Saving My Life: My Back, Part I

...some call It God. Sometimes I do, too, but mostly I do not bother with a name. For expedience, I will say God, but that does not mean "the Father" to me. It simply means whatever it is that we find when there are no people, there is no money, when we are utterly alone, but search and find some strength that seems larger than our own.

In my adult life there were two times between 28 and 42 when I was acutely aware that I was calling on something that did not feel like only me. The first was after I'd been as far from any church as I could be for about more than a decade. Like so many children of the sixties, free love and "finding myself" were my religion from college through most of my twenties. At least this is what I told myself. When I fell in love with Matt, I knew that I was running from some demon I could not name. When he used me and threw me away, I cycled into self-destruction and running like hell from those dark places I could not yet quite touch, could not bear seeing. My dreams were peopled by a faceless man who touched. A laugh that was familiar, but which disappeared just as the face began to come into focus and I would awaken. I was not yet ready to remember my brother. Or my grandfather. Or those times I'd worked so hard to bury beneath ten tons of minutely detailed memory of everything but...

A funny thing happened one day when I was 27. It was February.  And it was six years before I remembered anything of the abuse of my childhood. That fact is significant.

Chaos: My Family's Special Friend
Ten days before this my father had gall bladder surgery, in the days before lasers. While he was in surgery, I got a call from brother Jim's wife, Sue, that he had been in a severe car crash with another woman.  He was in a coma, not expected to live. She was in shock and angry, but she was clear in her message to me. "He's a bastard but I'm not wanting him to die, and I will stick with him while he recovers. I'm his wife. He's my kids' dad. I just--"

"Sue, no one can or should ask for more. I think it's good for you to do this much. You must be in hell."

I found out that she had no money for bills, let alone his hospital stay. Their insurance was minimal, through the car insurance mostly. I went to my mother's but, of course, she was drunk and incoherent, so I called for the siblings. We split things up: Jean Ellen got a loan from her credit union, Jack would drive to New Hampshire to see to business there, and I would deal with telling Mom, when she was conscious, about Jim and tell Dad.

Only Dad had complications and went directly to ICU. It was fifty-fifty whether he would make it, but I knew I had to tell him. He was not in a coma. Mom, however, was semi-comatose throughout. How nice for her. I piled her into the car, propped her in the corner of Dad's cubicle and told him. It was only the second time I watched him cry. Then he said a curious thing, "If it makes me a bad father, so be it, but on some level, I almost wish he would just go. Oh, God, what kind of man am I?"

Something back in the recesses of the dark in me said, "HUMAN." I shoved the thought out, however, and said, "Well, Dad, this really isn't the way for him to go out, for Sue's sake. And sometimes near death experiences change people."

This seemed to help him.

It was five days before Daddy was put in  his own room. He had spiked a terrible fever and was still on massive antibiotics, still with a fever over 101. Jim was still in his coma. On the sixth day he came out of his coma, but he, too, had a massive infection from a wound on his leg. They were now hoping to save his foot.

Celebration and Black Ice
In the meantime, I had been awaiting news from B. U., about my application to the Graduate School of Education, because I wanted to get a terminal degree in  Adult Education. Good things come all at once...

I got a call from Jack that Jim would make it and keep his foot, then a call from the hospital that Dad would be okay, and a letter of acceptance from B.U. the next morning, I could not wait to go to the hospital with all the news. It was February, warm and foggy. I hit the top stair to the driveway, and a patch of black ice. I fell down six stairs on my back, and when I hit bottom, I knew I was in trouble.

I made it to the hospital to tell Dad the good news, leaving out graduate school. I went to the ER from his room.

I was scheduled for an emergency myelogram. It was 1980, just before MRI's.  Two ruptured disks and no disk at all at the base of my spine. I knew I'd had problems, but this finished me off. I was immediately put into a body cast. As luck would have it, the ER doctor that day was my orthopedic surgeon and he said, "My dear, you will need surgery. This finished off our work I'm afraid." I had had two months of PT and was exercising regularly up to this point.

Fighting to Live, Praying to Walk
Jim made it; his marriage didn't. Dad made it; Mom drank to celebrate. Business as usual.

Except for me. The six months between the fall and my first surgery resembled my clinging to the side of a cliff, more than anything.

It was a terrifyingly dark time. It was more a dance to escape my own past, the memories that haunted me, but which I was not prepared to face. When Jim was nearly dead, I was horrified at my own initial thought, 'Good. Die, damn you.' So I ran to any man who looked my way, in a frenzy of dangerous sexual behavior.

I was in a body cast for a month and lost weight. I kept losing weight because I could not keep food down. I thought it was stress; I was mistaken. The thinner I got, naturally, the more other women told me how great I looked. I did not. You could see every rib and every vertebrae. I could pour water into the gully of my collar bone. I photographed great, though, because of the gauntness of my face. I did not miss work; I did not miss rehearsals for a play. I pretended that I would be fine.

By June, my legs began to collapse and the headaches started. Every day, on my way into Hartford, I'd pull off to the side to quickly vomit, then go to work. Once there, I'd take the migraine medication and try not to pass out. Sometimes my legs would collapse in the stacks, but I was so expert at pulling myself up onto a book truck or the shelves that sometimes no one registered I'd fallen.

I had had to turn down the opportunity to go to B.U. Even I had to face that particular truth; I never told my family that I was even accepted. Everyone was so busy with Dad and Jim, with Jim's divorce, that I did not care to worry them, and what was the point of talking about a program  I could no longer join?

So I buried my pain in men. For an hour, maybe two, I would be beautiful and wanted, then I would leave. I did not care, I thought, whether I lived or died.

Facing Fear, Finding a Toe Hold
Until I saw the doctor and told him about my legs. He looked at me hard and said, "For how long has this been happening?"

"A month, maybe two... I am not sure." I looked at the floor. It was late July.

While I was there, he scheduled a myelogram and surgery.  The disk had fragmented into the spinal canal and pieces were impinging on my spinal cord and the nerve root, both.  I was scheduled for emergency surgery two weeks from that day.

I was told that I could die or be paralyzed from what was happening.

All I registered that day was, "What do you know? I don't want to die after all. I really don't." My body was numb, but at last my mind and my heart had come to life.  For the first time in more than six months, I cried.

What followed in the next five years were eight back operations that entailed seven months of hospitalizations, nine months in various body casts, 37 blood transfusions (before AIDS testing), traction, seven months of physical therapy; I also got married and was instant mother to two half-grown children. I had to be brought back--whatever that means--during or after surgery eleven times. And I had ten days in a Striker bed. You would think it would all be a blur, but it is not. I remember details of almost every stay, and what was done. I remember the smells, the sounds, the nurses, the pain.

But that first operation was the most dangerous. It nearly killed me, but when I finally left the hospital three weeks later, I knew that this back of mine had saved my life. I had something tangible to fight, and learned that I wanted to fight. It was not until three surgeries later, however, that I understood what it really was to feel alone, and that I found that there was something beyond my stubbornness on which I could draw,

And it was then that at last, I rediscovered Grace in my life.

*****
Off for vacation for a few days. Have a wonderful weekend, one and all.