After my mother was pronounced dead, my sister-in-law handed me the diamond necklace Mom always wore.
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There are many forms of trauma from psychological to emotional to physical. One cannot outweigh or place a different set of values from one to another. In this story, I will describe a horrible accident my husband sustained about 21 months ago, what we know about it and how very lucky we are that he recovered.

July 1, 2021 began like a normal day during the pandemic. I had a physical therapy appointment later in the day, as I had tendonitis in my left elbow, so dressed in appropriate clothing before heading downstairs to the computer in the kitchen, where I begin every day, reading political blogs, the news and stories online. I had suffered a badly sprained ankle at an out of state wedding six days earlier (not my first sprained ankle) so wore an old air cast, grabbed before returning to the Vineyard.

Dan always gets up later than I, had eaten his breakfast and gone back upstairs to our den with his cup of tea just to rest and hang out before his afternoon golf date with a friend. Overhead, I heard two big plunks, like he dropped something heavy, but I didn’t go up to check. He does not like to be fussed over. About 20 minutes later, I got a text on my phone, “Betty, please come upstairs, I need your help.” Oh no, this was bad. I knew that the text was dictated from his phone because Dan knows my name is “BETSY”, not “BETTY”.

I raced up our narrow, antique steps and found what looked like a crime scene, with a trail of blood outside the bathroom and pools of blood near where Dan lay, with his feet up on the toilet.

The two thuds had been Dan falling. As best we could figure it, he had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and, with no warning, collapsed in the hallway outside the bathroom, falling forward and splitting his head open. He claims that he wasn’t dizzy and felt like he did not have altered consciousness. He reasoned that he shouldn’t just lay there, bleeding on the wooden floor, so got up and moved into the bathroom, where he collapsed again, this time backwards, hitting the back of his neck and head on the tile floor. He was in tremendous pain, but pushed his body onto the bathmat, grabbed a towel for his head and got his legs up on the toilet. He’s been on blood thinners for about a dozen years for a different ailment, so he REALLY bleeds. Then he thought about how to reach me and came up with the bright idea to launch that text from from his Apple Watch (his phone was in the den, but within range to pick up the signal).

I told him I would call 911. He told me to call our doctor in Newton first (as if he could do something). I took a few photos to send to our doctor, but called 911. They came quickly; I began to clean up the puddles of blood, so it wouldn’t get tracked across the house as they got Dan outside into the ambulance.

The police and EMT blocked off our narrow street and told me to wait in the car to follow the ambulance. It was a hot day (as it had been the day before. I couldn’t get off my driveway to get to the hospital until all the emergency vehicles left the street). I never saw how Dan got out of the house or how the EMTs worked on him. Our dear across-the-street neighbors had just come back from a walk and saw the commotion, asking what was going on. At that point, I only knew that Dan had fallen and there was blood everywhere. During the course of the day, I texted with them and the friend who had the now-cancelled golf date. So those two close friends knew something about his accident. And I cancelled my PT appointment. She asked if Dan had another bike accident. No – this was different; he was forbidden to ride his bike after too many falls.

I raced to the hospital, but due to COVID precautions, wasn’t immediately allowed back into the ER. In fact, I was in the waiting room for an hour. When I finally got back, Dan’s forehead was stitched up; he had a 5″ laceration and his head was fully covered in a compression bandage to keep the swelling down. He was on an IV morphine drip, so he was in good spirits and happy to see me. They were about to take him for an MRI.

When the results came back, the image showed a broken C-1 vertebra (known as the Atlas vertebra, as it holds up the head) on his left side. He had a broken occipital bone at the base of his skull and a torn and clotted vertibral artery, also on his left side, but as soon as the doctor saw the broken vertebra, she knew she had to get him off the Vineyard, STAT. She called for the MedFlight, which was at Mass General (in downtown Boston) at that moment. She needed them immediately and began to prepare Dan for his journey. She urged me to run home and get what he might need to for a hospital stay. I didn’t know how long I had, so I raced home to pick up some clothing, his wallet, iPad, chargers, etc and try to get back before his flight. It is about a 20 minute drive each way.

I got back and Dan was still there. A storm approached and MedFlight couldn’t make it back to the Vineyard. The ER doctor called the Coast Guard. The Search and Rescue team arrived, along with the Oak Bluffs EMT crew. They did all sorts of other things (which, mercifully, Dan does not remember; we’ve talked about it subsequently) to prepare him for that flight in bad weather. The crew was amazing. We are both forever grateful for their calm professionalism. I kept watching Dan’s toes to see if he could move them and made mental lists of how our lives would change if he became paralyzed.

He was off. The hospital made a ferry reservation for me to leave the next morning (it did my heart a little good to see that even THEY had trouble getting through to the Steamship Authority; I was also given a special number to call to make my return reservation, only used for medical emergencies. When I finally knew when we’d return, they were kind and accommodating. I keep that phone number for true emergencies).

