Why I am More Than Thankful This Year

Besides being a proud wife and mother, Sharon Cullen is the author of numerous romances. Her latest book, Her Dark Knight (Carina Press) is now available for download. You can learn more about Sharon at her website. She’s very active in social media. You can follow her on Twitter or friend her on Facebook.




I’m typing this while at home alone and I’m incredibly thankful for it. That might be weird for some people to hear. Most people don’t like to be alone and, yes, I am one of them. But alone right now means that my husband is at work and six months ago we didn’t know if that was ever going to happen again.

May 9th, 2011 was a warm, almost-summer day. Earlier my husband, our three kids and I, ate dinner on the back deck. After dinner I settled down to read and my husband—never one to sit still for long—decided to go on a bicycle ride with our dog, Winston. Winston is a larger-than-usual black Labrador who has an overabundance of energy. John and Winston have been doing this bike riding/dog running thing for many years. At 6:35pm I received a call from the local EMT’s. To this day we aren’t exactly sure what happened but John had fallen off his bike. He fractured his skull in two places and had to be flown by helicopter to the closest head trauma hospital. He underwent emergency surgery to remove a piece of skull to accommodate the swelling in his brain. He was in a medically induced coma for nine days, in neuro ICU for fourteen days and in a rehabilitation hospital for eleven days. He had to relearn how to walk and he endured hours upon hours of speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy.

On October 3, almost five months to the day of his accident, he returned to work. His doctors and nurses called him a miracle. His recovery far exceeded anyone’s expectations. On October 1st, eighteen weeks after awakening from a coma, he ran his first 5K.

I am incredibly thankful to God for answering the many prayers sent up from family members and strangers. And I am thankful for the woman who saw John fall and called 911 immediately. I’m thankful for the paramedics who rushed him to the hospital, the emergency room doctors who realized the severity of John’s injury and called Air Care right away. I’m thankful for the doctors and nurses on the neuro ICU floor who took such excellent care of John and who were always upbeat and positive. I’m thankful for Lauren, John’s physical therapist and the person who taught him to walk again, and to all of his therapists: Courtney, Stephanie, Allie, Amy I, Amy II, Paige, Jonathon, Karen, Melissa and Lisa. I’m thankful for John’s neuro doctor who understood the importance of John returning to work and who worked tirelessly to get him to that point. I’m thankful to all of our friends who stepped in and held me up when I needed it, who drove our kids to soccer practices and school and back and forth to the hospital. I’m thankful for all of John’s co-workers who waited with me in endless waiting rooms, who walked me to my car late at night, EVERY night. Who cut our grass and did home repairs.

But most of all, I’m thankful for John for working so incredibly hard and for never taking “no” as an answer.