I had someone wishing me a happy birthday ask about the\nhealing progress so I thought I’d let you all know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These days I talk a lot and I tend to talk mainly about\nmyself, so if you’re not inclined to wade through it feel free to skip it and\nmove on. I won’t be offended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has been nine months since the incident. Sometimes someone will call it an accident\nand I tell them, “I have no memory so I can’t know for sure whether it was\naccidental or intentional.” I call\nit the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is about a two and a half week gap in my memory\nbeginning with the incident. To say I\nhave no memory of it is not entirely correct. \nI have about a seven second memory of the time leading up to the\nincident. According to witnesses I was\napproaching a freighter and was within a car length by their observations. What I recall was the handlebars beginning to\nviolently wobble. I don’t remember the\nprogression into a full tank slapper. \nI’m sure it occurred. I assessed\nthe problem as a high speed wobble induced by the air flow off the freighter\nand recall consciously deciding I needed to avoid rapid deceleration. It was the wrong decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had left my Saturday meeting early to ride south to meet\nthe Kansas Valkyrie riders for lunch in El Dorado. My path would lead me to join the Kansas\nTurnpike at Emporia about an hour and a half into the ride. I was wearing a half shell helmet, summer\ngloves and a Joe Rocket armored mesh jacket. \nI was carrying a pair of leather chaps in the saddlebag. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first Kansas State trooper on the scene beat the EMT\nteam there. He commented, “He kept\ntrying to turn over but I was afraid he would drown in the blood.\u201d The helmet had one snap ground away, a slight\nscrape on the side evident and some disturbance of the rubber liner across the\nfront above the face. I tell my friends\nthat if you want to save your equipment the proper strategy is to land on your\nface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I apparently hit the pavement on the right side of my face\nat something at or around eighty miles per hour. After impact I did some sliding and\nrolling. Witnesses say the bike passed\nover me, but I don’t fully trust their observation at distance. The trooper on scene noticed a blood sugar\nkit among the contents of my saddlebags scattered over the road. When the EMTs arrived he asked them to\nmeasure my blood sugar. It registered\nforty-eight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s it, he decided. \nHe simply went into a diabetic low sugar reaction and lost control of\nthe bike. When my friends picked up the bike they found it would not hold air\nin the rear tire and discovered there a hole that looked as if someone had\ninserted and retracted a good sized bolt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was transported by helicopter some sixty miles to\nStormont-Vail Hospital in Topeka. The\ndoctors there assessing the damage came up with a long list. The flesh was worn through on the backs of my\nhands and both knees. They listed\nmultiple fractures in the hands. The\nmiddle finger of my left hand was broken above the knuckle. The left arm was fractured lengthwise. The right eye socket was shattered along with\nthe sinuses, the nose and other facial bones. \nThere was a chip of my chin bone missing. The nose appeared to be out of place and the\nleft half of the lower lip had been torn away but not completely\ndisconnected. There was a laceration on\nthe inside of the mouth and the neck area was significantly swollen. The flesh of the face was badly scraped,\nbruised, and torn. C1 vertebrae was fractured\nwith minimal displacement. There was a\nconcussion and brain bleed on the right side and a brain shear between the\nfrontal lobe and the main part of the brain. \nThere was a laceration on the inside of the mouth and the neck area was\nsignificantly swollen. Added was the\ncomment that, \u201cHe has a broken toe.\u201d \nThis was despite the presence of steeled toed boots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lori was on her way to our son’s girlfriend’s daughter’s\nbirthday party with our granddaughter in the car. Her cell phone rang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Hello.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Hello. Is this\nLori Beth?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Yes.” \nThere was a problem. Only her\nhusband calls her Lori Beth and it was not his voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Has anyone told you that your husband was in an\naccident?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“No.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He was in an accident on the turnpike and was flown to\nStormont Vail in the ER.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Stormont Vail? \nWhere is that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Stormont Vail in Topeka.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Is he okay? \nWhat is his condition?