I got home late in the afternoon, dreading the thought of needing to now, after everything I’d been through that day, tackle cleaning up the bathroom, getting the blood out of the grout, washing all the towels and bath rugs. I was spent, emotionally and physically. I opened my door and caught the faint smell of bleach. I walked up the steps and entered my sparkling clean bathroom.

I couldn’t believe it. I called my neighbor. “Ed, thank you SO much for cleaning the bathroom. I can’t begin to tell you how much this means to me, what a relief it is. But I must ask, did your housekeeper do this, or did Joan?” And the response: “My angel wife spent all day going back and forth, doing the laundry. She got on her hands and knees, cleaning that grout herself. She wouldn’t send a stranger into your house.”

I cannot begin to tell you what it meant to me that my dear neighbor slaved away on her hands and knees so that I wouldn’t have to face that scene when I came home. Before I left the next day, I sent a thank-you email, and flowers, once I arrived home. Their kindness and generosity to me and our family goes so far beyond how I can ever properly express my gratitude. They were heaven-sent that day.

I heard from our primary care doctor. We had joined a concierge practice a year earlier. Boy, did it pay off this year. Our doctor coordinated all of Dan’s care and explained everything to me in terms that I could understand. He was truly wonderful, invaluable and reassuring. I called our children to explain what had happened.

The next morning, I drove home, dropped my stuff, turned the house on (we shut everything off when we are away for the summer) and headed down to Mass General Hospital where Dan impatiently awaited me. It was the start of monsoon season (it seemed to rain most of that month). The Featured photo was taken that day. Dan does well on morphine. We FaceTimed with each of our kids (as it happened, David and Anna were in the US, so in the same time zone, which was helpful). We reassured them that, despite how Dan looked, he would be OK. He received wonderful care, was seen by multiple specialists (neurology, orthopedics, cardiology). He remained there until the doctors had him stable, off the morphine drip and the wonderful nurses had taught me how to use the two collars he wore to stabilize the broken vertebra. He had to switch when he wanted to shower.

We left the hospital on July 4, not the holiday we had envisioned. No one ever mentioned “concussion”, but it was clear Dan had one. He had all the symptoms, which took quite some time to resolve. He couldn’t read for the strain on his eyes and concentration. He couldn’t talk on the phone – the sound hurt his left ear. Everything was too much for him. Eating with the collar on was problematic, as he couldn’t open his mouth fully, so we had to think a lot about food that was easy to chew and he didn’t have to open his mouth wide to access. He couldn’t lie down, or even rest comfortably on the couch. I brought lots of pillows to support him. He hollered in pain when I had to change from one collar to the other so he could shower. He couldn’t tolerate having his neck unsupported for even a moment.

David and Anna came back to Newton from their US travels for a day before leaving on July 10, so we had a chance to visit. Dan was so happy to see them again and it reassured them to see him. That was a bonus.

I took him to see his primary care doctor later in the week, who went over a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”. Drink lots of water or Gatorade – stay hydrated. The doctors were trying to rule out what might have caused his collapse. He’s had a history of vasovagal syncope before – collapsing when standing too quickly, his blood pressure drops precipitously and he goes down. But each time he would feet faint or dizzy. He had no such feeling this time, no warning. He had played golf the day before, walking on a very hot day and not drinking much. He drinks Diet Coke, which is a diuretic, it does NOT hydrate. The doctor told him to drink water and lots of it while playing golf and after, and dial back the Diet Coke. He did this for a while, but only for a while.

His skin became very irritated from the collar. We tried cream and wearing various shirts all the time to keep the collar off direct skin contact. He saw multiple doctors and had Zoom calls with others. Two weeks later, the orthopedist told him he could stop wearing the collar 100% of the time; he only needed to wear it when in the car or other times when he could be jolted. That was a tremendous relief. We were off Martha’s Vineyard for 20 days and finally returned. He was not allowed to drive for three months (he couldn’t turn his head until the fracture healed).

At least back on the Vineyard, he could get out and walk slowly, see friends, go to our favorite restaurants. He came with me to my Pilates class (under a tent outside during COVID) and sit on the lawn, just to get out. A few times, I took him to meet up with his Friday golf group at lunchtime, so he could socialize. They were pleased to see him and he was SO happy to see them. Of course, golf at this point, was also out of the question.

His doctor checked in on his progress. He got occasional headaches, but he progressed. His final check with the orthopedist was October 6. We had left the Vineyard a few days earlier (I was done for the season). I drove him to Mass General for his X-ray, then his meeting with the doctor who gave him the all clear. I drove him straight to Woods Hole and watched him walk on the ferry (his car, clothes and golf clubs were still there). He was free to drive, play golf, resume his life.

