Another Fine Dog

When I was a little girl, my grandparents had a memorable dog named Spotty. I don’t remember her as being particularly spotted – she had a brown head and a black and white body so I suppose she was. Long hair, maybe a collie or Spitz mix.  There is no reason to fixate on her name – this was the period of Rover and Rex and so Spotty was probably a fine name, spots or not.

She was a sweet old girl, and I remember how much she liked it when my grandmother would feed her tiny elm leaves in the spring.

However, she lived her life on a tether. My grandparents’ back yard was narrow but deep (as city lots are), and unfenced. There was a long clothesline running front to back. Because there was no fence, my grandparents came up with the solution (I suspect my grandfather here) of putting Spotty on a very long, soft cotton rope, clipped to the clothesline.

Oh, how she could run! She made the metal clothesline sing! She’d run from one end to the other, playing in the sunshine of my memory.

When she came in, the end of her rope was tied around the kitchen doorknob. It was so long she had free range of the kitchen, but no further. When you’re a kid, you don’t think too much about these things. That’s just how it was – Spotty lived in the kitchen.

But that changed, for a while, one summer when my grandparents took a trip, and Spotty came to stay with us.

Our very, very large front yard was fully fenced. What a treat, we thought, for Spotty! We turned her loose, expecting that she would race from one end to the other, maybe even barking to show how happy she was. But, disaster struck. She crouched down on the sidewalk by the porch door, refusing to move. She was miserable.

So, my mother, who knew something about the need for security and holding tight to the familiar, took Spotty to the back yard. She clipped Spotty’s lead to our clothesline, and Spotty immediately felt at home. Ears up, happy smile, she was running up and down the line.

Soon it was time for Spotty to come inside. Ever the optimist (despite her love of security) my mother said she thought it was ridiculous for Spotty to be confined to the kitchen. Spotty’s lead was taken off, so she was able to go anywhere she liked.

Disaster struck again. Spotty crouched down on the floor, refusing to move. She was miserable, and absolutely refused to move until mother tied her rope to the pantry door. Up she came, had a little sip of water and settled into her bed for a well-deserved nap.

As with so many of my memories, this one haunts me. Spotty was only able to relax when she was tied. Am I that different? Are you? We tie ourselves to the familiar. We may even appear to enjoy our ropes.

And why did Spotty only run and laugh when she was tied to the line?

Please, Tell Me I'm Alive!

On November 28, they loaded me and my oxygen and IV tubes into a wheelchair and rolled me to the rehab gym – the first time I was out of a hospital room for 25 days. What a very, very strange experience.

First, any change of head position gave me total vertigo. (Oddly, I came to enjoy this sensation of ass-over-ears dizziness. And why not? People line up for the same sensation at an amusement park. And I was doing it in bed, in pajamas.)

And there were mirrors. I started the journey apparently healthy. Walking into the hospital for the brain surgery, recovering for a few days at home walking well with the walker.

Then, “the unpleasantness” – I nearly die and now I’m barely functioning. (For all my denial.) Now who is this person in the mirror? The drugs and IVs ballooned me – I could be in a parade! My face looked like a moon. My hands were so swollen the skin was shiny; they looked like baseball mitts. My feet were like footballs. I sometimes wonder what I weighed. It’s better I don’t know.

And so, on the 28^th, whacked on more drugs than could possibly be good for you (but were keeping me alive), it was time to confront the rehab gym.

The first steps were using parallel bars, with therapist fore and aft, wearing a fashion accessory known as the “gait belt”. For those who haven’t encountered this, it’s a heavy, woven cotton belt that essentially puts a handle on you for the therapists to grab.

For me, it went between swollen breasts and distended stomach, north of the feeding tube. Properly cinched, you are encouraged to begin your life of mobility all over again.

There is a reason, I think, why learning to crawl and walk are done before you are really going to remember the experience. (In the normal course of things.)

Babies and toddlers don’t even particularly enjoy this phase of life. Endless frustration – stand up, take a few steps, get tired, plop down, do it again and again. And they cry.

As an adult, the only way to manage this (without losing your mind or make everyone hate you) is to profess to love it even though you are lying. You want to cry. But then the magic happens. You do love it. I craved physical therapy.

I was probably unbearable to be around. I would work and work, then make everyone tell me how well I was doing. I wasn’t really satisfied unless I could wring fulsome praise from everyone around me.

“Look at me!” “Tell me I’m the best you’ve ever seen!” Which was really, “Tell me I’m alive, that this won’t last forever….that I didn’t die…that I don’t have to be this scared!”