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I can’t tell you that. \nHe’s in the ER at Stormont Vail”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She asked him repeatedly where is Stormont Vail? She was having trouble concentrating or\nprocessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She finished, or at least ended the conversation in time to\narrive at the birthday party. Our youngest\ndaughter, the granddaughter’s mother met her and must have seen something\ntroubling on their faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Are you okay?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I think so.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What’s wrong?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Paw Paw has been in an accident.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I have to go home and clean out my car so I can bring\nhim home.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Forget cleaning your car. You have to go.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I have to go tell Tim.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Okay. Hurry,\nyou need to go.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He needs to stay at Lina’s party.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You need to go. \nCall us when you know something.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lori was experiencing some shock and fighting to pick out\nthe thoughts that made sense. It’s sixty\nmiles from Olathe to Topeka and about an hour and a half’s travel time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lori started out toward Topeka and during that time was\nalmost constantly on the phone. She\ntalked to people far away and near. She\ntalked to the riders in El Dorado who wondered why I hadn’t shown up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Lori arrived at the hospital she was greeted by our\nfriend from Wamego, an EMT, who was there to meet her with a cold drink. My boss from work was already there and they\nwere joined sometime later by Joe and Teryl, our friends from Topeka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next few days half of my eight children, my wife,\nseveral of my friends, and as a pastor locally in Topeka spent time in and out\nof my hospital room. I am told that I\ninteracted with these visitors but I have no recollection of what was said or\nheard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The medical people and Brian, the EMT, early on advised Lori\nof the expected result of the brain injuries. \n“He has no filter,” they explained among much other\ninformation. That has reference to how\nmost people deal with social interactions. \nPeople carry in front of them an image that they present to everyone\naround them. Before saying or doing\nanything, the last question that occurs to them is, how will this make me\nlook? The brain injured person has no\nsuch image or question. I told my\nfriends that that means whatever bounces between my ears comes out my mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was apparently in a lot of pain those first few days. There was a lot of morphine involved and my\nthroat would not allow any food to pass for the first four days. The doctors were involved with stitching my\nface back together, wrapping both hands to the point of unuseability, and\nwatching very closely as to whether the brain bleed would stop or need\nintervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a conflict arose after the first few days at\nStormont. The trauma surgeon was intent\non dealing with the wrist and arm but the throat was still very swollen. He began to schedule surgery and the first\nanesthesiologist he contacted responded negatively to the risk of the swollen\nneck. The surgery was cancelled. The trauma surgeon then approached a\ndifferent anesthesiologist and received a second refusal. His third selection gave him a positive and\nhe scheduled the surgery for the next morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Lori heard that the surgeon had scheduled surgery on my\nhand despite the refusal of the first two anesthesiologists she was greatly\ndispleased. She expressed her\ndispleasure. Among her complaints was\nthat the doctor in care of my condition had not conversed at all with her. What information she had was from attending\nnurses and a friend, Joe\u2019s mother, that was working at the hospital. I think that friend may have been pressured to\nretire over the help that she gave Lori.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lori requested that I be transferred to the hospital closer\nto home sixty miles away. At first the\nhospital administration pushed against the transfer. They explained to Lori that the required\nambulance ride would be very expensive and would not be covered by\ninsurance. Discussion continued and\nthose holding the power of the decision were made aware of the lack of\ncommunication to Lori and her discomfort with the medical decisions pursued\nwithout her input or approval. The\nhospital agreed after some discussion to transfer me to the hospital near home. The Topeka hospital picked up the charge for\nthe ambulance ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was especially hard on Lori those few days. The oxygen mask on my face was irritating to\nme. I would move or try to move it off\nmy face and Lori would put it back. I\nwould try to get out of bed and Lori would prohibit me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That first night at OPRMC was particularly stressful. Maybe it was the change of environment. Maybe it was just that time in the process. Lori sat with me in the new room. I was treating her harshly with more\nintensity that night. After some time I\nsaid to her, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just go home. \nYou\u2019re only stopping me from doing what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was crying. She\nstopped by the nurses\u2019 desk on her way out. \n\u201cHe\u2019s going to try to get out of bed,\u201d she told them. She was greatly concerned about my getting\nout of bed as much of my body and especially my knees were not functional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The charge nurse that night was a male. He told her, \u201cYou don\u2019t need to worry. His room will be right next to the nurses\u2019\nstation. The alarms on his bed will\nalert us anytime he starts to move.