The agony of the cliche (MG update)

As a writer, I have always been told to avoid cliches. I still remember how, in one of the first stories I ever had published for a newspaper, I used "like hitting your head against a brick wall'' in the lede. I knew it was a cliche, and I knew I should have come up with something better, but it was all I could think of on deadline.
Sure enough, my editor told me that while it worked, it was indeed a cliche, which I should try to avoid.
Of course, the problem is that cliches don't become cliches unless they actual say something so universally understood that other people begin to use it frequently, simply because it describes what they are feeling/thinking so perfectly.
Like "hitting your head against a brick wall."

Sunday morning MG woke up, and I could tell she was feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything.
She'd actually had a very good day Saturday - after a lousy, lousy Friday. But on Saturday, she ate the best she had since before the accident. She sat up on the side of the bed without any help, and moved from bed to wheelchair on the sliding board without any significant help. I took her outside for a stroll down to the mailbox, then out to the new garden in the backyard where I took this picture.

Yes, she's making great progress.
Unfortunately, sometimes great progress is also a depressing reminder of how far she still has to go.
Sunday morning,realizing she was overwhelmed, I decided to lay down beside her on the hospital bed. We actually fit rather comfortably, probably because she weighs next to nothing now even though I still weigh more than enough.
It was nice to be close, and I told her she had to realize how far she'd come - three weeks ago she was just coming out of a coma; two weeks ago she was just coming home from the hospital; one week ago she couldn't sit up and had virtually no range of motion in either leg.
"Can I be really honest?" she said.
Of course, I answered.
"Everyone tells me how far I've come, but I get tired of hearing that. I'm in the moment, right now, and sometimes it just feels so awful."
I told her she was right, that unfortunately when we - family and friends, the people who care about her - talk to her, all we can think to say is "You're doing so well! You've come so far! You look so much better! You're making so much progress!"
We say it because it's true, of course. But I think we also say it because we don't know what else to say.

MG knows that, of course. And this isn't to say quit telling MG how far she's come or how much she's improved or how good she looks. She needs to hear it. She needs cheerleaders in her life. And I can guarantee you she needs to hear someone new saying those things, because the truth is I can say them every day but, after two weeks at home, they are starting to sound like cliches when I say them.
But it's also MG being honest. Sometimes every step forward is just a reminder of how many more steps we have to take. And it gets overwhelming.
We talked about SaraBeth's graduation from college next spring, and MG said her goal was to be able to walk with SaraBeth at her graduation.
MG loves the beach, and as we lay side-by-side Sunday morning I told her next summer we'd be lying on the beach (a huge sacrifice for me, by the way, because people that know me know I hate being on the beach). She said, "I hope I can walk on the sand."
I am absolutely, 100 percent confident that MG will be able to do both - walk with SB at her graduation (although not up on the platform to help SB accept her diploma, as much as MG might deserve to make that walk with SB)  and walk down the beach through the soft white sand to a towel where she can -  as we say around our house because of something one of the kids used to say - "take a sun tan."
But I also knew that MG didn't want to hear me saying, "Oh, you're going to be fine! Don't talk like that. You'll be up and walking before you know it."
MG was caught in the moment of where she is. She told me she woke up and felt great for a minute, almost forgetting that anything was wrong, and then the pain started.
As I wrote before, MG's recovery has been amazing. Every milestone set out before her has been moved up -from not being able to put weight on her right leg in seven to ten weeks to now being told she can begin to put weight on that leg in two weeks.
And that kind of news gets us both excited. But then the reality sets in. It is, after all, two weeks away. And until then, there is pain - nerve endings continue to wake up, stretched ligaments and muscles pull back into place, incisions heal, ribs heal, lungs heal. There are areas of her skin that have no feeling. There are areas that have too much feeling. There are the problems that come from of a lack of muscle control.
A great day moving around means a horrible next day because every movement disturbs her ribs. And anyone that has ever broken or separated or even bruised a rib knows how painful every movement can be. Is there any movement that doesn't somehow require the ribs to move, too?
I can't tell her not to get caught up in the moment, to focus on how far she's come or how close she is to the next milestone. On this day, she's firmly in the moment, and she needs to be able to express that.
I'm glad. One thing I'm acutely aware of is that when people ask me, "How is she doing?" I feel compelled to give the best news possible, to say "She's doing great" and "She's making great progress." And it's true ... but sometimes I  feel like saying, "How do you think she is? Everything on her left side, from the shoulder down to the top of her thigh, was crushed by a Chevy Tahoe driven by a guy who was nearly drunk out of his mind, who never even hit the brakes! How is she supposed to be?"
(Can you tell that sometimes I get angry, too?)

But then, as MG and I always do, we laugh.
She said - in all seriousness - "what about going through the airport? Will I have a card or something saying that I have all this metal in my hip? What do I do about that?"
I said, "I'm not nearly as worried about getting through the airport as I am about taking you to the junkyard where they have those cranes with the big magnets on the end. What am I going to do if suddenly you're pulled up 50 feet over a junkyard, dangling by your hip from one of those things?"
She laughed. And suddenly she was no longer thinking about the problems, because she was caught up in the absurdity I was describing with such apparent concern.
I think that's another reason why I married her: she genuinely thinks I'm funny.

As I said, this isn't to stop people from saying the truth to MG: that she has made tremendous progress, that she is lucky to be alive, that she looks great.
It's just to remind ourselves that sometimes the best thing we can say is nothing. Sometimes all we can do is sit beside her, and hurt with her, cry with her, rage with her.
Because eventually, we will get to laugh with her again.
Usually sooner than we think.

Wednesday, Friday, Sunday News

Newspapers aren't dead.
Well, newspapers might be dead. Certainly the news this week that the Birmingham News (my old paper), the Mobile Press-Register, the Huntsville Times, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune are no longer going to be dailies, but instead will be publishing three days a week - Wednesday, Friday and Sunday - does not bode well for the future of reading news, sports, comics, classified, and shopping coupons from hard copy.
Having spent most of my life working for daily newspapers, I couldn't help but think of what was going to be lost.
No Saturday paper means no more easy reading of Friday night football scores. No more pictures from local high school fields and seeing the local hero's name in headlines.
 I can't even begin to describe the madness that was a Friday night in the sports department. A team of reporters and stringers - part timers hired to answer calls and ask the right questions to fill out pre-printed statistical forms from which game summaries would be written - waited at desks around the news room, waiting. Sometimes we'd have pizza, or someone would bring in some treat, and we'd all talk and tell stories and catch up on each other's lives. Then the phones would start ringing, and it seemed like all the game reports came in at the same time. As they filled out the game reports, someone else was writing up brief stories, and someone else was loading the statistical summary of the game (the boxscore or linescore) that would appear in the next day's paper.
You'd like to say it was a well-oiled machine, but it wasn't. It was chaos. More phones would be ringing than there were people to answer them. The team statistician would not have full names for the opposing team - sometimes would not have names for the opposing team at all - and sometimes the statistics were so unbelievable. There was one school, in particular, whose statistician would call in and inevitably they'd have a running back who'd rush for 200 yards and a quarterback who would throw for 300 and their defense would hold the other team to next to nothing, yet his team would lose 30-0. Once or twice, maybe you could explain it. But this was consistent, Friday night after Friday night.

I can't help but believe high school kids, coaches, parents and fans won't miss holding a hard copy showing results of their games on Saturday morning.

Monday, of course, was an easy way to get all the linescores from NFL games. And standings. It was a great way to see stats and highlights. Not to mention "day after" news and notes from Saturday's college games.

And so on.

Not that this stuff won't continue to be available - which is why I say newspapers aren't dead. They will continue. Just online.
But it's got to be tough to fill a scrap book with print outs from computer stories.
If kids and parents even keep scrapbooks anymore.

The good news, I think, is that this change in the business won't reduce the need for reporters and writers. There is still a demand for content - and, hopefully, reliable content, which means from professional reporters and writers.
However, the downside is deadlines. Every reporter needs deadlines. In the ancient days when the print edition was important, you had to have time to get a story researched, written, and pass through copy editors who would not only make sure the story conformed to style but also that it made sense - that is, that there weren't unsupported "facts" in the story or unsupportable suppositions. Many times, particularly in my early days, I'd turn in what I thought was a perfect story, only to have a really good copy editor send it back, challenging me on details and supporting evidence and conclusions.
But as newspapers modernized and computerized, deadlines got worse. I'm not sure why. It was supposed to be those things were going to make it better, but it never did. Deadlines became earlier and more strict.
Now, of course, there are no deadlines. The story can go online as soon as it's ready. The problem is, the rush for content can outweigh the need for checking details and balance.
The motto used to be "get it first, but first get it right." Now, the rush to get the story out there first means reporters can't wait for a secondary source to get back, or for the other side to offer their say on what is being reported.
Oh, sure, the story can be updated repeatedly, but once a version is out, there is no taking it back. And, unfortuantely, I've seen on-line editors who are never as quick to post the updated version of a story because they're already looking for the next 'breaking' story.

