Restart
It has been quite a while since I lasted posted anything to this
blog. It is partly because of my fall on
8/9/10 and partly because of Hurricane Sandy, but mostly because writing is hard
work and having lost the momentum it was just easy not to be motivated and
restart. However, if I take the time to think about it the “itch” has continued
to surfaced from time to time over the last 6 years and has become all but
impossible to ignore recently. Because I’m
interpreting the events of last Tuesday, August 9, 2016, to be more than a very
big coincidence I decided to restart the blog with “this” story about the last
couple months.
If you don’t know this already,
my wife and I do a good bit of sailing. We got hooked on sailing with an old Hobiecat
16 almost 20 years ago. Since than, being on the water and under sail has been
a big part of our lives. On 8/9/2010 I
made a small mistake, one that came very close to being the end of me, http://tinyurl.com/j9u35re,
and one that everyone,
including me, thought was the end of our sailing days. After my fall, hospitalization,
more than a few surgeries, many hours of PT/OT and countless prayers I was able
to transition back –over time- into a normal, with some small modification,
life.
On October 29, 2012
hurricane Sandy came ashore on the NJ coast. We live at ground 0, right where
the eye of the storm made landfall on the mainland. Houses all around us were
devastated. We lost both our cars to the flood and had 18" of water in the
ground floor of our house. Watermarks on the outside of the house show that the
flood waters peaked between 3 and 4' on the outside of our house. Somehow, with
Gods great help, the storm damage, insurance company snafu’s, repair work, car
replacements and the associated overwhelming financial needs all eventually
worked out. In order to stay afloat financially couple times we sold off just
about everything that we could. It’s remarkable what you can sell of Craigslist.
I even tried a couple of times to sell
the sailboat to fill the obvious huge $ gap between what was coming in and what
was going out. But regardless of how low I was willing to go on the price we
were prevented, somehow, from doing so. Eventually, when the time was right,
like “the birds of the air”, all the needs became met. Life returned to a new normal.
This past winter a
false spring in March gave me the chance to get an early start of prepping the
boat and an early launch, and then winter returned. The ready and waiting
sailboat rode out the late cold and snowstorms floating at her dock. After the
thaw I began making plans for an extended sail, and then one of our three daughters
needed her mom’s help with a new and first baby. It was a delight to be delayed
for grandchild #10.
My bride finished up Nanny
duty in the first week of June. She was well worn out and needed a week or so
to refresh her batteries from seven or eight weeks of spending three – five days
each week in NYC.
As she rested up we began making plans to cast off on the high tide June 11 or 12. We were dead set on getting out for a couple weeks.
As she rested up we began making plans to cast off on the high tide June 11 or 12. We were dead set on getting out for a couple weeks.
* All the while I occasionally
felt the nudge to return to writing. I didn't pay attention*
On June 10, 2016,
walking out the front door to check the mail, I twisted my ankle and broke a
bone in my left foot. My right arm is very well plated and screwed together and
my right elbow frozen, remnants of the 8/9/10 fall so I cannot use crutches. In
order to give me some mobility the doctor put me in a walking boot. "This
should take 6 weeks or so to heal." He said. I set my sights on a new "cast off"
date. HA!
At my first follow up
visit with the Ortho Doc. 2 weeks later. Fast healing, all is good, I’m making
plans to sail. So I get sloppy about always wearing the boot.
Second follow up, not so good. Instead of great progress the X-ray shows regress. The break looks bigger, to us, than it did on the first x-ray.
Now I get very serious with the boot.
Second follow up, not so good. Instead of great progress the X-ray shows regress. The break looks bigger, to us, than it did on the first x-ray.
Now I get very serious with the boot.
Thursday morning, 7/26/
2016 my sister calls. Our dad has had a seizure of some sort and is being taken
by ambulance to the emergency room. We
later learn that the seizure was a massive stroke. I have an appointment for my
foot with my Orth Doc the same day at 1 pm.
For months I have been
trying to plan and to get out for a long sailing trip. Despite trying my best to pull it off, “something”
keeps getting in the way. These somethings are not necessarily bad things; In fact
some of them are really good and wonderful things. But that doesn’t change the
fact that I no matter how much I plan, we just can’t start the trip. For five
weeks I have been kicking myself for turning my ankle and breaking my foot now
the thought begins to emerge, “OK,
so my foot is to have kept me home for this morning?” Had I not broken my foot, or had it healed as
expected we would have been out to sea, we might have been a hundred miles
away. It could have taken us days to get back to help mom and Dad, if I had
sailed.
