TEN YEARS ON — Rachel is no prisoner of her past
Stays positive as she focuses on recovery and helping others after devastating crash
WHEN RACHEL Dendekker was 18, she nearly died. Her boyfriend was drunk and driving fast and lost control of the vehicle on Upper Ottawa. He was fine, but Rachel had catastrophic head injuries and went into a coma.
The doctors told her parents to just let her go. She would be a vegetable in a wheelchair.
“Well, I’m still vertical, still going,” Rachel says today, 10 years later. “The joke’s on you, devil.”
She walks, with a cane. She talks, a little slowly. She remembers, often with difficulty. She stays positive. “Hey, I used to be a cheerleader.”
Rachel is on Facebook. A few months ago, she posted a little quiz. One question: “Biggest fear?”
Rachel’s answer: “Won’t 100% recover.”
The Facebook response is one thing. In person, Rachel has another: “There are so many definitions of recovery. I’m just trying to be the best I can be.”
It was a year after the accident before she got out of hospital, back to the east Mountain home she shared with parents Lori and Bart.
Lori left a long career as a pharmacy technician to start bringing Rachel back.
For a time at home, Rachel was still missing the front section of her skull. Then doctors pulled it from the freezer, screwed it back in. Not a scar in sight.
There’s been the physical recovery, bed to wheelchair to walker to cane. And maybe one day the cane will be gone too. But harder yet is getting the mind in order again.
Rachel is smart. She does Scrabble, Sudoku, Jumble. Is she fast? “Wanna race?” she asks. She’s funny and articulate. But memory remains difficult and there was so much she had to relearn.
Five years ago, a psychologist referred her to OnCourse Education (then known as New Horizons), a nonprofit private school at the rear of Melrose United Church on Locke South.
Adult education director Karen Sutherland has a brain-injured sister, so knew the challenges of getting help. And she assigned teacher Linda Kooiman to Rachel, who comes two afternoons a week. Tuesdays are English; Thursdays are math.
Three times a week, Rachel works out hard with a personal trainer. Twice a week, she volunteers at ECHO, a program for disabled adults on Barton East.
“It makes me feel I am here for a reason,” she says. “I can help out.”
Some Wednesday nights she heads over with sister Sara to karaoke at the Brown Barrel. Rachel’s go-to song, a Garth Brooks biggy, “Friends in Low Places.”
Rachel did well at Sherwood Secondary, good marks without working too hard. A little wild, like more than a few 18-year-olds.
But she does not dwell on being in that vehicle, at 12:50 a.m., April 1, 2007. Or why she was injured, even though she was wearing a seatbelt. Her boyfriend was tossed from the van and emerged largely unscathed.
There has not been contact with him.
“He’s moved on,” she says. “I don’t think he deserves any of my time.”
There’s something else she wants to say about that, but the memory is not helping. Her iPhone to the rescue: “Never be a prisoner of your past. It was a lesson, not a life sentence.”
There have been some guys in her life since, but it might have been for the money. Rachel won a settlement of several million dollars, and it seems at least one of the fellows she saw figured that might be a ticket to a life of luxury.
“Guess what I have to say to those guys,” she says. “My initials are RD, not TD Canada Trust.”
We’ve talked a long time. We hope Rachel understands not everything will make it into the piece, that the limit for this column is always 650 words.
“OK, here’s three words you need to use at the very end,” she says. “To be continued.”