And copy editors no longer have time to read and challenge the writer. The rush to be first outweights the need to make sure the story is "right.'' And it's easy to hide behind the idea of, "well, those are the facts as we had them at that time."
Copy editors now are simply there to code the stories and load them onto the web. Some reporters already do that themselves, totally eliminating copy editors. That breaks down the chain of checks and balances - reporters who have to answer to copy editors, and copy editors who force reporters to really think through what they are reporting, aware that they'll be challenged on whatever they write before the first member of the general public ever sees it.


All of this simply puts more responsibility on the reader. Because of the internet, we have more access to more information sources than ever. Some of that information will be good, some will be wrong. Some will be biased, some will be balanced.
I'm not afraid of all the access to new media. Personally, I find it important to read both Drudge and the Huffington Post; Human Events and Politico. I don't trust any of them completely, but I find that if I read both presentations, I am able to develop, hopefully, a truer sense by which to interpret what is really going on.

The danger is that it is also possible for me to get my 'news' only from the people who I tend to agree with, who feed my pre-established opinions and bias.
I do believe we're a divided nation. There is no question there is a dramatic difference in Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative. For that matter, spend time talking to people from the Northeast or the far West, and their view of this country is so different than that of people from the Midwest and South that it's like two different countries. And that's scary.

But what has always concerned me is that the more information we have access too, the less information we take in. The local newspaper at least gave us one source that most people read, a commonality of information from which to agree and disagree, and held local officials somewhat accountible.

I understand Thomas Jefferson's opinions on media changed. But I still think he was right when he said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

We're a long way from Jefferson. And a lot closer to a government without newspapers.

Skimming stones and fighting pain

Behind our house, across the yard and through the woods, is a steam that varies in depth and width, depending on the season.
And a bunch of rocks.
So, naturally, sometimes when I'm down there - particularly by myself - I look for flat rocks to skim across the surface of the stream. It's a guy thing, I guess.
Depending on the size and width of the rock and the variable strength of my arm, I can get the rock to skip three, four, maybe even five or six times.
But here's the thing: no matter how many times it skims and hops, when it slows down the same thing happens. Every time. No matter how much effort I put into it, how hard I throw, how perfect the rock seems to be ...
It struck me that there was something profound there, something meaningful that should be a statement on life in general.
On the other hand, it could be just the manifestation of my own version of cabin fever psychosis.
Let me know if you see it.

I'm amazed at how much progress MG is making. It's remarkable to sit and look at her, talk to her, listen to her, and realize two weeks ago she was just coming out of basically a two-week medically induced coma. She was swollen and cut and bruised, with wires going into her body and tubes coming out and one leg in traction. She didn't move.
I think back to the morning at the hospital when I was waiting for someone - anyone - to come tell me something about MG's condition. I had only seen her briefly since being told she'd been in a serious accident, having arrived at the UAB Emergency Room in time to ride up the elevator with her on her way to surgery. She was already on a ventilator and in a coma, and nobody could really give me a prognosis.
As I waited, a policeman came to see me and tell me that she'd been hit by a drunk driver. Later, another officer came by to see me. Because I didn't know what else to ask, I asked to confirm what I thought I already knew - "Was it a DUI?"
The officer said, "A DUI is the least of this guys' worries. We've charged him with felony assault, and depending on what happens here, we're prepared to up the charges to ..."
I don't know if he actually said what the next charges would be, but I knew: vehicular homicide or manslaughter or whatever it would be if MG "didn't make it" - in other words, if she died. And everyone who responded to the scene of the accident fully expected MG to not make it.

Now, here we were four weeks later (could it really have only been four weeks?) back at UAB after a week at home, when the orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Lowe, came in and, after a little conversation, said, "I think in two or three weeks you may be able to start putting weight on your right leg."
I wasn't sure I'd heard him right. I know I wasn't sure what that meant.
But I do know MG had already been using her right leg to scoot herself around on the bed. She wasn't putting any weight on it, but she was pushing with it. I didn't know if she should be doing that or not, but MG had been so frustrated at being so completely helpless and I knew that her right leg had been, by comparison, uninjured.
(For a recap: the impact fractured the outside of MG's pelvis on the right side, but it didn't require surgery and the doctors didn't seem overly concerned; all their attention was on the clean breaks in the front and back, and the smashed hip joint on the left side. This was, of course, in addition to all the other injuries that are too many to rehash here. I'm not sure I've ever listed every one of them, because it seems every time I do I forget a couple).
For the additional use of her left leg to be officially sanctioned was huge. Not only could she continue to use that leg to scoot on the bed, but it would mean that moving from bed to wheelchair would be immeasurably easier; from wheelchair to toilet or shower or even just a regular chair was going to be a real possibility.
Understand, we'd been told three months without putting feet on the floor. The one hope I was clinging to was that Dr. Lowe had said in "maybe" seven to 10 weeks MG could start putting weight on her right leg, which meant walking. I asked, 'how do you walk on one leg?"
With a walker, I was told. She would be able to take a step forward on the right leg, put all her weight on the walker, then slide her left leg up beside the right one.
To have that possibility moved up to within two or three weeks was ... unbelievable.

As good as that news was, as excited as we were when we got home and began to talk about the possibilities, it didn't take long before the effort of the day took its toll on MG and the pain set in.
It reminded us that there is no shortcut to glory. We could set our vision on the finish line - or rather, in this case the next line in a series of finish lines - but it didn't relieve the pain that MG had to go through that night and the next few days, or the sleepless nights we all had, or the shared suffering that we had to endure along the way.
There is no shortcut to glory. It seems we all, at some point in our lives - or maybe "points" for some of us - have to take that walk through the valley of the shadow of death, when the still waters and that table prepared for us seem to be a long, long way off.

C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain called it "the heartbreaking routine of monotonous misery." We don't like to think about our lives that way, because we want to believe we're meant to be comfortable. Work hard, love well, follow God, and it's should be smooth sailing.
But despite what generations of a certain breed of evangelist has told us, nothing in Scripture says that Christians should expect life to be any easier or cleaner or safer than it is for non-Christians. In fact, perhaps if anything, pain serves to keep us connected to a fallen world, identifying with the real-time after-effects of sin and living in a fallen world.
I remember reading about Siddhartha Gautama being raised as a wealthy, protected prince in India who was never allowed outside the walls of the family home. At some point he did finally go outside, and was  shocked at the hunger and suffering and pain - aspects of humanity he'd never experienced or been told about before. So, according to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha's answer was to teach people to do away with yearnings and cravings that he believed caused those feelings of hunger and suffering and pain. Do away with the desire, accept the lot life has dealt you, and you find inner peace. And so Siddhartha became the Buddha.
Then you read the story of Jesus, who - for sake of comparison - left his protected, safe place in Heaven to experience life on earth. But rather than accept pain, Jesus taught us to bring relief to those in need - to feed the hungry, heal the sick, do our best to do as much as we can to combat the evil that exists in this fallen world; to rebel against the status quo. And He suffered right along with humanity; as British writer Dorothy Sayer wrote, "For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is ... He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine ... He has Himself gone through the  whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work  and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile ..."
I much prefer fighting than accepting.
And I think sometimes we lose sight of that Christian concept - that we don't accept the world the way it is, but fight to make it better.
The problem is that so much of the world doesn't agree with the definition of "better," because it is much easier and more comfortable to accept things the way they are and simply adapt and say, "live and let live" or "let it be."

The first of the so-called seven "virtues" is courage. We think of courage as the absence of fear, but in reality courage is overcoming natural fear. Courage means doing the right thing even at risk of pain or loss.
I think it can apply even to situations' like MG. It would be easier and less painful to lie in bed and just try to be comfortable, but she knows - and we know - that she has to suffer in order to get better. She has to do what her body screams out not to do, in order to allow her body to perform the way it was created to perform.
Even though it hurts.
I may not have figured out the lesson of skimming stones, but I can figure out the lesson of rehab.
That one screams at me every day - and it did even before MG's accident. I just didn't always hear it as clearly as I do now.
Sometimes it hurts to do the right thing. But if we really care, we don't accept life the way it has been dealt to us but say we can make it better.
Even if it hurts.
That's wall-poster philosophy if I ever heard it.
But just because something is trite doesn't mean it's not true.

Just another Saturday morning wondering if Saturdays will feel the same again

I hate being morbid. That's not my personality, and it is certainly not MG's.
But it's Saturday morning, and my wonderful sister-in-law, who came down to spend the week with us (she's a licensed physical therapist) to help MG adjust to being home, left for the airport this morning. My son - or maybe both of them - drove her. And all I could think of was the last time a member of my family headed out for the airport on a Saturday morning.
Foolish, I know. It's reflex. Like when I was in college and was coming down the road that ran between Sanford Stadium at Georgia and the railroad tracks in my 1974 Vega. It had been raining, and the roads were wet, and as I came around the curve a Volvo coming from the other direction lost traction, came into my lane, and hit me head-on. It totaled both our cars (which was no loss for me, considering mine was a Vega; but her Volvo was a different story).
Fortunately the injuries were relatively minor. But for a long, long time afterward every time I went around a curve at night and saw headlights coming from the other direction, I tensed and flinched and slowed down and pulled as far to the right-hand side of the road as possible
I guess every time someone I know heads to the airport, I will flinch inside.