Two more weeks slowly
pass we head out to the Ortho Doc’s office for my third visit, now at 7 weeks
from breaking my left foot. The x-ray
shows some healing; it is starting to look good again. I am disappointed to
hear "Keep the boot on for another couple weeks and make a new
appointment".
After leaving the doctors we get a call from our daughter, the new mother, the baby has a virus and has been banned from daycare for a week. Our daughter has some important meetings that no one else can cover. We are happy to help. I'm thinking to myself. “Wow, are we ever going to start this trip?”” But then if my foot wasn't broke we wouldn't have been here for Mom and Dad and now to help with the baby too”, so my foot break is starting to = a good thing. Little did I know.
After leaving the doctors we get a call from our daughter, the new mother, the baby has a virus and has been banned from daycare for a week. Our daughter has some important meetings that no one else can cover. We are happy to help. I'm thinking to myself. “Wow, are we ever going to start this trip?”” But then if my foot wasn't broke we wouldn't have been here for Mom and Dad and now to help with the baby too”, so my foot break is starting to = a good thing. Little did I know.
On August 3rd
I mentioned to my wife that "the boot" must be really worn out. I'm
having some tenderness in my left calf where the top strap hits my leg. Not
that I haven't been exploiting the term walking boot at all.
The visit with the
Ortho Doc on Aug. 9th goes well, lots of healing. I am delivered
from “the boot”, I am given a small, by comparison, ankle brace. In my mind’s
eye I can see the coming Friday high tide and us sailing out the cut for a few
days. Just before we are done with the doctor,
my wife mentions my casual complaint about my calf. Very quickly the doctor
turns around and stoops down to inspect my left calf. Then he tells us that he
wants me to go “right over to the hospital and have an ultrasound, right away”.
His expression had quickly turned from satisfaction to obvious concern. He says
I could have and he does not want to take any chance. Around the block to the
hospital we go. His referral scrip says STAT across the top.
While waiting at the
hospital, for what seems a very long time, I hate waiting, I am working hard to
not get a bad attitude about the hospital and what, at that moment I am interpreting
as, their apparent lack of efficiency.
The truth be told, I have been fighting against a bad attitude with
regards to the delays to my plans, sailing in particular for quite some time. “First
it’s the foot, now looking for a possible blood clot, will I ever be able to
cast off?” Eventually I am called back for my ultrasound after what seems to me
a lifetime of waiting, but in reality is not long at all. While the ultrasound technician does the test
I'm watching the monitor thinking that the dark mass in the center of the image
are clear veins. In my thoughts I am comparing the ultrasound on my leg with the
sonar on my boat and trying to think of something clever to say about it when
the test is finished. Technicians normally will not tell a patient what they
see or find, leaving the diagnoses up to a doctor, but I hope with a little
levity I can get her to tell me how well I am. When she finishes she says
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this but you do have a clot. And it's a big
one it goes from your groin to behind your knee. I need to take you to emergence
right now. Don’t get up. I’m going to get a wheel chair”. The date is August 9,
2016. Exactly 6 years from the fall that almost killed me.
While lying on the
table, having a quiet conversation in my head, I pray " now what". Again
the idea of writing returns. It seems an odd answer that at that moment, after
just hearing that I have a big blood clot in my left leg that I would think the
answer is “to write”. Frankly, I would rather think or hear, go sail.
I mentioned to the technician,
then tell the triage nurses at emergence, and then to everyone who comes to
check on me in emergence, that I already have a Greenfield filter, a left over from
the clot in my leg caused by my fall in 2010. After a round of blood tests the ER doctor gives
me some blood thinner pills, a prescription for more and instructed me to
follow up with my own doctor. Then they send me home with instructions to treat
my left leg like it is made of glass for the time being.
I learned the next day,
from my Doctor that the old Greenfield filter is now, because of its age, quite
useless. It should have been removed years ago. Nobody is saying much about how
ugly this event could have turned out. Dad's recent stroke had caused us to
have already done some research on clots and what they often lead to.
I don't normally go
around trying to ascribe "meaning" to every little thing but this
chain of seemingly unrelated events, all lining up for "the good" is
hard to overlook. The fact that this all comes to a climax on the anniversary of my fall is the frosting on
the cake. One nurse in emergency, when she heard about the fall six years past said
"with your bad luck you should just stay in bed" I told her that I think
I must have very good luck, after all I’m still alive. I neglected to mention I
don't believe in luck at all.
Dad's recovery has been
Amazing. His speech is restored. He has regained the ability to walk and to
care for himself, possibly better than before the stroke. He is being discharged to home on 8/13.
As for that nagging
thought about writing; the old saying goes, every journey begins with a single
step, in this case with a few typed words.
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