Dr. Justine paid her dad a visit today. She turns into such a mini-grownup around him, in his state, calling him by his first name and giving him advice. Today’s bedside manner included hair-brushing, silly jokes, dancing, singing, and summersaults. And an original painting that he said was the most beautiful picture he’d ever seen.
“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.” – Anne Lamott
Maki, Justine, and I are especially thankful for our friends and family, all the support we have been given—all the hugs, help, and humor. And most of all…the fact that Vernon continues to heal—with his personality and wit intact. We are beyond blessed.
‘You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” —Jonathan Sarfan Foer
I was pleased to find that Vernon had been woken up early this morning for physical therapy. It must have worn him out as he was pretty tired by the time I arrived. And by the time he was transferred to the Dialysis Center, he still seemed to be feeling mellow and secure on his “kidney-lounger.” We bantered for awhile and when I asked if I could leave early, he seemed fine. “Ah, so we are finally hitting our stride,” I thought. “This is a good thing.”
I drove most of the way home, gassed the car, arranged to pick up the kids from their holiday-diversions. Then the phone rang. It was the Dialysis Center, asking if I could come back because Vernon had suddenly become agitated and had nearly escaped his chair. In order to calm him down, they had told him I’d be back. So I turned around. (What I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving? Wonderful, flexible babysitters!)
It was hot, I was annoyed, I’d be hitting traffic on the way home, and we keep smacking into new walls of the grand-maze. I felt I had a few reasons to cry. But things don’t stop after a cry. One just gets to carry on the trail a little bit lighter. What is the weight of emotion anyway? Can it be measured?
At least he was still there by the time I arrived again. (Had he already been transferred, I really would have been annoyed.) But when I am with him, all the annoyance goes away and I can be brought back into his moment. That is truly one beauty of it all. The managing nurse talked to me a bit about getting a relaxant for him that would help with his dialysis transition. The small-framed nurse who had tried to help him back on the chair when he was agitated came over to tell me how frightened she had been in that moment, worried he might strike and hurt her. She did add that he had quickly realized and apologized.
As poor Vernon listened, his face crumbled. He looked at me as if he were about to cry. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hate that I am doing things I don’t mean to do. I don’t want to hurt anybody. It doesn’t seem like me. But I think it was me.” He went on like this, trying to explain how he felt. And we cried together.
I reminded him its just a temporary phase connected to his injury. He then went further to express in true sadness that the accident was his fault too. He couldn’t remember it but he was sure that must have been his fault. That it was ALL his fault. That he was so sorry he had caused everything to go so badly. That he had scared the nurse. That he had made things difficult for me. I couldn’t help but cry with him some more.
I recognized that lie…as I’d said a version of it so many times to myself. Whenever anything goes wrong, it immediately can feel like my own fault. Before I even think it out, that is my default. Seems Vernon does this too. We probably all do on some level. Or we DID, before we self-evolved, for lack of a better word. I call it SHAME. Its sadness on a very deep level.
So I told him: “No, the accident was NOT your fault. You did not cause anything bad to happen. And you know what else? What you are feeling is good. It is good to cry when you feel sad. Just like it is good to laugh when you feel happy. This is life. This is emotion. Its good to feel the right feeling for the right situation. Sometimes that all a strong person can do. And you are doing it.”
This weekend marks six months since Vernon’s accident. Of course I find this significant for a number of reasons.
I’ve been told it takes at least a year to recover from a brain injury, dependent on the severity. I imagine Vernon’s will take longer, but IF it took a year, we would be half way there! That must be some cause for celebration, anyway!
I don’t feel right going on about it in much detail here, but now that we have reached the six month mark, the police accident report should finally be released to me. For some reason that has been explained to me (yet I still fail to understand ) in my many visits and phone calls to the Sheriff’s Office early on, there was a six-month lock put on the information…to anyone. So until now I have only figured out what happened that night based on what I was told at the hospital and some clumsy detective work of my own here and there. I have not heard anything from the other driver. They may well have been advised not to make contact, who knows. It doesn’t really matter.
The point is…its a turning of the page, at six months. Things have shifted from survival to recovery mode. For both Vernon and our family. Things are moving from simply medical to legal. Even looking at care and insurance issues in this new phase has been mind-boggling, as until now we have been allowed to rest in whatever (excellent) place Vernon was placed in. Where he is now is excellent for what it does, but I think he needs more care specific to his unique injury (as noted in this week’s previous posts.) Do I sound like a broken record yet? If not, I’m sure I will.
People are so kind to tell me that they think I’m doing well in our situation, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.
Beyond all the Grace and Prayers and Miracles and Faith and psychology, which are more powerful than I can even try to credit, I will admit that one thing that keeps me from slowing down: he didn’t die.
And this is where it might get a little heavy. My most honest condolences to those who HAVE lost loved ones. I think about you all the time. I may not know you all, but I hurt for you…and I think about you. And I know that I am the lucky one. Vernon’s parents and his kids are the lucky ones. I know it sounds theatrical and cheesy, but I’ve been thinking about this for months. It’s part of what makes my state-of-mind.