MG has been home a week now. She's been really working hard in her physical therapy. My sister has come over from Dallas for the week,and will take the place of my sister-in-law, who needs to get back to her husband and kids. My kids are all here, of course.
It is understandable that our lives are focused around MG ... not letting her be alone, sitting with her when she sleeps, when she wakes, trying to take care of her every need as much as possible. We all have our jobs - recording her medicine dosages and making sure she gets them on time, who changes the bandage on her stomach wound, who gives her the twice-daily shot for protect her from blood clots, who adjusts her legs when they are uncomfortable or just start to ache, who helps her with her "personal" issues (it occurs to me how there is nothing personal when you're immobilized in a hospital bed like this).
I want the kids, in particular, to have as "normal" of a summer as possible. SB and The Heir will start their summer internships soon, and I'm thankful to God that both were able to land internships in town. That is another God-thing, because all of SB's connections were out of town and The Heir thought he was going to be reporting for basic training this summer.
The Young Prince was supposed to come to live in Gulfport with me this summer. I was lining up jobs for him down there, and he was going to find out what it was like to live in a one-bedroom studio apartment with the old man. That won't happen now, since we need all hands on deck here. I'm not sure what we're going to do with him this summer.
But the bigger lesson, to me, is a reminder that God was not surprised by what happened. Again, we can get all theological about whether God "caused" this or just "allowed" this to happen, and whether there is a difference (and whether the difference even really matters!).
What I won't argue is how now I see so many things - starting from years ago - that have put us in a position where we can, as a family and with friends, care for MG over the next few months. His mercies are new every morning, and He indeed knew each of us before we were even being knitted together in our mothers' womb.
(Not sure my tense is correct there; I'm not suggesting each of us has the same mother or that all of our mothers share a womb. Hopefully, you understand what I'm trying to say. It's from a verse in Jeremiah).

Wait - what I was trying to say was that I still want to make this summer as 'normal' for the kids as possible. I want SB to not only have a great work experience, but still enjoy being a college kid. Same for The Heir and the Young Prince.
But this won't be a normal summer. The boys are better at this than SB and I are, because they are, well, boys. I don't expect them to get involved in the intimate, day-to-day care of their mother. They do what we ask - The Heir is his mom's exercise coach, the Young Prince makes wonderful eggs every morning just the way his mom likes them - and they help outside MG's bedroom. The best thing may be that they have each other.
So much of this is being dumped on SB, the oldest and therefore the over-achiever who feels all the responsibility that most first-borns feel. She's always felt responsible for her brothers, for me, for her mom. And, like her mother, she has the attitude that "it's an honor and a privilege to serve."
MG was so excited that SB was going to be home this summer. It was going to be a "girls'' summer - with the boys expected to be gone.
And it will be their summer, but not the way either imagined.

I believe I wrote that we'd discovered a wound in the back of MG's head while finally clearing out the "rats' nest" of hair back there that the doctors and nurses in the hospital could not be concerned with. It is healing, but continues to give her problems and, I think, may be the cause of the headaches MG has been getting over the last couple of days - one more evidence of how the "little" aches and pains make themselves known as the body adjusts to the major shocks and surgeries.
Her ribs are tender. My guess is they've always been tender, but the pain in her pelvis over-rode the rib pain.
And her left foot continues to be a problem. She doesn't have much control over that, which the doctor told us was to be expected, what with the muscles and nerves that had been cut and stretched. He said it might be a year before she regained control. But it makes her toes, in particular, very sensitive to touch or to movement.
But again, I can't help but feel that's a good sign, an indication that the nerves are starting to reconnect and recover and are hyper-sensitive as they come back to life.
I've read stories of burn victims who scream with pain when something as gentle as a breeze blows across the surface of their skin. What brings most of us a bit of relief is pure agony to someone whose nerve endings are coming back to life and every little motion feels like it came straight from the gates of hell.
But I'm beginning to get a glimpse of what that must be like. It's not constant for MG, but at times it is very much like that. I accidentally brush her toes, and she's crying. My big feet bump the leg of the bed, shaking it, and the pain is excruciating for her.
Again, not constant - thankfully - but just enough.
The body is an amazing creation, wonderful in both its capacity to feel pleasure and pain.

Perspective changes. We were sitting around talking to day about how long this has been going on, about how long MG was in the hospital, in the trauma unit, in a coma ... and SB mentioned how it seems like it was only a few days. Indeed, from this side of things, it just doesn't seem like we spent three full weeks at the hospital, watching and waiting and worrying.
That, too, gives me hope. I've written about this before, but people have told me how they or a friend went through something similar and in what seemed like "no time at all'' they were back on their feet. Of course, when you press them, "no time at all" turns out to have been eight months.
Still, I realize that in eight months, we might very well look back and say this didn't seem to take any time at all.
One can only hope.
MG woke up and said, "I believe I just had a Roecker response."
I laughed. From the time Roecker - The Heir - was a baby until, really, even today, he's always responded to potentially overwhelming situations by going to sleep. When he was a baby, I remember MG took him and his older sister to an Alabama-Tennessee football game. I was in the press box, of course, and watching them through my binoculars almost as much as I watched the game. SB was a little over two years old, Roecker not quite a year. They got settled into their seats at Legion Field (this was in the days when the game was still played in Birmingham), and as soon as the noise started in ernest - the crowds yelling and the bands playing and the speakers from the scoreboard blaring - Roecker went to sleep. It was his reaction to too much stimulation. So here was MG, with a two-year-old next to her and this baby sleeping in her lap.
It was worse the next year, when MG was very pregnant with The Young Prince. We were in Knoxville, and she had a three-year-old sitting next to her, and an almost two-year-old draped across her almost seven-months along belly. And again, The Heir passed out on her stomach, head on her chest, arms around her neck, almost as soon as the game started.
This morning was a tough one in that MG wanted to get into the wheel chair and get her hair washed. That's an ordeal in itself, but it was like every movement hurt her despite all of our - mine, SB, and Brittany - best care. I didn't realize how quickly the back of the wheelchair would drop and neither MG nor I were ready for it and it was not comfortable. Even getting her back into bed it seemed like every movement was the wrong one, and we hurt her.
As soon as we got her back into bed, however, MG went to sleep. Hard. For quite a while.
Her "Roecker response."

People ask about my job. My employer has been amazingly understanding. I flew out to Houston this week for a meeting, and my boss told me he didn't know how long he would lose me for when this happened and was pleased that I had chosen to stay engaged as much as possible. There are changes going on in the company, and I was hoping to be considered for some of those changes. Maybe I still will be, but at the same time I have to be flexible to be able to be with MG as much as possible, and I appreciate that all the people I work with not only understand that but encourage me to take the time I need to do what needs to be done.
I, however, tend to worry. I have admitted my paranoia in the past when it comes to work. Maybe it's all those years as a beat writer, responsible for a covering, at various times, a recognized professional sports franchise and then, for 15 years, one of those publicly unacknowledged professional franchises that make up major college athletics. I had to be ever-vigilant, and even on vacation I was constantly checking in to make sure I knew what was going on. It was 24/7, and at times caused me problems with MG (the time we were at her brother's rehearsal dinner in St. Louis and I spent half of it on my cell phone, outside the restaurant, taking calls from head coaches around the country as Alabama was in the midst of a football coaching search.)
However, two years ago when I was put in a position where I felt I had no choice but to change professions, I decided I would never cling to a job so tightly again. All my life I had tried to maintain balance and keep my family first even with such a demanding job - in fact I once asked about a job opening that I wanted to be considered for, only to have the editor tell me he needed someone whose priorities were screwed up so that the job was first and foremost, and that he knew me well enough to know my priorities were not screwed up and he respected that, but it wasn't what he needed for this particular job - but I also know that job was a large part of my identity.
As I began this new career path, I determined I would not let that happen again. Don't get me wrong - I love this job, the people, the purpose, the relationships. But I think God keeps finding ways to remind me that the job is not my god, and is not the answer, is not the foundation, is not to take preeminence in my life ever again.
That's hard. Maybe you can relate, but it's very hard for me because I've been wired for so long to be on a 24/7 news cycle and staying on top of everything. Not that I don't do that now - I can't help the way I've been trained to work - but I know now that I have to be able to let some things go.
That's way too much about me.

The room is full of flowers, which MG loves. We have plenty of chocolates, too, but she's not been in the mood to eat that and I'm trying my best not to.
It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the sky is clear blue, the grass is green (and a bit long). I'd like to get MG out into the sun, on the small deck off the bedroom. I'm not sure we'll do that, after the disaster of the wheelchair this morning. But I know she'd enjoy it.

MG told me her goal was that in a year, she'd be there to "walk" with SB when SB graduates from college. I told her while I was sure she'd be walking, I didn't think the school would allow her to walk "with" SB to get her diploma.
We laughed.
But as MG lies there doing her upper-body exercises, faithfully working what muscles she can to try to be ahead of the game when real physical therapy starts, I'm convinced that MG will be back sooner than the doctors' prognosis. That's just the way she has always been, and I can't imagine her being any other way.

