Surviving... and thriving
NIU shooting victim works to overcome the physical and mental scars of 'that day'
By Jamie Sotonoff | Daily Herald StaffLast of a three-part series
Sometimes, walking on the Northern Illinois University campus, Maria Ruiz Santana suddenly feels anxious and finds herself looking suspiciously at everything around her.
The 21-year-old senior from Elgin, who was shot in Cole Hall on Feb. 14, isn't worried that someone's going to pop out of the bushes and hurt her. It's just a general anxiety that creeps up on her from time to time, despite her best efforts to put the trauma of that day behind her.
Dealing with the emotional baggage from this trauma has not been easy for any of the shooting survivors. Maria does it by confronting her fears head-on. She went back into Cole Hall her first day back on campus in April. She learned how to fire a gun so the sound of gunshots won't scare her anymore. She doesn't try to hide the scar around her throat from her gunshot.
The key to her emotional recovery, however, is something she believes rather than something she does: she accepts that she can't change the past, only the future.
"I just think, 'This is what happened and this is what I have to do,'" she said. "I know I'm not going to get anything out of being sad all the time."
Despite her fierce determination to move on with her life, it's impossible to make all of the emotional scars go away.
Once, a loud bang in a nearby ceramics class made Maria's heart start pounding. Nightmares about the gunman slamming open the Cole Hall auditorium door still haunt her. When she's home alone, she sometimes repeatedly checks that her door and windows are locked.
With help from a psychologist, Maria's learned how to identify her anxiety and control it. The process involves taking deep breaths to calm herself down, and then talking to herself about what's really happening. It usually works, she said.
"I tell myself that nothing bad is happening. That I'm not in Cole Hall. That no one is shooting at me," she said. "But sometimes (things happen) that will bring pictures into my head."
Like anyone who's experienced extreme trauma, Maria has her good days and bad days. Fortunately - and miraculously - most of Maria's days are good ones. She's surprised everyone, including herself, with her physical and mental toughness, some of which she believes comes from her five deceased classmates who are angels watching over her and cheering her on.
"This is not easy," she said. "The strength did not come out of nowhere. It's from all the people who love me. My family and friends. I had a reason to fight for my life. I want to live the same life that I had."
Maria's family has been her main source of strength, and she talks to her parents and brothers daily. While they are also recovering emotionally - from nearly losing Maria that day - they are buoyed by the support and love they've received from both friends and compassionate strangers.
When Maria was recovering in Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, every inch of her wall and floor space was covered with get-well wishes and gifts. A woman she didn't know made her a quilt.
"It's something we're not going to forget," said Maria's mother, Rebeca Santana-Ruiz. "These people helped to keep us strong and they motivated us to carry a positive message to our daughter. We are so thankful to them."
Physical recovery
Maria is forced to think about what happened every morning when she looks in the mirror and sees the red U-shaped scar around her throat. She also still has dozens of shotgun pellets lodged in her face and body. Doctors are keeping an eye on one that's close to her spinal cord.
Some of the pellets will pop out eventually; others will remain indefinitely. Her brother Jose jokingly refers to them as her "lead pimples."
One of the pellets damaged a bottom tooth, but doctors are confident they can fix it.
Like any 21-year-old woman, she sometimes feels self-conscious about her appearance and the scars make it worse.
"Whenever I see her, I think, I wish I could take those scars and have them myself," said her father, Alfredo Ruiz. "I say, if you didn't have them, then you'd be unhappy with something else. But when she gets down, she somehow pushes herself back up."
The pellet that struck Maria damaged her windpipe and vocal chords. Surgeons repaired her windpipe, but she needed a breathing tube and an oxygen tank for a week and a half, leaving her unable to talk, drink or eat.
She doesn't remember feeling a lot of pain, except when they removed the tape on her breathing tube. That was actually a happy day.
"Oh my God! I can talk!" she said, with a squeaky, meek voice. She immediately reached for her phone.
"Guess who this is?" she'd squeak with a smile on her face.
When they didn't know, she'd tell them, and they'd rejoice together in the good news and joke that she sounded like a cartoon character.
'An inspiration'
The next challenge was to get her vocal range back. The shotgun blast paralyzed her left vocal chord, and Maria required speech therapy to get her vocal fold muscles moving again.
Bastian Voice Institute speech pathologist Lori Sonnenberg remembers Maria sounded "like a little girl" during her first appointment in March. Now, a combination of physical healing and speech therapy has brought her vocal power back to about 80 percent of what it was.
"My friends now say, 'Wow, Maria, you can yell at me? And I say, 'I'm sorry, but yes!'" she said.
Dr. Brent Richardson, the Bastian laryngologist who treated Maria, said not everyone recovers from this type of injury, but Maria did.
"I admire her," Richardson said. "She had every reason in the world to say, 'Poor me' ... but she's stepped in and said, 'I'm not going to let this stop me.'"
During one of their last appointments this summer, Sonnenberg asked Maria to stretch her voice to different ranges and volumes, marveling at her performance.
"You know, Maria," she said, "I think things are just going to continue improving for you. You are well on your way."
And she's well on her way to a career in law enforcement, too. The shootings helped Maria realize what she wanted to do with her life and connected her to NIU Police Chief Donald Grady, who found her in Cole Hall and kept her alive until paramedics arrived. Now he is her mentor and friend.
Grady is awed by Maria's resolve and believes she'll excel as a police officer, but not necessarily because she was the victim of a crime.
"She has a heart as big as this building. And because she has the heart and the intellect, she will have no problem being an excellent police officer," Grady said. "I have no doubt."