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That night I found myself in a hotel room in\nWashington. Washington was where I went\nto pick up the Valkyrie Interstate that I had purchased some three years\nprior. From my bed I could see the\nwindow. It was night and dark but I\nwanted to see out the window. The next\nthing I knew I was on the floor and there was a man on one side of me and a young\nwoman on the other. The floor was\nslippery and I wondered what these people were doing in my room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStay down! Why\ndon\u2019t you just stay down!?\u201d The male was\nhollering at me. He didn\u2019t want me to\nget up off the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About 02:00 that morning Lori got a phone call. It was from a female nurse. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to have to make this\ncall. He got out of bed.\u201d Apparently I had landed forcefully on my\nhead. Previous diagnoses had indicated a\nconcussion and bleed on the right side of my brain. After that night diagnoses indicated\nconcussions and bleeds on both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next many days are without notation in my memory. I had been at OPRMC some five years prior and this time I was served by my favorite doctor and nurse\nfrom that visit. They put plates in my arm\nand my left middle finger. No surgical\naction was taken to deal with the C1 but I was required to wear a neck brace\nfor the next several months. My face had\nbeen stitched back together in Topeka. Apparently,\nthe concussions began to heal without further incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only other memory I have of the time at OPMRC is being\nloaded into a van to be transported to the rehabilitation unit of St. Luke\u2019s\nhospital some four miles east. I was\ntransported sitting in a wheelchair. I\ndon\u2019t recall whether I was belted to the chair but I suspect that was required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was released from the hospital there were two bits of\nadvice that Lori got from the doctors that stuck with her. One was, \u201cDon\u2019t let him blow his nose. His sinuses are shattered.\u201d The other was, \u201cRemember he has no filter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we arrived at St. Luke\u2019s West there seemed to be some\ndelay in getting me into a room. I was\nleft alone sitting in the wheelchair in a room that had a large glass window\nbehind me and a wall with several televisions in front of me. They were playing Steve Harvey\u2019s Family\nFeud. They broadcasted one episode after\nanother for what seemed like a very long time. \nThrough the window behind me I could see it was storming outside with\nrepeated sheets of rain hitting the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lori tells me there are large portions of that memory that\nsimply are not true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I healed well over the next week. My mind and memory began to return to near\nnormal. Each day I was visited by\nmultiple medical technicians. Of course,\nthere were the nurses. I had a sessions\nwith a physical therapist, with a speech therapist, and with an occupational\ntherapist. There was a wound specialist,\na man near my age, who came each day to apply treatment to the backs of my\nhands, my knees and to my face. Meagan,\nthe occupational therapist washed me each day. \nIt seemed not disturbing for her\nto be in the shower when I was. I was\nnormally seated in the shower and when it came time for my more private areas\nto be washed she would toss the washcloth into my lap and step away. I don\u2019t know what she did before I was healed\nenough to remember or to participate in washing myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every day Lori and my youngest daughter would come to my\nroom and sit with me. They were a great\ncomfort to me. Lori\u2019s devotion was above and beyond as she\ncared for me. It was a great\nencouragement for me to be visited by my daughter. I was not a good father to her as she grew up\nbut she was my best friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day I advised the physical therapist that I did not\nrespond to pain as do normal people. The\ninstructions to do something until it hurt didn\u2019t work well with me. Faced with pain I usually push to see how\nmuch of it I can take. She tried to kill\nme that day. I went back to my room so\nworn out I just laid myself down and went to sleep. My speech therapist came in that day but\ndecided I need my sleep more than I needed her session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day my motorcycle riding friends came from far and near\nto surprise me. My friends came