What Do I Remember?

I remember doctors shouting my name and grabbing my toes, trying to get a response. Inside my head, I was pissed. I wanted people to know I was in there – trying to get out.

Oh, I was in there all right. I would like to say my recovery was seamless. (I’m thinking of June Allyson in one of her movies when she greets husband James Stewart after having their baby and she looks fabulous with a big, blue hair bow. This did not happen.)

Instead, breathing was a problem with one three hour coughing and wheezing marathon that left everyone exhausted. I did have a session of rage that earned me a couple of shots of Haldol. I did pull out my breathing tube, threw it across the room, and glared at St. Kenny.

There were swollen vocal cords, with a question of whether I would be able to speak again. They put in a feeding tube that was painful and troubling. It went on and on and on.

But finally, on November 23, they moved me into a room on the rehab floor. I remember the move only vaguely, but I know I was not as excited for the change as my family was. Shame on me. But I needed to believe I was already well, just waiting to go home.

By now the holiday season was upon us, and my family began decorating my room. I ended up with two Christmas trees, bears, angels, and artwork from my very young great niece. Why should I mention this? Well, it seems that my room was the only one decorated.

I know! Please, if you ever have a family member desperately sick in the hospital, bring on the decorations. In those early days, when I was in and out of sleep, I stared at the colors and lights for hours.

Finally, finally it was time to take those first steps to recovery.

I think I have minimized this experience, again because my soul and self cannot (or will not) comprehend how far away I had been. It’s only now, after a year and a half, that I am even beginning to go there. In the experience, I just couldn’t. In the early days, it was too important for me to deny that there was anything wrong. I actually believed I was just fine.

And So We Continue

Ah, where were we? I had to take a few days off from the brain tumor book. Going back over the notes and talking to St. Kenny and Jan to fill in the gaps of my memory is a hard, hard thing to do. I notice I feel like I can’t breathe, my head hurts, and I want to cry.

Sometimes I am a brave soldier about it all, and sometimes I get the shakes and am very sad. I want to clarify this. I’m not sad because of the events themselves, and the recovery process has been mostly a joy. The sadness is for that woman who lay there, with no expectation of recovery, no understanding of the stakes of the game, dependent on the willingness of others to help her to the other side.

To recap, I woke up on November 9. No one knew what, if anything, would be left of me. But there I was. Paralyzed, on a ventilator, but there. Waking up was magnificent.

There followed another week of semi-awake. Lots of drugs, feeling cold, angry and frightened, but I was making my way back. The wonder is, quite frankly, that anyone recovers from any traumatic illness. What is it about our minds that says “hell, no” when the body wants to shut down?

Why the Story of Prince Charles Should Be Required Reading for Every Man

Prince Charles was and is a chump. 

There he was, married to arguably the most beautiful woman in the world.  She apparently, at least at first, was in love with him, and all he had to do was be nice to her. She would have loved him forever, he would have been the most envied man in the world.  She would have been the feather in his hatband and the sporran on his kilt.  But he could not stand the fact that she was more interesting than he.

And this is the lesson for any man who wants to partner up with any woman more interesting than a can of bacon grease.  They will always be more interesting than you. 

Let me tell you why.  Women can do all that they do, professionally and personally,  AND they can give birth. 

The sad thing about a man’s understanding (that they are simply not able to digest) is that nature has made them not less, but different. It is when they compete that the troubles start.

Now, let it be said that I love men.  What I love most is their manliness. Their confident swagger, their intelligence that is so different from mine, their need to fix. I have a long and happy marriage, and two boys who have grown up to be the young men I have hoped for.  They are strong and intelligent, capable, funny, and bright.  They have a lively interest in the world and are genuinely witty. 

Some of my very best friends have been men.  The short and the tall, bless them all. 

But back to Prince Charles.  What an idiot.  One must never be in competition with one’s spouse, no matter how tempting.

What did he lose?  How about…everything.

St. Kenny and My Friends

I’ve written about my husband, Kenny, who was a saint through all of this – turning his life inside out, upside down, managing his work as the news director of two TV stations from my hospital room. He took notes on every doctor and nurse, every drug, every conversation, every change that happened to me. He sent constant updates to our friends and families. He was there when I reached out my hand. He brought me a digital clock when he realized I couldn’t read the wall clock. I had beautiful pajamas.

I have much more to say about him, but he deserves a whole chapter that is requiring more meditation and prayer.

