Ill carry the fork, p.4
I'll Carry the Fork!, page 4
Although I talk about attorneys and their significance in a later chapter, one of the most important things my attorney ever did for me had nothing to do with litigation.
Six months into my recovery, I was still bewildered by the idea that this was a “mild” injury and that tests indicated no serious damage. Though several doctors subsequently criticized that diagnosis, given to me by one of the specialists I saw for a few minutes early on, the term stuck. We live in a society that registers blood and stitches and bruises and crutches as proof of injury and I was no different. In the absence of those obvious props, I started to wonder if I was going crazy. You think, My God! It’s not bad enough? There’s not enough damage? That’s like telling a family that just lost their home to an earthquake that it’s no big deal, the quake didn’t register very high on the Richter scale.
My attorney wrote me a letter and likened my injury to a symphony orchestra. He said the tests could tell you if all the trumpet players were present or if the string section was accounted for, but they could not tell you how well the musicians communicated with the conductor, or how each individual was playing. He explained that with a head injury, all the musicians might be present, but some might not be playing, or not in the right key. Finally, I was starting to understand. I imagined that half my orchestra was playing Beethoven and the rest of those lazy bastards were in the dressing room eating pizza.
My speech therapist told me that the term “mild” described the severity of the injury, not the duration of recovery. That was important. She told me that I could experience “mild” symptoms for years, maybe permanently. A lot would heal, most likely, as my brain recovered and the nerves and connectors found new pathways to determine and detect messages. But she cautioned there was no way of telling just how long it would take or how much would return.
One of my doctors explained that if my brain were a house (mine was most likely a messy house), everything I knew before the accident was in storage down hallways and behind closed doors. The theory was that even though an earthquake might rock the foundation, I still had that information. I just needed to go down those hallways, pry open the doors, turn on the lights and sift through those rooms. It would take time.
I cannot say enough about those doctors and therapists and attorneys who kept searching for stories and other ways to describe the effects of brain trauma. They were like teachers with a troubled student, trying to find new ways to say the same thing. They suspected, as I did, that understanding as much as I could about the injury would help my acceptance of, compensation for and recovery from it. When you’re catapulted into your first significant injury, you’re instantly behind the eight ball in more ways than one. It’s like lacing up skates for the first time—then going out to play goalie in the Stanley Cup finals.
Of course, those goalies are said to be a little off the wall anyway. Maybe we’re onto something here.
Loving All My PETS But This One
UNDERSTANDING “PAIN AND SUFFERING” Ju l y 23, 1996
The young man and I chatted easily about the beautiful Upper Peninsula. He was originally from Louisville and was planning to backpack up near Pictured Rocks.
I eagerly stoked the conversation with questions about his decision to attend school and we talked about the respected reputation of Wayne State University. As I chatted along, I made myself oblivious to the needle biting my arm as the young man displayed the skills of his internship.
They laid a heated sheet of pliable plastic over my face, with holes arranged around my eyes, nose and mouth. As it cooled, it formed a firm mask they could fasten to the table by the edges so that I wouldn’t move. Soothingly, they told me that I would need to remain still during the test, as they secured my arms with tightened straps across my ribs, eliminating any other possibility of movement.
43 The “pictures” would take 20 minutes, during which time I could not move. The first 10 minutes or so were easy. I imagined I resembled Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs.
But slowly, gradually, the back of my head became numb and my fingers and feet tingled. I lay on what felt like a great mass, unable to distinguish between my head and neck. My nose itched and I told myself (mind over matter!) it would go away.
The pressure on the lower back of my head became almost intolerable. I told myself they would come soon, and I strained to see them behind the safety glass that protected them from radioactivity.
When they finally came and removed the mask, my head was numb and I shook my hands to chase away the pins and needles.
They changed the IV and put a pillow behind my head, dimming the lights as they left the room. Here I would stay, quiet and still for 30 minutes, while my body absorbed the dripping stranger.