Fate would have it that the same night of Vernon’s accident, the daughter of dear family friends was also in an accident. She was young, a wife and mother of two, just playing on a skateboard on Memorial Day weekend. She fell and received a head injury. As bad as Vernon’s was, hers was even more serious. Her family gathered around her in the hospital. Within the week, she was gone. I remember reading the update in a Starbucks and crying for the first time since our own family catastrophe.
A local TV station filmed this segment shortly afterward. Her husband told me it was okay to share this months ago, but I’m finally doing it. I think about these dear people often.
On top of that, I just found out this weekend, that my dear second-cousin Barbara had died suddenly. She was a nurse and hospital case-manager, who had helped me out as we navigated Vernon’s hospital journey. She just offered last week, on this very website, to help me sort out Vernon’s next move. Such a loss. She was an angel to so many besides myself.
We don’t get to chose the ones who get taken from us. We do get to love those we have with us.
And readers, even if you miss someone close to you, how wonderful that you still have those alive to be with. Enjoy them and the rare gift they are!
I asked Vernon if he wanted to say anything to the people who read the blog and this is what he said:
Hi, how are you all doing?, I would love to come over next year sometime, and rent a flat nearby, Maki would obviously come with me because I’d rather he traveled with me than I suffered from the worry of him alone at home. 
It was an interesting day. It feels like things are shifting all around us, although we are still in the same little nursing home room in Newport.
Lois came up again, this time with Nancy, a family friend and Physical Therapist, who hoped to get her own general assessment of Vernon’s current physical state. She had visited Mission Hospital about three months ago, doing the same. Since she isn’t hired by either hospital, there is only so much she can do. But I’ll tell you this lady is force of nature. She got the number for Vernon’s current PT and asked the Nursing Director for a better schedule “to give him a chance.” It’s great to have another pair of specialist-eyes on his team.
Our dear friend Nicole came down from LA to hang out and visit. It wasn’t her first time, but each time, she can see more improvement. He remembered her well as she and her husband are close friends of both of us. He forgot names but he was able to describe some memories. He did the same with my Aunt Sue who was in town, doing her thing as an event speaker. (She also keeps an active blog…check it out here.)
Thanks, Aunt Sue, for taking me to a great lunch…and thank you, Nicole for staying with Vernon after he expressed his disappointment at not being invited. You can see he felt pretty chuffed to be hanging out with Aunt Sue while she was there.
But for me, the Vernon highlight of the day happened earlier on, before all the company and activity. I was so pleased to see that after down-grading his sedatives, he was pretty alert again today…probably the most alert I’d seen him for a week. I started talking about the accident, as I do every other day or so (mainly to check his reaction, to see if he is ready to accept it yet.) He usually gets angry at me. He gets frustrated because he can’t understand why he wouldn’t remember something so major. We argue a little about it and then I let it go. But today, for some reason, he took it in. I could see his eyes widening as he listened. I had him touch the scar on his chin, which he was at first convinced had been there before. I showed him the scar down his forearm and he seemed to understand a little more. After that, he wouldn’t let me show him any more scars, but he listened closely as I told him about the accident.
He said: “I’ll only believe it if I have photographic proof.” (We’ve been through this before. Jen even wrote a post about it a month ago.)
So I showed him a couple of early pictures posted on this very website, and he seemed quite humbled by them. I don’t know how much he could see as I only had my little phone screen with me. I also let him know that the photos posted here were the most flattering ones I had…I hadn’t posted any of him looking as terrible as he did the first few days. I don’t even know what happened to my pictures from the first night…maybe the police have them in the accident report that should FINALLY be released to us tomorrow. (Don’t ask!)
I walked him through his broken bones, and I told him how I’d been told that if his skin had broken through skidding on the ground, he would have surely died, how one more organ breaking down would have been too much. I told him how he hadn’t been breathing, but the paramedics had saved him by providing oxygen in the ambulance. I told him how the kids and I had all gone to the door when the cop rang the bell to tell us the news. I told him there were 5 hours of surgery that first night and we didn’t know if he would make it. For the first time, he let me keep talking.
Then I read an early SansOxygen post to him, something about another surgery I had already forgotten about. He quietly listened, and then I asked if I should read the comments. There were 25 on that one…and he was amazed. He wanted me to read each and every one to him, even if he didn’t recognize the names of the people leaving them. He could only handle hearing one post: this was quite a lot to take in. I imagine the shifting past DENIAL is a tiring thing. Its a big wall to break through.
I asked him if it was scary to realize all this had happened and to not remember it. Still wide-eyed in a kind of surreal awe, he agreed it was. “But,” I added. “You’ll go through the rest of your life with an amazing story! Not everyone can say they should have died, but didn’t.”
He agreed he would have an amazing story, but then he added that perhaps he didn’t want to be the guy with the amazing story as people might try to avoid him, saying: “There is that guy with the amazing story. Let’s not bother talking to him. Don’t want to hear that again.” Or something to that effect. He said it better, of course. You can hear a little of it below. Classic Vernon.