But I can talk about my friends.  Jan turned her life in LA “off” for a month, spending it with us at the hospital in Dallas. This is one of those life questions I’m moved to ask myself - “Would I do that for a friend?”

Would you? Until she did that for me, it would never have occurred to me that an unrelated someone might give me this gift.

Granted, we’ve been the best of friends for nearly 25 years. We talk virtually every day. We’ve cussed and discussed every topic – men, children, relationships, jobs, aging, traffic, hair color, politics, menus – there is no topic we haven’t covered.

And we’ve invented a conversational tactic that even saves time – when we hit a topic we’ve already discussed, and we already know how we feel about it, we observe a moment of silence to mark that we don’t need to discuss it again.

We don’t agree on everything. We observe a moment of silence for those things, too.

We’ve even had the luxury of taking several “girls’ only” vacations. It is hard to travel with just anyone. (I’ve traveled with some who deserve to be left behind on the side of the road.) We had a magnificent eight-day trip through the Southeast, including Graceland in Memphis. (Sorry, I’m taking a brief detour here.) Before Graceland, Jan was so-so on Elvis.

She did not understand that Elvis is the most handsome man ever born. And arguably the most talented. I love Elvis. So, we ended up at Graceland on a snowy December morning, we toured the house, ended up in the trophy room and Jan said…”OK, now I get it.” We shed a few surreptitious tears at the graves. Took pictures of ourselves, and giggled like the girls we are.

Anyway, Jan had planned to come to help me recover from the surgery, and already had her ticket to Dallas when the seizures started. So, instead of traveling on to my home in Tyler, she stayed in Dallas.

It was like having an “extension of self” in the room. I’ve asked her what we did, all those days, and she says we “talked”. Of course we did. Even with me in a coma we would be talking. Eventually I was pointing and trying to make myself understood. Later I got a trach that had a blue button “talky thing” that let me whisper. Step by step, I talked my way to recovery.

She was brilliant at figuring out how to help. There is a lot of messy “doing” that has to be done.

Of course, it was Jan’s glasses that I saw when I woke from the coma. That memory has stayed with me, with my poor brain trying to figure out where I was and why Jan was wearing glasses and what had happened to me.

I associate Jan with grilled cheese sandwiches from the hospital’s cafeteria downstairs. Even with the feeding tube, they eventually wanted me to eat “real” food. Those grilled cheese sandwiches were the first thing that actually tasted good.  

By the way, I’ve never told this to a soul, but I thought this might be a great time to diet. There are all kinds of crazy, but the crazy you are after a TBI is a special, rarefied kind.

Even Jan needed a break. Another friend, Lindsey, came to spend two nights over a weekend. She is a warm, gregarious woman…very easy to be around, and one of those people that makes you relax and say, “ahhh”. One of the nights I was convinced there were ships in a harbor that needed to be guided in. “Is there a lighthouse?” “Yes,” I said, “but it’s broken.” So we spent the next hour, she tells me, guiding the ships into the harbor. I was worried about Christmas gifts, and decided I could make instant hot chocolate mix to give to people. She agreed. I went to sleep, but suddenly sat up and cried, “I can’t do this math to figure out the recipe.” “That’s OK, we have a calculator.” “Good.” I fell back and went to sleep.

Lindsey’s husband, Paul, is a lovely man and our dogs’ veterinarian. (Paul is a magician. He takes care of exotic birds and ferrets…he is so sweet to his patients he makes me want to cry. Would that everyone in the world were so kind.) While I was in the hospital, three of our Chihuahuas went to stay at Paul’s clinic, where they were spoiled rotten. It was Paul and Lindsey’s gift. If you ever wonder what to do for someone who is very sick, take the worry of their animals off their shoulders.

While we are on the subject of kindness, let me tell you about our neighbors. They asked what they could do, and we asked them to care for our maltipoo, Lincoln, and elderly Chihuahua, Angel. Boarding would just not have been a good option. Kenny asked these dear ones if they would walk Lincoln and Angel several times a day. Praise be. They did. They managed these two home-bound pups with love and concern. I heard second-hand stories about how they were doing. I never had to worry.

Worry is the enemy of recovery. It is like an acid that eats at every good thing. I’ve learned this, and I’m trying to be as kind as my friends have been, and are, to me. When I was literally hanging by a thread (not to put too much drama here, but I was) my friends stepped in to help me hold on.

What lessons I learned! And how this has made me question my own response to friends who need help. Can I be as openhanded and kind? Do I have the willingness to say “yes” when someone asks? I hope so. I really do.