All things considered, everything is good. The boys are back from the airport, so my fears once again proved foolish.
It is indeed a "normal" Saturday morning.
By our new definition of "normal."

The journey in full: chronological order

For personal reasons, I've gone back to list the entries for MG's accident in chronological order. I'm flattered that so many people have taken to reading and keeping up. Hopefully this will help family and friends see the journey from the beginning to ... well, whenever


April 21: Me? Us? Why not?

April 22: Surgery, sooner than expected

April 22: Great is Thy Faithfulness (Surgery Update)

April 23: Depending on the Kindness of Strangers

April 23: I hate being stupid - and being treated like I am

April 24: Do the 'eyes' have it?

April 25: This one's for the guys (Ladies, you were warned)

April 25: "Every step forward is going to be full of hard"

April 26: The Community of the Waiting Room

April 27: Sure I concur; what else can I do?

April 28: Learning to wait without losing time

April 29: Reruns and opening lines; what do I say next?

April 30: Today's rant: Do doctors even listen to what they say?

April 31: A few random stories from you guys

May 1: Just like that, everything changes

May 2: The kind of day MG would love

May 3: Who is my neighbor? We will see

May 5: I want to go home

May 6: "Men at ease have contempt for misfortune"

May 8: A little psychosis doesn't mean you're crazy

May 10: Perception, reality, and determining what is real

May 12: Ninth floor, room 9314, 2:14 a.m.

May 12: 22 years, 22 days, and home

May 14: Life on the outside: If 300 million Chinese don't care, why should I?

May 19: Just another Saturday morning wondering ....

May 23: Skimming Stones and Fighting Pain

May 27: The Agony of the Cliche

June 1: What does it mean to be a 'man of faith?'

June 1: Remembering the Promise of Progress

Life on the outside: If 300 million Chinese don't care, why should I?

Back when we bought the house we're currently living -- back when big money loans were easy and everyone was buying houses and then adding on, believing the houses would always appraise for more and never dreaming the housing market would crash - we joined the lemmings and added on a truly master suite.
Years later, MG and I would lie in bed thinking about what had happened to the housing market and say, "MG, we could have cut this bedroom by a third, still had plenty of room, and saved ourselves thousands of dollars."
Always she'd answer, "Some day when I'm old and an invalid, I want to have room for my children and friends to come gather around me, sitting comfortably in their chairs, not feeling like they have to get out because it's so crowded."
And of course I'd think, "by the time that happens, who knows where we'll be living?"
Once again, MG was right.

After 22 days in the hospital, nearly two weeks in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator, we were cleared to bring MG home.
We couldn't wait. But it wasn't easy.
For all the practice we had in using her "sliding board" - the means to move from bed to wheelchair, and wheelchair to regular chair or toilet or car seat - practicing in the hospital under the direction and care of the physical therapists and actually doing it for real proved to be about as different as dunking over LaBron James in a video game and actually facing him on a real basketball court.
And while you might think it not so difficult to get around without being able to put feet on the floor, I was surprised at just how necessary our feet are in even the simplest activities, such as sliding on a board from one location to another.
Needless to say, we wore MG out Saturday. But we came home to our kids, her father, and one of her sisters, and everyone was able to sit around the bed, talking and laughing and calling family and friends.

We got her settled into our new sleeping arrangements - her hospital bed pushed up against our bed, side-by-side but with the bed guardrail in between us.
It made me think of the old Puritan tradition of the running a plank or board down a bed between unmarried couples to keep them from touching. I sleep on one side of the rail and MG sleeps on the other. From time to time she will roll  up on her side to change positions for a few minutes (the most she can stand it) and we come face-to-face with the bars between us. It's actually kind of funny. I tell her it only makes her miss me more.
In truth, I think it's the other way around.

Sunday was a great day. MG's sister was, once upon a time in one of her many previous lives, a hair dresser of sorts. By that, I mean she went to school to learn to be a hair dresser but I don't think she every actually practiced professionally (although she has been known to give us all haircuts from time to time, in moments of either desperation or extreme cheapness/laziness).
MG has had this big knot of hair in the back of her head that the nurses had not been able to untangle. They'd been pulling bits of glass out of that knot for two weeks, and we've tried - as best we could in a hospital bed - to use shampoo and conditioner and brushes and combs and get it all out.
Sunday, we put her in the wheel chair that reclines and put her over the tub, where MG's sister washed and combed and cut what MG referred to as her "rat's nest" out.
It turns out there was a pretty good cut on the back of MG's head that nobody knew about (and, no, the sister didn't do it!), just another of the new "insults" we're discovering daily. There are these little stitches in various places around MG's body. I guess they are places where drainage tubes were removed and doctors put in a single stitch to pull the skin together. And at one point MG's right side was hurting and she didn't realize she'd broken one rib on that side, too.
In fact, I haven't gone over the full extent of her injuries with her because she doesn't want to know. Mainly, in odd moments when she talks about something hurting that she hadn't noticed before - her lower back, her ribs, whatever - I will slip in there, "well you know you broke your ribs on that side'' or "you know you broke your pelvis in the back, too" - never mentioning just how many ribs or how many places she broke bones.
And I won't show her pictures of the car until she's ready - which may be never. I was looking at pictures of the car again today. I keep going back to them with a curiosity that I guess can only be described as 'morbid.'

MG asked SB to go find her curling iron. SB came back with her own curling iron.
"Where's my curling iron?" MG asks.
"It was bent,'' SB said.
"How could it have been bent?" MG said.
It had to have been the accident. Her bag was in the left rear passenger seat. The impact was enough to bend a curling iron.
I see the way the side of the car was cut away by the emergency personnel. I see the way the windshield was shattered and hanging inward, toward the front seat. I see the air bags deployed and hanging deflated.
And I wonder again how she was able to survive.

One of our nieces sent MG a message that "when you're sick, that's when you put on your bling!" So MG dressed in new pajamas, put on make-up, and hung all these Mardi Gras beads we'd collected the last few years in Gulfport and Biloxi for a picture.
She smiled. She looked wonderful. For a minute, everything looked great.

(You ever see a hotter looking woman just a week out of a coma? I didn't think so!)

But as soon as the pictures were taken, she was exhausted.
Still, it was fun.
We did wear her out Sunday, which made Sunday night a long, hard night for both of us. And as MG's body begins to mend, pain returns. Nerve endings start to reconnect; ligaments that were stretched start to pull back into place; bones settle where they're supposed to be ... all good things.
But they all hurt, too.

Life on the outside ... at times, I feel like a prisoner who has been set free. Although it was only three weeks living on the ninth floor of the trauma unit, living there among other people who were there because a loved one was injured and suffering made it easy to think the whole world was full of injured and suffering people.
Now that I'm on the outside, it strikes me as odd how many people don't know of MG's injury. I see an old friend at the check-out line of the Western and he asked about MG and says to be sure to tell her 'hello,' and I know he doesn't know. I don't tell him.
I take my dog to get trimmed because he's shedding, and the girl at the pet place has no idea of what I've been going through the last three weeks.
The boys and I shop at Wal-Mart for some items to make MG's life easier, and nobody there knows or cares why we're there or what we're after.
That's as it should be. I am not the center of the universe. Neither is MG. And I consider all those times I shopped at the grocery store or went to the pet place or took the kids to Wal-Mart and now I wonder who around me was suffering? Who was there because they or someone they love was in pain?
And should I know? Should I be held responsible? How should this experience change the way I interact with total strangers who cross my path every day?
Am I expecting too much from this? Expecting too much of myself?
Thinking too much?
Yes.
And no.

The existentialist writer Albert Camus wrote in "The Rebel:" "Only a personal God can be asked by the rebel for a personal accounting."
For some reason, that brings me comfort. I can ask God "why" and know that because I believe in a personal God who cares, I can ask. If I didn't believe, what would be the sense of even asking?
I'm not sure why that brings me a sense of peace, but it does.

22 Years, 22 Days, and home

The old saying is that the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. What do you do when you can't walk?

Today marks MG's 22nd day in the hospital. Three weeks ago today MG left the house to go to the airport - her last memory until earlier this week when she came out of the fog of blissful, medically-induced forgetfulness to find herself lying in a hospital bed in a trauma unit of UAB, with her family gathered around cheering that she woke up.
You can imagine her confusion - not only in her strange surroundings, but that people were cheering the fact that she simply woke up, something that - as far as she knew - she'd been doing every day for the last 50 years.
But of course, she hadn't been doing that every day for previous two weeks.
Even now, three weeks after "the accident,'' she said, "All I know is I've been in the hospital for a week with a sore throat."
We tell her the sore throat is from two weeks on a ventilator. We explain the two new huge scars on her body are from four surgeries. She understands, intellectually, why her pelvis hurts and her left leg feels so lifeless and why she has so much difficulty doing the simplest of things (if she can even do them at all), but cognitively it's all a mystery to her.

