and out of bathrooms without help and how to dress herself.

Putting on Shoes

For example, just putting on her shoes is a challenge. “When you can’t feel the bottom of your feet, you can’t tell if your shoes are all the way on,” she said, glancing down at her new, fashionable and practical sneakers with pink, black and white laces. The high tops help support her ankles when she holds herself up on a walker in the bathroom.

Cooking too becomes more difficult because kitchens are built for people who stand up, she said.

She is eager to learn all that and then head home “to take care of my husband. I’m afraid he’s been eating a lot of junk food. Even if he can take care of himself, I need to take care of him.”

After another week of recuperation, she plans to go back to work for Tustin lawyer Steven J. Melmet.

And she is signed up for another Orange Coast College class beginning June 10.

“I’ve always gone to school. I love school. I’m a storehouse for a lot of useless information,” she said with a smile.

She plans to attend a 4-year college and perhaps go on to law school and medical school.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” she said. “One of these days I’ll graduate” with a higher degree.

Family Coming to Graduation

As for her associate of arts degree, her mother, father, grandmother and friends are planning to be on hand to watch her receive that tonight in Costa Mesa. Her mother, Shirley Dahlberg of Westminster, is planning a graduation party, although it will be delayed until after Mynxx leaves the rehabilitation center.

It would be too tough to squeeze in all the celebrating on her 2-hour pass tonight, Mynxx joked.

What’s more, she is looking at her recovery and rehabilitation “as a chance to learn,” Mynxx said.

“I’m not looking at it as permanent. But if it is, I’ll handle it. I’ll just do everything from 3 feet up instead of 5 feet.”