His neck still hurts a bit when he tries to turn it to the left. He will never have full-range of motion, but given the alternatives, he is SO lucky that is the only lingering ill-effect. His life is back to normal. The doctors continued to think through all that happened and, for lack of better explanation (they did a test of his heart function, which came back normal), they concluded that it was an abnormal episode of vasovagal syncope and he has to be careful when standing, drink LOTS of fluids, and is on medication to RAISE his blood pressure (crazy, I know).

All things considered, he was one lucky guy.

 

Snow Day

Kids love snow days when the schools are closed,  and so do we teachers.

One winter a few years ago we had lots of snow and every night we eagerly watched the weather report for the listing of school closures

When we did have a snow day my colleague Doug decided to spend it bingeing on some movies he had taped.  He watched a few,  and when we were back in school a day later he told me he had one more taped movie  – a classic that was a favorite of mine – and he planned to watch it that night.  Knowing I love that film he proposed we discuss it the next day.

And so the next day I sought him out,  but he wasn’t at school.   It seemed he’d watched the movie the night before,  but when it was over the weather report came on and it was announced that a record ten inches of snow was predicted and all the city schools would be closed.   Delighted,  Doug turned off his alarm clock.

What my friend Doug didn’t realize was when he’d made that recording weeks before,  he’d also taped the weather report that came on right after the movie!

 

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Although this story was originally written for the prompt Changing Times,  it is a Floods story too.

The first of my Boston friends to visit me after I left to enroll in a Ph,D.program in the Midwest was Jack. We had become buddies through our participation in a Men’s Group that lasted about five years. By the time he arrived at my apartment in Champaign, Illinois, he was a bit rattled and needed to talk. He was shaken up by something that had happened while he was in Indiana a few days earlier. But the subject of his concern would turn out to be very different from the kinds of personal and emotional terrain that he and I used to explore along with Kevin, Steve, and Bill.

Jack hadn’t made a trip from the East Coast all the way to Illinois just to see me. (The first time someone finally did that several years later, I ended up asking her to marry me. And she said yes. But that’s a story for another day.)  FEMA sent Jack to Indiana as part of the relief effort after the disaster that people around there now refer to as, “The Great Flood of 1993.” The major flooding had happened over a period of months and it was the final days of October when they sent Jack on his mission.

A lot of people—especially those from the Northeast or the West Coast—may have totally forgotten about this, but those of us from the hinterlands recall that in the summer of 1993, the upper Mississippi River Basin experienced the costliest flood in the history of the USA. About 150 rivers and tributaries flooded. (Ok, I didn’t remember that stat. I had to look it up.) If people from other regions recall any part of this, it might be because it led to a great celebration of the character of the American heartland, as so many thousands of Midwesterners turned out to volunteer—to place sandbags prior to the floods and to aid their neighbors afterwards. Those who followed the news might also remember that the Mississippi reached its highest flood stage in U.S. history and among other consequences, smashed a 100-yard hole through a levee at West Quincy, Missouri; for the next 71 days, there was no bridge for 250 miles that crossed the Mississippi from eastern MO to southern IL.

Jack anticipated that coming to the Midwest would be a lot different kind of experience, potentially a more culturally unfamiliar experience for him than it had been for me. He knew that I had started out in Indianapolis, Indiana, and went all the way through public high school there before arriving in the Boston area for college. My parents and my sister Laurel still lived there. Going back to school after two decades of post-collegiate life in Boston had been a kind of homecoming for me; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was an easy two-hour drive from my childhood home, where Mom and Dad still lived..

In contrast, Indiana and its people were going to be a new experience for Jack. His most comfortable milieu was in the Irish parts of Boston where he grew up—or even in the Old Country, Ireland itself, where he and his brother, in a decisive act of entrepreneurship, took over an old rundown hotel somewhere in the Connemara region and got stuck running it for several years.  That was back in the days when he was drinking, long before I knew him. In fact, he said it was only because he and his brother were both drunk at the time that they made the offer on the hotel. He had found out about the Men’s Group from someone he knew in AA. The drinking life was behind him, but he retained some good stories he didn’t mind sharing from back in the day.

Jack had been involved in building and various parts of the construction trades around Boston. He had a good eye for property and how to inspect damage and estimate the cost of repair. Those were the kinds of talents and skills that FEMA needed. The Great Flood of 1993 was the second or third disaster for which they had called him in as a specialist. He would meet with homeowners, examine their documentation, take photos and do a damage assessment, and file paperwork authorizing emergency funding as was appropriate according to the regulations.