In those first few days when they'd taken MG off the ventilator but she was still so doped up on pain killers, the nurses would try to get her to wake up to talk to them, to make sure she could follow simple commands. They'd ask her where she was, if she knew why she was here, and so forth.
I'd ask, "Do you know what next Saturday is?"
Last year, the first time in 21 years, it was MG who forgot our anniversary. Usually, unfortunately, that's been my mistake. Days run together for me. My standard "excuse" is always that "I have trouble with numbers and can't remember if we got married on May 12th at 10 a.m., or May 10th at 12!" Of course, that doesn't explain why I didn't come in on May 10th ready to celebrate the big day, but then I really wasn't fooling MG anyway.
So it was a big deal to me that she forgot. MG never forgets - birthdays, anniversaries, the day that a family member or friend died or the anniversary of a funeral or the first day of school or work for a friend's child.
I loved that, for once, she forgot.
She had every reason to forget this year. After all, she'd lost two weeks of her life.
But every time I'd ask, "Do you know what next Saturday is?" she'd give me this sly little, crooked little smile and say, "22 years."
Or I'd ask, "When's our anniversary?" And she'd roll her eyes as if I'd asked her the color of the sky or how many fingers she had on each hand. Then she'd whisper in that ventilator-injured voice, "May 12 at 10 a.m."

I know people do this. I know it happens far more than it should. But I never imagined celebrating our anniversary by waking up in a hospital room, waiting to go home.
I would never have imagined how close we came to not making it to No. 22.
I always figured with all the traveling I do, if something like this ever happened to either of us it would be me, the one who drives all the time.
And I can't begin to tell you how much I wish it had been me.
But it wasn't.
God only knows why.

We've done a lot of talking about 'why,' this week. MG wants to make sure that this event doesn't just become something we hurry and try to get past and forget. She believes God is at work in this, that God is working to teach her as well as continuing her (big theological word here) "sanctification." She is already looking to see where God is working (recognizing, of course, that God is working everywhere, constantly).
Me? I'm always hesitant to try to interpret God. I'm always worried that what I might see as "God's purpose in this" could cause me to miss what He is really doing. Again I go back to Job and recognize that even when God came to directly answer Job, God's answer was essentially "who are you, that you would think you could even begin to understand  Me and My ways?"
That's not to say one way is right and one is wrong. It's just to say MG and I often approach things differently. We process things differently, even as we look to see what could/might happen because of what we've gone through.
But as Saint Augustine said, "If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself." To extrapolate that a little, I'm afraid that if I decide what God's purpose was in this, or how His will is being accomplished, then it might really just be my purpose and my will that I'm seeing and not His.
Still, I know MG will come out of this stronger in her faith, more determined to be available to God, and that both of us will be changed through this.
A little more 'sanctification' if you will.
I want to end with a song (but, no, I'm not going to sing).
A friend of mine who reads my blog asked me about the title, "Homesick for Eden." He said he understood "Eden," but what did I mean by "homesick?"
There are so many poems and lines and songs and stories that have resonated in my life; expressions by other people that I read or hear, and think, "I could have written that. I know exactly what he/she means."
The words of this song, written by someone named Claire Cloninger and Paul Smith (who recorded it) back in the late 1980s, I believe, do that. The words of this song have always resonated deeply within me. It's a song that has a lot of meaning for my family for a lot of reasons, that has seen me through a lot of difficult times, and seems appropriate to end with on this day.
I know it by heart.

A garden so green, where water ran clean
And the animals roamed without names
Love was a girl who walked through the world
Where passion was pure as a flame.
In the back of our minds is a time before time
And a sad irreversible fact:
We can't seem to think why we left there,
And we can't seem to find our way back.
All of us are homesick for Eden,
We yearn to return to a land we've never known.
Deep is the need to go back to the garden
A burning so strong for a place we belong
A place that we know is home.

Have you ever just cried for no reason why
Like a child that's been left on it's own?
You can't quite explain the confusion or pain
So you live with the heartache alone.
In the back of your mind is a place and a time
And an image of what should have been.
And you know that you'll never be happy
Until you find your way back there again.
All of us are homesick for Eden
We yearn to return to a land we've never known.
Deep is the need to go back to the garden
A burning so strong for a place we belong
A place that we know is home.

We were made to live in his perfect love;
We were meant to walk in his grace.
And we'll never feel we are home again
Until we see him face to face.

Deep is our need to go back to the garden,
A burning so strong for a place we belong;
To rest at his feet in fellowship sweet
A place that we know is home.

Things like this remind us that we live in a fallen world, that we weren't meant to have these things happen to us, that we were meant for something better. Until we get there, however, this is what we have.
I'm so thankful to still have MG to walk through this fallen world with.
Just as I'm thankful for so many of you, who walked these last three weeks with me.
There is still much to be done.
But if any of you ever need a prayer offered on your behalff, I can tell you where to find me.
On my knees, praying.
Sometimes we say "praying is all I can do," when the truth is, praying is the first thing we should do.


 

Ninth floor, room 9314, 2:13 a.m.

WARNING: This is going to be a very selfish post. I'm tempted to not even post it, but I've been this honest so far in this story (my brother suggests maybe I'm being too vulnerable), so I might as well go on. I have these wonderful people who've read some of what I've written who talk about the way it reflects how much I love MG. I do love her. But I love me, too. It's the curse of being human, I guess.
And I'm as human as the next guy.


A guy wins the lottery, hundreds of millions of dollars.
"What are you going to do with all that money?" he is asked.
"Well,'' he says, "I look around this town, and I see all these people suffering. So many poor people, people without enough food to eat, or proper shelter. People on the streets, always looking for something. Everywhere I look, I see so much pain. I just feel that now that I have these kinds of resources, I'm going to do something about all that I see."
Impressed, the reporter asks, "You're going to use your money to fund or set up some kind of foundation to help all those hurting people here in your hometown?"
"No,'' the guy says. "I'm going to use my money to buy a house on a huge estate out in the country somewhere, so I never have to see this kind of pain and suffering again!"

The nights are the hardest part. Not only for MG, but for me. For all the progress she has made - and it's been phenomenal - it's easy to forget there is so much pain. She often says her left leg - the one that is attached to the hip joint that was completely rebuilt during the eight-and-a-half hour surgery; the one that had a pin inserted through the bone just above her knee so it could be placed in traction for the week leading up to surgery to pull the leg away from the damaged joint until she could undergo surgery - feels like a useless lump just attached to her body.
She has very little range of motion in that leg. The doctor has told me there is some nerve damage, that the nerves have been stretched. He believes that in time - maybe a few months, maybe a year - the damage will reverse itself. But while MG has complete range of motion in the right leg, the left one often feels numb, or cold, or screams with pain as, I guess, those nerve endings and muscles and skin begin to slowly come back to life.
And it's worse at night. I don't know if it's because during the day there are distractions, or just that at night she's supposed to be asleep but can't get comfortable, but starting about 9:30 every night, the pattern is that she'll get comfortable, sleep for an hour and a half or so, wake up feeling some kind of discomfort, and need for either her leg to be moved in some position its not ready to move into yet, or be massaged, or shift her body around the leg in an effort to find some kind of relief that just isn't there.
Yes, she gets pain medication, including muscle relaxers. That's the hour or two of rest she gets.
By 5:30, she's wide awake. Always an early riser, here in the hospital MG is awake by 5:30 and ready to, as she says, "Get the day started."
To me, 5:30 a.m. is still the night before.

As a result, I haven't had a full night's sleep since Tuesday night in Gulfport. Now I understand SB's exhaustion when I came back to Birmingham. When I left for Gulfport, MG was still in the ICU. The day I left she was moved to a private room, with a sleeping sofa, and SB spent the first two nights with her up here. It explains the 5:30 a.m. text I got from SB Wednesday morning asking if I was awake, followed by the 6:30 text saying "Mama wants to talk to you."
Since coming back to Birmingham, I have been spending the night (and most of the day) here with MG. And I'm feeling the effects of sleep deprivation. Tonight, in particular, I'm feeling like it's not worth lying down again, because I know I'll fall asleep quickly only to be awakened in a short time, kind of like those stories of prisoners being tortured with sleep deprivation where, just as soon as they go into deep sleep the guards wake them up.
Maybe I've suffering from my own version of ICU Psychosis.

Friday morning I went to the house to meet Greg, an old friend who runs a company that is taking care of providing us with a hospital bed, wheelchair, shower chair, and the other equipment we'll need when MG comes home (hopefully today, Saturday).
I went home early to try to catch 20 minutes of sleep, wake up to meet Greg and go through the house to talk about equipment and what kind of adjustments we're going to need. A friend calls to see if I want to get away for lunch. He's been keeping up with the blog and felt I could use some time away, and he was right.
Because Greg said he'd have the equipment delivered Friday afternoon, I go home to wait on the delivery. I take a chair and put it in the sunshine and sit outside soaking up some Vitamin D, and go to sleep in the sun for 30 minutes. But my phone buzzes constantly with text messages - friends, or SB wanting to know when I'm coming back to the hospital.
"No pressure,'' she writes. "Mama just wants to know."
So when the boys come back from where ever they were, I tell them what we need to do to get the house ready for the equipment delivery (which they take care of), and head back down to the ninth floor, UAB Hospital.
And now it's 2:37 a.m.

