No Such Thing As a Bad Day Anymore

Susan Pappalardo

7/1/97

My sister Christine and I have been athletes for years. We are runners, bicyclists, swimmers, bodies in need of motion. I always liked to run, chase boys, run in the woods, basically do anything that required constantly moving about. My mom can attest to that as I was aptly named ‘wiggle sticks’ because I could never stay put and would always fall out of my chair at the dinner table. For my sister, her energy showed in a different way. She always spilt her milk or poured too much syrup on her pancakes and cried every time.

We both ran track in high school. Christine ran cross-country, but I played field hockey in the fall. I had a passion for running every since fifth grade when I learned that I could out run most of the boys in the lap around the field that was required for the Presidential Fitness Test. It was during high school that she developed her passion for running. She was on the most successful cross-country team in the state of CT during her four years at Avon High School. They had 92 consecutive wins! It took me until my junior year in college to try cross-country and then it was only because I wasn’t getting enough of a workout playing field hockey. I had to run after field hockey practice to feel like I did something. I loved to run, but I was always inspired by her true love of the sport. She’s the one with running posters, clipped out running shoe ads and more running shoes that she could wear in one season. It was my sister who taught me how to love the sport of running. I mean running is a huge part of my life, but it took me a while to build the respect for it and harvest from it the confidence and joy of life that it grows within.

My sister knows me. She is the one in my family that understands what motivates me and why the small things in life are so important to me. There is always some family member that is the one who ‘understands’ you, who supports you the most, who shows you their love unconditionally. Well, that’s my sister.

My sister’s ability to be herself has been put on pause by someone who drunkenly directed his pick up truck at her while she was biking, like a shiny metal object attracted to a magnet. The collision left her with many injuries the most serious of which is a brain stem injury that put her in a coma. She was on the opposite side of the road going in the opposite direction. His truck came over and hit her directly. He was twice over the legal limit of intoxication. How funny that phrase is….’legal limit’. What’s so ‘legal’ about drinking and driving. He’d been weaving for a while the eye witnesses say, so how uncanny that his truck picked exactly her to cross over the median and hit. This collision happened at high noon, on a straight road, on brightly lit Mother’s day. How impossible it all seems. How avoidable. How utterly confusing that the driver and his passenger are claiming that they aren’t responsible. And more bewildering that the law will not punish the driver and passenger appropriately. The story gets worse and much more heart wrenching, but I don’t want to focus on that right now. My sister is alive and that is all that I can direct my energy towards. Besides, it feels sooo much better to be with her and support her through everything that she is going through. She’s the star that her husband, my family, her husband’s family and her many friends are working overtime to keep shining.

The neuro-surgeons gave her 2-5% chance of coming out of her coma. They are a cynical bunch (which they freely admit) and rightly so because they are doctors and must stick to the facts. The most well know fact is how unpredictive the human brain healing process really is. Christine is in fact coming out of her coma and is making progress every day. The progress is measured in millimeters some days and inches other days. It all adds up and I’m sure it’s going to equal exactly 26.2 miles. The full length of the marathon that she wants to run.

I moved on to triathlons during and after college. I loved them. My sister was always intrigued by them, but hadn’t quite yet figured out how triathlons could fit in her world of running. She did however and was recently training for her first big triathlon, the Greater Hartford Triathlon. While I ironically re-invested in my love of running and completely focused on racing track and cross-country. I have been competing at a high level for the past five years (and setting pr’s every year) and I can now confidently say that I love running as much as my sister. I devour running news, know all the elite runners at the world, national and regional (Northwest) levels. I race in a uniform; it’s a serious love. Only my sister understands this completely and only she, my husband, my coach and my treasured fellow running junkies admire the effort and determination it takes to compete at a high level. As Christine once told me, I am her Lynn Jennings (that meant so much to me!).

Now that I am getting a crash course in what it means to come out of a coma, I look at life very differently. There are smaller things than the little things in life that I now see clearer. Things like being able to open your eyes, move you arms to hug someone, tell someone what you are thinking, etc.. Yes, I still try to move through life at a rapid pace, but I am feeling a lot more these days and I don’t always move so fast. For all you runners and racers, I will never have a bad day anymore. Every opportunity that I get to move fast, no matter how I feel, will be a good day.

My sister is now at the Hospital for Special Care in New Britain, CT where she is receiving coma stimulation treatment. The doctors, nurses, nursing aids, physical therapists, speech therapists are all excellent. I call them all Team Christine. Actually, I think of everyone that is showing support for her, her husband and my family as being on Christine’s team. That is why I have created a fund called The Team Christine Recovery Fund. This will give everyone a way to lend Christine a hand in her time of need.

Any amount you are able to contribute would be greatly appreciated in helping Christine’s fight for recovery. You can make your check payable to: Team Christine Recovery Fund and send it to:

Team Christine Recovery Fund

c/o The Simsbury Bank

981 Hopmeadow Street

Simsbury CT 06070-1874