– Take it from Susan Da Silva

TO this day, Mellicia Susan Da Silva cannot fathom who would’ve wanted to harm her life and for what reason. All she knows now is that she may never be able to walk again and live the life she once did as an energetic, independent young woman.
When she was about 25-years-old, her life took an unpredictable turn when someone followed her in a car during the wee hours of the morning of May 16, 2014, and suddenly began shooting at her.

She had gotten up early to drive her parents to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport and had left home alone around 01:30 hrs to pick up her sister in Garnett Street, Kitty, who was also going on the airport trip.
Susan later realised that the car which followed her was parked outside her house earlier that morning, but she didn’t pay it any heed as she busied herself taking a shower and getting ready for the trip.

She feels that the individual may have planned the attack in front of her house but did not succeed in doing so until she was approaching her sister’s house. “When I turned into Garnett Street I saw this car approaching behind me and I felt to myself I was about to be robbed because we had been robbed so many times before, and I just knew something was about to happen,” Susan recalled during an interview with the Pepperpot Magazine.
While expecting to be robbed, Susan saw that the driver of the vehicle exit and began shooting at her, while leaving another person in the car. “I didn’t have the vehicle in park as yet and when I was shot in my spine, I lost control of my leg instantly.” Her vehicle subsequently crashed into a fence on the other side of the road.
Susan was hit twice; once to her neck and the other to her spinal cord, resulting in her having to undergo a major surgery and spending several months in the hospital.
“I don’t want to make myself believe that someone tried to hurt me but when I’m by myself and think about it, it all amounts to that; because that isn’t the way a robbery happens. They didn’t even try to open the vehicle,” she expressed.

WAKING UP TO REALITY

About three weeks into her hospital stay, Susan woke up to find a wheelchair beside her bed. Devastated, she asked: “Mom, what is that doing there?” Her mom, Nesha, mustered up some courage and would only tell her that she may need to use it for a little while.
It was when the doctor explained to her that she may never be able to walk again that she understood her new reality. “I didn’t cry that night when I was shot, but when the doctor told me this, I cried. And when you are alone in the hospital in the middle of the night, there are a million questions in your head,” Susan recalled.
This period of time was the worst in Susan’s life and as she was pondering what the doctor told her, there was still a part of her that was hoping that he was wrong. “I told myself I can’t live like this. I was in total depression for a couple of months; like in a dark hole. I felt like I had died already but I was still breathing.”
Before the injury, Susan was an active young woman who worked six days a week and was studying at the same time.

She attended St. Gabriel’s Nursery and Primary and moved on the ‘Business School’ after writing the then ‘Common Entrance’ Examinations. But even before finishing school, she’d help out her parents on the weekends with their businesses. Her mom runs a number of shoe stalls in the Stabroek Market and her dad, Francisco, is into the jewellery business.
Susan would spend her time travelling between Guyana and New York and while overseas, started medical studies. She only managed to complete the first semester before the attack.

Her new circumstances led to her being in “hospital after hospital” and she eventually left Guyana for treatment in New York. There, she underwent several physiotherapy sessions and received a lot of counselling.
But the transformation from a busy, active life to one in a wheelchair was very hard for Susan and she could see nothing good about her new life. Even now, she says she is still trying to recover and understand this new life.
“The transformation is very, very hard. If someone is born into a disability, they adopt from young because that’s all they know. But when you have a life like anybody else; get up in the morning and do your chores, [are] walking independently and doing everything for yourself- I had a time where I didn’t think I could do it,” Susan expressed.
Seeing her parents grieve didn’t make things any easier for her.

TURNING A NEW PAGE

No amount of counselling could change how Susan was feeling after hearing what the doctor had to say. But while at the ‘Push to Walk Rehabilitation Centre’ in New York one afternoon, Susan was part of a group and was listening as others with similar circumstances shared their story.

She especially took note of one man (whose name she cannot remember) who had a car accident about six months before her injury and who couldn’t move any part of his body besides his head.

“He couldn’t even move his arms, feed himself, or hug his children,” Susan recalled and that’s the first time she saw something positive about her situation. “I couldn’t imagine living like that. That’s the first time, I wouldn’t say I felt lucky living like this, but I felt I was way better and should thank God,” she said, while also thinking, “If he can find the courage to live, then I can too.”

Susan still has days when she feels depressed. “But hey, you have to try again. I always tell myself now that I could be worse,” she says, and she is also thankful that she has great support from her parents and two sisters and can afford to pay for certain things that make life easier for her.

“I try to make life as normal as possible. There is nothing cheap about this disability so I feel for the people who have a spinal cord injury and can’t afford a good quality of life. It is hard as it is if you have the money and facilities; more so, without,” she said.
Susan applied for the $8,000 ‘public assistance’ that the government gives to persons in her situation, but she was denied. This was a few years ago when the officer conducted an interview at her home and subsequently told her that the ‘board’ didn’t think that she needed it. “I asked him if he knew the expenses of living in a wheelchair. When you become a pensioner, do they look at your standard of living? He couldn’t give me an answer.”

She is thinking about re-applying for it.

‘LIFE IS A BLESSING’
The question of who wanted to harm her still lingers in Susan’s mind, but she chooses not to think too much about it anymore. “I don’t like to blame anyone, especially how I can’t back it up. And it doesn’t matter now because that time is past. You want to have peace of mind.”

“Even though I don’t know the exact persons, I’ll forgive them because it makes no sense holding on to it. I try not to think about it too much because it wouldn’t make any difference to me and even if he is in prison, it wouldn’t change my struggles,” she added.
Susan now feels that waking up and seeing life is a blessing. “I’m still thankful. You have to create your own happiness.”

She wants to get her own business going and is also in the process of writing a book about her life story.