Because in this wing there is only one nurse for several rooms, the attention is far less than it was in ICU. MG remains hooked up to an IV bag, and at one point there is some kind of line occlusion and the machine starts this annoying three-note alarm. I hit the call button for the nurse and the same voice that you get at the McDonald's drive-thru says they'll notify my nurse.
The alarm gets louder. I see a place that looks like if I push it, the alarm might stop. After about five minutes, I push it. The alarm doesn't stop, but does get softer ... for a few minutes. Then it gets louder again. I hit the call button and tell the disembodied drive-thru voice, "If you'll just tell me what button to hit, I'll turn this off myself." That seems to get a reaction, because in about two minutes both our night nurse and another nurse come in to handle the alarm.
About 45 minutes later, the IV bag is empty. The alarm goes off again, and we repeat the process.
To be fair, this is the first night we've had this alarm thing happen. And the nurses here are fine and attentive. But when you were used to two weeks of ICU nurses giving practically one-on-one care, who responded immediately to any request, this is frustrating. The good news, of course, is that nothing in these rooms is life-threatening I suppose, which is why they give the nurses up here so many rooms and patients to be responsible for.

MG's foot is cold. She's wearing socks  which MG almost never wears  - and we put this contraption around her calf that automatically inflates then de-inflates, helping promote circulation in the leg. I rub her foot. I rub her knee. She wants her leg wrapped up tightly in a blanket because her leg feels so cold - again, something MG would normally never do. I ask if we need to call the nurse to see if there is some way to heat up her bed. MG says "no,'' and I understand we have no confidence we'd get any help. They don't have those pre-heated blankets here like they did in ICU. And besides, whatever they might come up with will take so long to get here that we're better off improvising. We decide to run a bucket of hot water, and I soak washcloths in the water then wrap her foot. It helps almost immediately.
She tells me to go back and lie down and go to sleep.
I don't want too, because it feels like rather than just get back into deep sleep and start dreaming again only to be jarred awake, I'd rather look out the window over the night lights of downtown Birmingham.
And blog.
It's 2:49 a.m.

MG is asleep. Tomorrow is our anniversary - 22 years of marriage. It will also mark the 22nd day in the hospital.
Fortunately, we're told we're going home.
I can't help but think everything will be better once we're home. Oh, we won't be away from all the pain and suffering; we'll carry that with us as we go, and deal with it for days, or weeks, or even months. I don't know.
But at least we'll  be home.

It's 3:03 a.m. MG looks like she's asleep. I'm wide awake now, but I'm an optimist. I keep telling myself that maybe this time she'll rest comfortably and if I curl back up in my blankets, I might get two or three hours of good sleep myself.
I have a feeling this is what people who are being tortured with sleep deprivation tell themselves, too.
Maybe this time ...

Sure enough, it's 3:08. MG doesn't want to disturb me. I hear her hit the button for the nurse.
"Do you need something?" I ask.
"No, the nurse will do it,'' she says.
The drive-thru voice says, "Can I help you?"
"I need help ...." MG says.
She doesn't want to disturb me.
But that's why I've stayed awake.
We get through this, and I think, "maybe this time ..."

It's 3:26 a.m. The alarm on the IV machine goes off again.
And again.

Perception, reality, and determining which is real

Years ago, MG taught me a valuable lesson about marriage. We would be "discussing" some issue and I'd say, "That just your perception,'' to which she'd reply "My perception is your reality."
That sounds crazy at first, and completely unfair, but the longer we've been married the more I realize it's true. I have to deal with her perception as my reality. I have to see things from her perspective and figure out how to respond to that perspective, otherwise whatever the issue is that is dividing us will not be bridged.
Her perception is my reality.

I have learned that again this week, as MG has slowly awakened from the accident, the surgeries, the drugs and tubes and brain-altering lack of a clear day-night timeline that is life in the hospital.
My perspective: I have been living at this hospital for nearly three weeks, staying all day and most of the night by MG's bedside, watching and talking to her and waiting for her to respond from all the surgeries and treatments.  And now that, over the last two or three days, she is more alert and aware and has moved out of ICU and into a private room, I'm relieved and starting to feel like life can begin to be some kind of normal.
MG's perspective: she woke up two days ago. She has no memory of all that has gone on except what I and others have told her, but just hearing about it doesn't make it real. She didn't - from a cognitive sense - experience any of it. To her, this ordeal began two days ago when she finally broke through the drug-fog and began to experience real time again.
Do you see the difference? For me, this is week three; for MG, it's day three.
That's a huge difference in perspective and reality.

I have been trying to do as much work as possible from here, and given the wonders of technology - laptops and cell phones - I feel like I've been able to stay on top of things. However, to someone who grew up PVR (pre-virtual reality), there is nothing like "being there,'' seeing people face to face and interacting in the place where things are happening.
So thinking that MG was coming around and that I had spent over two weeks away from my office, I decided it was time to make a quick run back to Gulfport, where my work is based.
Reasonable of me, right?
But remember, MG just woke up to this new reality that I've had more than two weeks to start to get adjusted to. And while she would never say it like this, I realized while I was gone that it was as if she'd just had a serious accident and I had run off to go to work.
Unreasonable of me, right?

So who is right?
Her perception is my reality.
(And, to be fair, the reverse is true too - MG understands that my perception has to be part of her reality, too. It's not one-sided).

When I left, MG was awake, but still heavily drugged. I honestly thought I could get down and back and while she would know I was gone, she wouldn't really know for how long.
Wrong.
At 5:30 Wednesday morning, I got a text from SB: "Are you awake?"
I wasn't.
At 6:15, I got a text: "Are you awake? Mama wants to talk to you."
I was, and called; I knew I was in trouble.
It was so good to hear her raspy voice on the phone. She said she wasn't upset that I had gone, just bothered that I had tried to "trick" her. But, she added, it was nothing that some flowers and chocolate couldn't fix.
Unfortunately, the hospital doesn't allow flowers in the rooms up here.
Some of the folks with BP in Houston sent a basket of treats - including chocolate - to her room today. So I'm halfway in the clear.
Trust me, there will be flowers.
Remember when SB said, ""Every step forward is going to be full of hard?" I'm not sure any of realized just how true those words would be. Maybe even now, we still only have the vaguest of clues as to what that really means.
There are times we all gather and laugh and talk and even play games, and we see that the next few months will be manageable as we work through this "interruption" as a family.
Then there are times when we see how difficult it is going to be - when the pain becomes unbearable for MG and the rest of us can't do anything about it; when one of us has to be there to do things for MG that she can't do for herself (and trust me, it's not because she doesn't want to do them herself); when the 'other things' of life get pushed aside or delayed or done just good enough because our attention tends to be all on this.
Understand, that's one thing about our family: we will do this together. Not just our immediate family, but extended family. MG's brothers and sisters and in-laws have already talked about setting up a schedule to come down for a week at a time to be with her and help out; my brothers and sisters are offering to come and help; and then of course there are friends who I know without a doubt if I were to say "I need ..." they wouldn't even wait to see what it is I need but would begin springing into action while the thought was still making the transition from brain to mouth.
Still, it doesn't help when MG is overwhelmed at just what has happened to her and how different her life is going to be. We can offer all kinds of support, but in the end she has to process it and work through it and deal with it.
And we - I - have to figure out how to deal with her.

We are out of the ICU and in a private room. We're out of that glass-walled room, where everyone walking by could look in and the people in rooms on either side could adjust blinds or curtains and we could all see each other. There is a fold-out couch that I can sleep on. There is privacy.
But it's not home, and MG wants to be home. Truthfully, there is very little she can do here, now, that she couldn't be doing at home. The physical therapists come by and are working with her on being able to move from bed to wheelchair and back again. That's going to be about the extent of her movement for approximately three months: bed to chair, chair to chair, chair to bed. Maybe, in time, there will be a car ride.
I remember being so daunted at how long this process might take. But then I'm not the one who feels the frustration of limited mobility, who bears the pain of a multiple-broken body beginning to mend. If three to six months feels like a lifetime to me now, to MG it looks like an eternity.

The therapists have given us reason to believe we could be home this weekend or by Monday. MG already has it in her head that she could be going home tomorrow (Friday). Patience was never her strong suit. I think it might be Monday, if for no other reason than her orthopedic surgeon is out of town at a conference and won't be back until Monday and, for some reason, I think he might want to see her before she leaves the hospital.
Pain is still very much an issue. She can't stay upright in the wheelchair for very long without wearing herself out. Someone told me that you can lose as much as 50 percent of your body strength if you stay in the hospital like this for over a week. I believe it. But MG is doing her arm exercises, and did remarkably well in her physical therapy today. I think it's more her determination and adrenaline than having built up the right amount of strength, but what do I know?
I just know that at home life will at least have the framework of normalcy.
Although ever step forward will continue to be full of hard.

Still, those steps will be easier to take once we're home.