from\nTexas, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota and Nebraska. They parked their bikes where I could see\nthem from the window. It was a group of\nmore than fifteen loving friends, a genuine emotional uplift in my healing process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The time came for my release from the rehab center. That day some of my motorcycle riding friends\ncame again. We went by the barbeque place on the way home. They prepared and modified my home to provide\nfor my needs. We celebrated together for\nawhile and then I went to sleep that night in my own home. I was in my own home but I could not yet be\ntrusted in my own bed. It was too high\nfor a man needing the support of a neck brace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They had placed a twin bed in my home office on which I\ncould sleep alone. Actually, almost\neverything I needed was either in or brought to the office. The twin was not high off the floor and was\none I had built for one of my children many years before. That first or second night home Lori awakened\nto see me standing next to our queen sized bed in which she was sleeping. After that she made a pallet on the floor\nnext to the twin and slept there so I would have to step across her to get out\nof bed. She complained that I would\nsleep for forty-five minutes and then talk for two hours. This cycle repeated all night long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had spent eleven of my formative years, seventeen to\ntwenty-nine, as an active duty Marine. It\nhad an impact on my verbiage. As I grew\nI chose to remove the profanities from my mouth but I had never removed them\nfrom my mind. My children were shocked\nto at times hear coming from my mouth words and phrases that they had never\nbefore heard from me. It was through\nthat experience that two paths took place. \nOne was a deep belief that it is not how a word is spelled that matters\nbut what the word means. We have as a\nculture separated some words into buckets of good words and bad words. Some of us will only use good words while\nwe\u2019re in certain companies. Some of us will\nnever use bad words. In the using of the\ngood words we are sort of pretending that we don\u2019t talk about things that bad\nwords indicate but we do. I see a\ncertain amount of hypocrisy in that. \nIt\u2019s not how the word is spelled that matters but what it means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other issue was the realization that I had held the use\nof profane words and phrases in my mind but short of my mouth for many\nyears. It was through that experience\nthat I learned that it\u2019s not enough to change the outside, the appearance, but we\nmust change from the inside, from the heart. \nIf there is something wrong that comes off my hands or from my mouth it\nis not my hands or my mouth that have a problem. It is my heart. I have worked hard at removing curse words\nfrom the inside. I have worked hard to\neradicate the word that refers wrongly to what should lovingly take place between\na husband and wife. Sometimes that one\ncomes back but it is becoming more and more rare. For many, many years I never used the obscene\nhand gesture. It came back. These days I am tempted often, most often in\ntraffic. I\u2019m making progress but these\ndays if I go for a month without violating my standard I consider it a victory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the brain injury \nI became more aware than ever before of the need for a Christian to\nsurrender himself to the will and use of God. \nWe had long used the term surrender when describing the salvation\nexperience but it was usually just a word. \nWe most regularly focused on ourselves being snatched from certain\ndisaster and looked past the concept of giving oneself over entirely to be used\nand completely owned by our Heavenly Father. \nIn my prayer of thanks for a meal I, as many, regularly used the phrase,\n\u201cbless this food to our body\u2019s good.\u201d \nAfter the experience I have added, \u201cand bless our bodies to Your\npurpose, Lord.\u201d I work each day to make\nthat surrender complete. It is an\nongoing and ever learning experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There would be more adventures. There was the visit to the plastic surgeon to\nremove the stitches, or at least most of them, from my lip. One hasn\u2019t experienced the wide span of life\nuntil someone has stuck a needle into his lip to inject lidocaine. There was\nalso the struggle to get past the requirement of a psychological exam to\ndetermine that my mind was adequate to allow me to practice the privileges of a\ndriver\u2019s license again. There was the\njourney of healing enough that I could take off the neck brace and ride in the\nfront seat of the car again. There was\nthe trip to South Texas to retrieve a replacement for my destroyed Interstate. There was and continues to be the journey back\nto near normalcy. There is growth, some\naway from the injury experience and some learning from and retaining some parts\nof the injury experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Life goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had someone wishing me a happy birthday ask about the healing progress so I thought I’d let you all know. These days I talk a lot and I tend to talk mainly about myself, so if you’re not inclined …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1244,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}