He came by my apartment. I showed him around—here’s where I work at my desktop computer; here’s my small second-floor balcony just large enough to accommodate a small hibachi in the good weather; here’s my couch. (It wasn’t a very long tour.) I offered him a soft drink and some pretzels. I noticed that he still had the same lean body (for a guy around the same age as me) and the ruddy face that I remembered. He also still had the Boston accent, which I enjoyed after not hearing it for a while. We then we went out to Espresso Royale, one of the coffee shops beginning to proliferate across the country. I only knew that there were more of those than I would have expected in Champaign; it would take a couple more years to realize that they were popping up in every town.

We would eventually catch up on all kinds of matters: what it was like for me to be back in school in my forties, how was life in Champaign and Urbana similar to or different from Boston? Was it hard to meet women here? What were they like? How was the bike riding? What were the rents?  But first he had to unload. He had to tell me a story.

To understand his exasperation, it’s important to realize that he was putting in at least twelve hours a day including weekends. When he went to one of these disaster zones, he didn’t even make a pretense of trying to maintain “work/life balance.”  He wanted to help people as much as he could, as rapidly as he could and to the full extent his authority permitted. He just worked. Drank coffee and worked.

He had inspected a neighborhood a few days ago that had several damaged homes in a small town south of Indianapolis. He had taken some photos and jotted a lot of notes, but he needed to make contact with the homeowners. The challenge was that a lot of them had to move out, so they weren’t staying in their homes. Happily one of them emerged from a neighbor’s house and identified herself. By then, he had to be on his way somewhere else. This was on a Saturday; he said he would like to make a plan to meet with her at her home on Monday. She seemed at first very pleased to have an opportunity to apply for funds from FEMA.

Jack suggested they make an appointment for Monday, first thing in the morning, perhaps at 8:00 or 8:30. He expected her to agree and be grateful that he was proposing to move along so speedily–so unlike the stereotype of the typical bureaucrat from a federal agency. Instead, she surprised him with a question. “It sounds like you’re not from around here, is that right?”  This rubbed Jack the wrong way. Here he was working his tail off, and she was going to marginalize him? Make him feel like an outsider?  Instead of giving a direct answer, he replied with a question of his own. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I’m not trying to be rude; I just noticed you don’t sound like anyone around here.”

“That’s right,” he told her. Knowing Jack, I am sure he was trying to hide the buildup of venom he was beginning to feel, but it was probably showing in his voice and in his reddening face. “FEMA sends in whoever they think will do the best job,” he tried to explain nonchalantly, “from different parts of the country” (which no doubt sounded to her like different pots of the country). “But you’re right. I’m not from Indiana.” (which to her sounded like Indianner.) “So, about that appointment Monday morning?”

She still wasn’t ready to give a direct answer. “I just thought, if I was right…and if you came from somewhere else, then you might not know about the time zones, and you might not understand about the Daylight Savings Time.”  It just happened that Sunday, October 31—the next day–was the date designated for the return to Eastern Standard Time, for zones that had been on Daylight Savings.

The way Jack told the story to me, he exploded just a bit and said to her, “I know all about the F-ing Time Zones, and yes, I know all about Daylight Savings Time. Will you be at your residence at 8:00 am on Monday when I arrive to inspect your home?”  She answered meekly that she would be.

But when he went to her home at 8:00 am, he waited around and there was nobody there. He left in a huff after ten minutes, believing the woman must have really not wanted to deal with him, the outsider with the accent. He went to a diner and worked on some paperwork. When he got back to his hotel—this was prior to the era of widely available cell phones—there was a message from the woman. He called her back, told her he had been there on time, and started to chew her out for not showing up.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she told him. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. We don’t change our clocks in Indiana.”

“You don’t change your clocks in Indiana!”  He put the phone down before he said another word, and rang the front desk to ask what time it was. Damn!  She was right.

He had done what he always did in Boston—turned his watch an hour earlier before he went to bed. When his watch said 8:00 am, it was still 9:00 am in the Hoosier State. At that time, Hoosiers lived on Chicago time for half the year and east coast time for the other half. They did not turn their clocks forward in the spring or back ih the fall. As the neighboring states moved forward and back; they just stayed the same.

Jack was so happy to finally have a chance to tell someone how aggravating the whole situation had been. I don’t know if he ever apologized or even whether he saw her again.

“So, what’s it like trying to meet women in Illinois? What are they like?”

 

 

 

 

Let us set aside the mechanical act of moving the clock hands forward, and think instead on the clock's underlying  connection to the seasonal changes in our natural world...
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I am an ACOA.
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This is not a piece of my own creative work. But if you put up a prompt about one’s experience with time zone changes, and one of your respondents to the prompt has a brother who has made a living with a comedy routine on that topic–well, what did you expect?

Here is my brother Hugh on a Rodney Dangerfield special.  Go to 5:11 to pick up the “time zone” bit.

 

 

What good does adding another hour of sunlight do in a state where the sun can shine for 24 hours straight, day after day?
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Since time is an arbitrary construct, I advocate for staying on Daylight savings time going forward.
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