A little psychosis doesn't make you crazy

Today was Day 17 in the Trauma ICU. I needed to stop and count because the days all run together for those of us whose lives now revolve around the ninth floor of UAB Hospital.
But if our lives seem out of whack, imagine what it's like for the actual patients.
There is something that goes on in ICU that is referred to as "ICU Psychosis," and it's very real. Medically (and I looked this up) it is defined as "A disorder in which patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) or a similar hospital setting may experience anxiety, become paranoid, hear voices, see things that are not there, become severely disoriented in time and place, become very agitated, even violent,  ..."
You may remember me writing about the young lady whose family was up here, whose mother hadn't slept for 72 hours because when she did go to sleep, she had nightmares about robots coming to get her.
Another of the waiting room community told me of their patient who was sitting in his bed, desperately looking for the steering wheel, convinced he was in a car.
Yes, the stories are funny. And no, they are not funny.
I have witnessed them first-hand. Part of the problem with coming off four surgeries, as MG is doing, is that she lives in sort of a dream world. She needs to be awake enough to follow instructions from the doctors and nurses, but asleep enough not to feel any more pain than is necessary.
I'm not going to embarrass her by repeating any of her disoriented moments, except to say they are very real. Some are funny. Some are sad as she tries to understand exactly what happened to her. I went over the accident in great detail today, because at various times over the last few days she's lived through a range of emotion. At times she has thought she was just being 'checked out' as if the accident had just happened that morning; at others, she's been very afraid that, among other things, her children were in the car with her (upon meeting one orthopedic surgeon today, she thanked him for operating on her son), or that someone else was hurt or that I wasn't telling her everything that had happened.
I was quite busy with MG Sunday night and all day Monday. She is starting to deal with very real pain from multiple surgeries, combined with the side-effects of finding the right balance of pain-numbing drugs, plus multiple "tests" to determine: if she has any damage to her throat from the ventilator tubes,if  her lungs are remaining clear, how much she can move her feet (particularly her left foot), and if there was any nerve damage to the left leg.
So far, thankfully, MG has passed every important test (there are a few side effects she's dealing with, but there is every chance those will correct themselves with time).
But it occurred to me, after a particularly fitful night and frustrating morning, the problem is that while I realize the dangerous part is over, MG got to "sleep" through all of that and for her, the hard part is really just beginning as she comes to terms with all that has happened and all that will happen.
Needless to say, it's a shock to her system.

Finding the right balance to the drugs has not been easy, and paranoia is very real, particularly at night.
In fact, defining "night" is part of the problem: it's almost impossible for patients to determine day and night. If they sleep, it is usually a short "nap" that they often wake up from thinking it is a new day. By far, the nursing staff is caring and professional. But when two "strangers" come in and start dragging you around on your bed, it is frightening (the "dragging" is just repositioning the patients body, but it often involves pulling the patient over to one side or dragging them back up to the top of the bed when they slide down to the bottom or off to the side).

We all know you can't sleep in a hospital. Even the doctors in the trauma unit shake their heads and admit it's impossible to get a good night's sleep. Everyone just accepts that this is the way it is.
But my question is, why does it have to be that way?
Oh, for some patients I can understand. But it seems to me that with a little planning and scheduling, a good many of the night-time intrusions could be handled consecutively, instead of the nurses coming in to check medicine, then 10 minutes later a respiratory therapist comes in for a breathing treatment, then 10 minutes after that someone else comes in to check a temperature. Why can't they all make their rounds together? For that matter - with all apologies to respiratory therapists - why can't nurses be trained to do the breathing treatment they do? I mean, after watching them hook up a tube, turn a valve, then put a mask over the patients nose and mouth, I could do it. I'm not saying respiratory therapists aren't valuable and necessary; I'm just suggesting it's one more intrusion that could be done immediately after temperature taking and med-checking and patient-sliding, perhaps giving the patient at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted rest.
I know and am thankful that the nurses check constantly on the patients. But what are the monitors for, if not to tell them that the patient is breathing normally, the heart rate and blood pressure are normal, etc. etc.? Do they really have to wake the patient? The machines give off a warning when anything "reads" incorrectly - and that happens all the time. But I've yet to see a machine give off a "normal" reading when things are not normal.

I am sure this is all more complicated than I realize. But I can't believe hospitals can't come up with a better system for checking on patients during the night, to allow maximum sleep time. My friend Mitch spent a month in the hospital and told me they were concerned because he slept all day and was awake all night. But he said it was very simple: during the day, his wife was there to care and protect him, while at night the nurses and attendants were constantly waking him and disturbing him. His sleep patterns got completely out of whack.
There has to be a better way.
Today, MG was almost in tears because she needed to sleep. The day nurse, thankfully, closed the doors almost completely to shut out as much hallway noise as possible, and let us draw the curtain and turn down lights. Why can the day nurses get it, but the night nurses don't?
The good news is that by the end of the day, MG was worn out from so much activity - particularly the physical therapy - that she crashed and slept uninterrupted for several hours.

Again, she passed her swallowing tests, so hopefully MG will begin to get the three basic hospital food groups today: water, applesauce, and broth. She's breathing on her own. Her vitals are near-perfect. I was told as soon as a room in the "step-down" unit becomes available, she's on the list to move.

The waiting room community folks whose family member has already graduated to the "step-down" unit regale the rest of us with stories of how nice they are. MG was actually starting to get excited yesterday afternoon at the prospect of moving to a new, more private room where family and friends can visit in more comfort.
The best news, to me, is that she seems to be finding a balance and coming out of the episodes of ICU Psychosis. She understands how serious her condition is, and I think now understands we're in this for a long haul that will be painful, but manageable - with planning.

It is good to know that the psychosis is not permanent. It is nothing that shouldn't pass in a few days out of the ICU, with a few days of living "normal."
We weren't meant to live this way.
Thankfully, we won't have to live this way forever.

And that, too, will preach.

"Men at ease have contempt for misfortune''

It is Sunday morning. I feel like preaching.
Turn with me to the book of Job.
Of course.

In Chapter 12, Job says, "Men at ease have contempt for misfortune."
Remember, when the book of Job started, Job was the ultimate "man of ease." There is a litany of his holdings, his family, his wealth. He is a respected member of the community, one that people go to for advice and counsel.
Yet now, possibly looking back at his life, he has this realization. It couldn't have been easy to make, because none of us want to admit we look down on people less fortunate. But I think down deep we know it is true: when things are going good in our lives, when we've got money in our pocket and the mortgage is being paid and the car is running right and the wife and kids are relatively happy, we look at those less fortunate and think, "Well, if only they'd done what I've done they wouldn't be like that." Sure, we thank God for our good fortune, but there is a dangerous tendency to think that somehow, because we're so blessed, "me and God" as a friend of mine once told me when I asked about his good fortune, "are tight!"
During those times, we help other people. We're compassionate toward those in misfortune. But down deep, in those areas we don't like to explore, when we see things go wrong in the lives of other people or even in our own lives, we look for reasons: what did they/we/I do to bring this circumstance?
Your spouse or child gets sick, you can't help but wonder, did I do something to bring this on the person I love? Is it my fault?
You lose a job, and think, "Am I being punished for some sin that I'm unaware of?'
From a seemingly happy and worry free life one thing leads to another and soon you are having trouble paying the bills, but a car needs repair or there is an unexpected medical expense and soon you have to choose between the immediate and the long term. Before you know it, groceries and gas have to take priority over mortgage and loan and now the home is facing foreclosure.
It's easy enough to trace how you get to the current situation, but it's that first step that has you bewildered. Where did that first disaster come from? Why did it happen to me?
What did I do to deserve this?

Job's friend Zophar's whole speech in chapter 11 is about that: "You say to God, 'My beliefs are flawless, and I am pure in your sight.' Oh how I wish that God would speak, then he would open his lips against you and disclose to you the secrets of wisdom ..."
Zophar's idea of justice demands that God treat people "fairly." He can't accept that this amount of horror could befall Job if Job had truly been living an upright and blameless life. But we know what Zophar doesn't know: that Job didn't do anything to deserve this.
No, that's not exactly true either. Job got this because he was living an upright and blameless life, and that attracted the enmity of Satan.

There are people who don't believe God really cares about the individual happenings in our life, that He is above us and distant. Eastern religions teach that we live our lives over and over until we get it right (before simply  disappearing into Nirvana, becoming "one with the universe,'' losing our identity as individuals completely). Islam - again, the short version - says everything is as "Allah wills it,'' meaning whatever lot you find yourself in, that's what Allah intended for you. Accept it, deal with it, move on.
My faith teaches that God does indeed care about the individual happenings of my life (and yours). He is involved in not just the day to day, but the minute by minute. It doesn't make sense. Why would the God of the Universe care about me?
We Christians are not fatalistic. We believe God gives us the power to change our circumstance, that He wants us to change not only our condition but the condition of those around us. We have hope - not only for eternity, but "strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow."
I think that is the point of the book of Job. There is the cosmic struggle going on. My faith teaches that Satan rebelled against God, and his rebellion continues to this day, and the only way Satan knows how to "get" at God is through God's favorite creation, man. The more of us Satan can get to reject God, the more victories Satan can claim on his way to ultimate defeat - kind of a "doomsday'' scenario, where Satan realizes that he's going down, so he's bound and determined to take as much of God's creation with him on the way.
We might not like this honor that God has bestowed on us, of defending God's honor if you will (and I know theologians are rolling their eyes at the simplicity of that statement) in this cosmic battle of the seen and unseen.
But it is an honor that God thinks so highly of us, His creation, that He believes we will follow Him "regardless."

