How Carolyn Gilbert recovered after attack
In January 2008, 16-year-old Angel Facio stabbed Elgin High School teacher Carolyn Gilbert. She survived, but was seriously injured. Facio talked recently for the first time about attacking his teacher. Daily Herald Staff Writer Kerry Lester previously wrote a three-part series about Gilbert and her physical and emotional recovery. You can read the 2009 Gilbert series here. Below is some of the paper's earlier coverage of the attack.
Once the doctors at Sherman Hospital had cleaned and sutured Carolyn Gilbert's wounds, they took her upstairs to perform surgery.
She was stabbed at least seven times in the back of her head, in her neck. The most serious puncture wound was to her right eye.
The surgery to repair the eye would prove too difficult for the Elgin hospital, which is a Level 2 trauma center. So late that night, Gilbert was taken by ambulance to the University of Illinois Medical Center's Ear and Eye Infirmary.
#8220;I remember being in the ambulance at night, and my daughter flirting with the paramedic up front,#8221; Gilbert said. #8220;He sounded cute, but I couldn't see him.#8221;
The next morning, doctors performed an initial surgery on
the eye, which they were unable to repair.
#8220;I fell apart for a little bit then,#8221; Gilbert said. #8220;But my best friend Gabino was there, and he said, #8216;There is nothing you can do. There is nothing we can do about it. This is it.'#8221;
She decided, the next week, to have the damaged organ removed. Doctors who performed the surgery explained to Gilbert that keeping the eye would be risky: The infected cells in her damaged eye could migrate to her good eye.
After the attack, Gilbert's parents drove up from southern Indiana. Her brother from Georgia. Her ex-husband, who had been down in Florida for a wedding, came to stay for a week.
#8220;Here we all were in this tiny little townhouse,#8221; she said. #8220;There were flowers everywhere #8212; it felt like a funeral home.#8221;
Less than three weeks later on Feb. 5, she underwent another surgery to remove the eye, having a temporary prosthetic put in its place. In March, she began meeting with an oculist to have a permanent piece made.
#8220;I've had a lot of problems with swelling,#8221; she said. #8220;My eye would hurt really bad; I'd get gunk in it. It was just a mess. Every time they take my eye out, it gets bright red right around it.#8221;
With the loss of her eye came the loss of her depth perception.
#8220;It didn't really hit me until I went to a 3-D movie with friends,#8221; she said. #8220;You see everybody looking around, their mouths hanging open. And I realized I couldn't see any of it.#8221;
Driving, she said, has been hard, particularly at night.
#8220;It keeps me from going out alone a lot. I find myself wanting to go out and do something, and then I'll shy away and stay home,#8221; she said. #8220;That's when I get really pissed off at Angel. I'm single. I want to go out.#8221;
Gilbert was attacked on Jan. 18, 2008, by a student, Angel Facio, shortly after semester exams had concluded. She was stabbed multiple times in the head and neck.
Having been attacked by a knife, using them in the kitchen at first was impossible, she said.
But that has eased. She still tends to cover up big knives with a napkin or towel, so she won't have to look at them.
And she's had trouble sleeping. She began using the timer feature on her TV to lull her to sleep.
#8220;Even if I'm dead tired, I still use it,#8221; she said. #8220;And I hate that. I hate having to do that, but I figure it's cheaper than therapy.#8221;
She tried therapy at first, #8220;but got out of that real quick.#8221;
#8220;Maybe it was the way I was raised,#8221; she said, #8220;but I just don't think therapy works too well for me.#8221;
What has helped, she said, has been the constant support from her colleagues.
Elgin family and consumer science teachers Mary Moschini and Lynn Kronvold were and remain a constant presence. They collected donations and brought over get-well cards by the box. In April, Eastview Middle School teachers organized a self-defense workshop in her honor.
#8220;They're there for my family. They're there for anything. And I didn't expect that,#8221; Gilbert said.
At the time of the attack, she was only halfway into her second year of teaching at Elgin High.
Despite these difficulties, she said a return to teaching was never in doubt.
When she was hired in 2006, she knew that Kronvold, Elgin High's fashion teacher, would be retiring at the end of the 2007-08 school year.
#8220;I knew she was going to retire this year, and I knew I was going to get her job. Teaching fashion all day,#8221; she said, a smile spreading across her face. #8220;I never thought about not going back.#8221;
Bound and determined, Gilbert prepared herself to enter her old classroom that summer, where the attack occurred. To collect her things. And to move forward.