By JIMMY LOWE
GLASGOW — One year ago today, Judie Hatchett was unconscious and struggling for her life in the University of Louisville hospital. That evening before, she had fallen down the stairs and hit her head on the brick floor in her Country Club Estates home. She knows this only because she’s been told. Judie doesn’t remember that near-fatal accident or periods of time before and after the traumatic event.
“Not remembering such an accident is a big plus,” she remarks. “I recommend it.”
We’re talking in her WKU office on the Glasgow campus where she is a professor of English. She’s back now, after taking almost a school year off to recover. “Teaching a full load doesn’t bother me at all. My prognosis is good,” she remarks. “I’m careful about getting tired. I take care of myself.” She looks around and smiles. “You know, I couldn’t even remember the interior of this building for a while. Then one day, it all came back.” She says that’s the way it’s been for other tidbits of once-stored memory, “No great, dramatic revelation. It just slowly comes back.”
“Did you forget any of the books you teach and have to re-read them for your classes?”
“I never forgot anything about literature,” she assures me.
Then we discuss a Flannery O’Connor story that she says she didn’t like before her accident. “Do you appreciate it any better now?” I wonder. “After your craniotomy, did you experience any epiphany?”
No, she still doesn’t like it. She’s the same ol’ Judie. Her family and friends are certainly happy to have her that way.
“I hardly saw any doctor during the days after the accident because I was unconscious.” She describes herself as being in a “time warp” then. Weeks later, she asked Dr. Bill Marrs to catch her up on what had happened. “I think he may have had to do that twice,” she chuckles.
What she has learned about her situation has left her grateful for the quick life-saving care she was given. She especially praises personnel at the U of L Hospital and Frazier Rehab. “Many people prayed for me. I think that helped a lot. I was really serious for a couple of weeks. My family couldn’t be assured I would live. My husband Edward was upset and run-ragged—at least she says he was—who knows?”In addition to her husband, she mentions their two adult children and her mother. “I regret that it was hard on them,” she says, “but I was blissfully unconscious.”
“What have you now remembered that you would like to forget?” I ask.
Her response comes quickly, “The concern in people’s faces when I first gained consciousness.”
She recalls a day soon after she regained consciousness. “My daughter Elizabeth was concerned about my hair and volunteered to give it a trim. She was ready to go with the scissors, and then I realized that half my hair had been shaved off for the operation.”
Also during that time, Judie asked for her glasses, and her husband located them for her. “These aren’t my glasses,” she told him, and then described her frames. What she was describing, though, was a pair she had used 15 years ago.
From time to time during the year before her accident, Judie claims she had a recurring dream. Perhaps it was more nightmare than dream. In it she feared that she would fall down the stairs and be hurt. “It’s very odd, but I never got to the end,” she says, “only the fear of falling down them.” Since the accident, that dream has not once revisited her.