But sometimes, like Job in chapter 7, we say, "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him every moment?" Or, as my brother David said to me once, "Don't you think Job wanted to say to God, 'Why did You have to mention my name?'''

Job asks of his friends - and they are his friends, and their advice is as wise as they can make it, they just advise not really knowing the full story that we, the readers, know - to hold him accountable.
I find a couple of scenes very powerful in the book of Job: one where his friends intentionally come together and then go sit with Job in silent support, putting their own lives on hold for seven days; and then this scene where Job, despite the argument he's having with those friends, still wants them to hold him accountable for his life, his words and actions: "But now be so kind as to look at me. Would I lie to your face? Relent, do not be unjust; reconsider, for my integrity is at stake. Is there any wickedness on my lips? ..."

In the end, all Job knows to do is cling to his absolute faith that he has followed God faithfully. What he wants his friends to hold him accountable for is this: "Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for ... that I had not denied the words of the Holy One."

I'm not Job, holy and blameless and pure. My guess is, you don't see yourself that way either. I am the last person I'd expect whose life God sees such reflected glory in that He's willing to say to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Ray ..."
But I do believe that all of us are part of that. I do believe that God does say to Satan, "have you considered my servant (your name here)?" and that Satan sees it as a challenge to see if we - the followers of God - will "curse God and die" (as Job's wife, his closest confidant and helpmate, encouraged him to do - no doubt out of her own grief).
The good news for all of us is also that God placed boundaries around what Satan could and could not do to Job. Like Job, we have God's protection. He knows there are limits to what we can bear.

Sure, we ask "but why take the lives of Job's children and servants, innocents who did nothing to deserve what they got?" And I don't know the answer to that. I sit here beside my wife as she sleeps in a hospital bed, knowing she is still unaware of just what happened to her and the extent of her injuries. From my perspective, this happened to me. My guess is that from her perspective, she will ask why this happened to her.
And I know that we're fortunate. God's boundary did indeed put a limit on what was allowed to happen to us. Last night, MG said of the accident, "It's good that nobody died." She doesn't know, I don't think, how close she came to dying, that no one at the scene expected her to survive. And I know that it appears we're going to have what we'd call a "happy ending,'' (again, our perspective) and not everyone gets that.
And I don't know why.
All I know is that whatever I go through, whatever "life" sends my way, I want to be able to come out the other side and be able to say - like Job - "I have not denied the words of the Holy One."
I haven't always been able to say that. And I ask my brothers and sisters to hold me accountable.

I once heard a missionary preach who ended his talks with something like this: "That is the end of my words. But the sermon continues."
I know that is true.
But it's Sunday; go get some fried chicken and sweet tea.
And don't forget to say the blessing.

"I want to go home"

No, not me. I'm right where I want to be - watching MG as she dozes and wakes, looks around slowly and curiously, tries to adjust her position, then dozes back off to sleep.
This was a great day, a huge contrast to Friday night when MG was so miserable in her attempt at rest that in an act that I can only describe as cowardice, I finally just left. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't bring her any relief, couldn't figure out what she wanted (because honestly I don't think she really knew herself), and it hurt to see the hurt in her eyes. So I ran.
I came back today trying to brace myself for more of the same. I knew nothing would get better until they got MG off the ventilator and pulled the tubes from her throat. Since it was Saturday, my guess was they wouldn't do anything until Monday.
Then about 2 p.m., they (whoever "they" are) came in and said, "Let's try to pull the ventilator and see how she does."
But first, they had to know she could respond, follow commands and answer questions. The respiratory guy asked if she wanted the tubes out, MG didn't respond. I explained I'd just hit her morphine pump because she was in pain. He said "Then we'll have to wait."
I jumped over to MG and said loudly, "MG? MG! Do you want the tubes out of your throat?""
She woke up and nodded emphatically. The nurses saw it and called to the respiratory guy that she'd "strongly" nodded her head.
"Squeeze my hand!" I told her, and she squeezed my right hand with her left. I changed over to her left hand, "Squeeze my hand again!" I said. She did nothing.
"Come on, baby, squeeze my hand," I said.
She wiggled her toes.
"Good enough," I announced.
Fortunately, the respiratory folks and nurses agreed (concurred?) and within 15 minutes, she was off the ventilator, breathing on her own.
She coughed like a kitten with a fur ball, these cute little soft coughs. I knew her ribs had to be killing her.
After a few minutes, however, she looked at me. Her lips moved. I leaned way down to try to hear what she was saying, the first words she'd spoken to me since the morning she left - exactly two weeks ago - before "the accident."
She said: "I want to go home."

MG spent most of the afternoon in this kind of half-drugged state. I sat with her and tried to talk to her, but the doctors had told me not to let her talk too much because it would wear her out and she needed to rest.
At one point, however, she whispered, "take my shoes off." I laughed. So typically MG.
She was wearing these blue orthopedic booties that are designed to keep her foot at the proper angle. I made an executive decision to take off at least one of them. I went down and pulled off one of these blue monstrosities, held it up, and said, "What do you think? I bought these for you. I got them on sale. I thought they'd go great with my eyes."
She laughed. I don't know that it was me or the morphine, but it was just so great to see her respond, to laugh and smile, that I didn't care.

I sat with her until a little after 6 p.m. when visitors are supposed to leave for the nurses' shift change.
When I got back, the night nurse was with her.
"She asked me if she could see her husband," the nurse said. "I told her yes, that you'd be right back."
Later I would ask MG if she remembered talking to me that afternoon. She looked confused.
There would be a lot of confused looks that night.
The nurse also said - and those of you who know MG won't be surprised by this - "She asked me what the rules are. I've never, ever had a patient ask me what the rules are."

When I walked in after dinner - with SB, who'd come down to have dinner with me - we were greeted by the most wonderful smile and the closest thing to clear eyes I'd seen in weeks.
MG was worried about her father (he's OK, I'd just talked to him a few minutes before). She asked what happened to her. She was still half-drugged, but I told her she was in an accident - she was driving, by herself, when someone ran a red light and hit her. She was the only one hurt.
She looked confused for a few minutes. I could tell she couldn't remember anything.
"No one was with you,'' I said. "I should have been driving. That's why I always drive!"
She looked at me and slowly smiled and started shaking her head, to say "no."
I said, "I know. It was just one of those things."
She smiled.
"It's good no one died,'' she whispered.

Then it got funny. MG looked up at SB and started speaking French. SB has taken quite a bit of French but doesn't like to speak it (she's Southern, after all!). MG looked at me and asked me to speak French. The only phrases I know in French are "How are you" and that song by Lady Marmalade.
MG laughed.
I wondered if this was going to be one of those stories you hear about, where the person comes out of the coma speaking with a foreign accent.
Fortunately, The Heir showed up. One of his majors in French. So he started in, and MG just got this big, pleasant smile on her face.
Now, remember, she's still drugged up - awake, but not really.
The Young Prince was there, hanging back. I said, "Gray is here."
Gray stepped up closer, but MG just stared past him, like he wasn't there. He said, "She's not even looking at me. She's looking at the TV!"
MG turned her head to me and winked.
We busted out laughing. She'd "punk'd" all of us.

It was so much fun - the five of us, standing around talking and laughing. At one point she asked me to speak Spanish - I don't know any Spanish either, other than "Jose Cuervo. Pedro Bourbon. Cesar Cedano." I went into my Pepe Le Pew accent, and started singing "Chantilly Lace''  with a semi-French accent (don't ask me do this for you unless you're in the hospital and on morphine), which only lasted a few lines until it became a bad Big Bopper imitation. At one point, MG actually sang part of a line with me - and she never sings.. It was that kind of night. A family night. A great night to be together. A night in which we knew - for sure - that everything was going to be all right.

All afternoon, MG kept asking me to get her out of the hospital. She kept saying, "I don't need to be here,'' and "this isn't a good place for me to be."
I told her if she really wanted, I'd find a way to get her out of here, but that it might take me a few days. I was kind of lying of course. Earlier I'd told her she was going to be in her for "at least a week" and she started crying. I knew she wasn't ready to hear the truth.
This time, she looked at me and whispered something. I leaned in really close again.
"I love you,'' she said.
Choked up with emotion, I told her I loved her too.
And then she looked at me with those deep green-brown eyes and said, "Now get me out of here."

I can't, of course. But with every passing hour, she becomes a little more aware. I know she doesn't know how long she's been in the hospital. I'm almost positive she doesn't understand the extent of her injuries. As she becomes more awake, we can discuss those things, plus what the next few weeks are going to look like.
But as I gave her a tiny sponge of water (she's not allowed to actually drink yet), she smiled and called me her "Aquaman." I have no idea where that came from. The kids were there, and we all busted out laughing. She laughed, too.

I got a text from SB.
"How's Mama resting?'' she said.
I answered with one word:
"Beautifully."