My mind dozed. I wondered how my brain looked in neon. I glanced at the clock. It had now been an hour and a half since this whole ordeal started.
When they returned, the pillow was removed and the mask and straps returned. I felt like I had been paroled, and now my return to solitary was frightening because this time I knew what the next 20 minutes would entail.
The pressure increased quickly this time, my hands and feet tingling almost immediately. There was no relief; I could not move. My eyes watered. I blinked away the tears so I could see the clock on the right wall. I mentally counted the minutes.
Loving All My PETS But This One 45 I was sweating now. I began to panic. I struggled to raise my head, even just a fraction, to relieve the pressure. I could not.
I fought the panic. I pictured being anywhere but there. I closed my eyes. I told myself that it would be over. That I could do it.
My mouth started to water and I thought I would vomit. I looked to the window and one of the women was talking on the phone. She was keeping tabs on me, and I mentally counted the time it would take for her to realize I was in trouble if I threw up while lying on my back beneath a mask with my arms bound.
I knew then why they call the night before a PET scan for “next of kin” emergency numbers. I also knew why, unlike the MRI and CT scans, they bound your arms and did not give you an emergency button. I would have been all over that table like a fish on land, pushing the button till all of Nuclear Medicine knew this hurt like hell. It was like having the back of your head slowly impaled. The term “pain and suffering” lawyers use when seeking damages in injury cases took on vivid new meaning.
I also understood why they don’t tell you quite everything, because after that first time I would have been out the door, down the hall and halfway home before they came at me with that mask.
I fought not to call out and tell them to stop the test. I told myself that if the test was invalidated, I would forfeit the chance they would find something in me to fix. And I knew I would not agree to another test, couldn’t go through this again, if this first test was compromised.
When they finally came in and removed the mask and the straps, I wiped the sweat from my face. I felt my jeans cling to the back of my legs and my shirt was damp. I sat up, regaining my balance and tapping my feet together to restore the feeling.
We exchanged pleasantries as they walked me to the door and wished me well. I went outside, found a grassy hill, sat down and cried.
Confidence, Esteem and Consciousness
BE TRUE TO YOUR SELVES Au gu s t 4, 1996
It was late July. The summer had been mild, so this afternoon of mid-90 degree temperatures and wilting humidity really took my breath away. I was walking home, laboring from the heat and suffering from an ego that would not let me call someone to pick me up.
As I approached a Dairy Queen, I saw a little girl holding a woman’s hand. The resemblance was
unmistakable: mother and daughter. The little girl turned my way, her eyes magnetically pulled to my cane.
Her eyes were big with wonder and curiosity. Eyes that asked, “Mommy, what’s that?” Eyes that did not yet judge, not yet criticize, not yet ridicule.
I smiled. A warm, welcoming smile. If I had been in line behind them, perhaps I might have bent down and said hello. I might have let her hold my cane, twirling it like a baton, giggling away the stigma. I would have delighted in the innocence that knows no prejudice.
47 In front of her face appeared a tiny cone of swirled chocolate that soon would run down the sides before she could catch it with her tongue. Her mother, looking down to see why her daughter had not taken the cone from her, followed the line of her beautiful eyes until she saw me, inching along in the afternoon sun.
She took her child’s head between thumb and fingers and sharply snapped it toward the wall. She bent down, and in a voice meant perhaps to apologize to me, said, “You don’t stare at cripples!”
The good thing about being disabled (or, as I prefer, “differently abled”) is that you never have to worry about your appearance. You can stop wearing makeup. Stop shaving your legs. Let your eyebrows connect in the middle. You don’t have to brush your hair, or even wash it. You can wear bunny slippers to restaurants, match stripes with plaids, or go naked as the day you were born. Because the second you sit in a wheelchair or use a walker or take up a cane or attach braces to limbs or patches to eyes, everyone stops looking at you.
I imagine that little girl with the ice cream cone will grow up automatically diverting her eyes to the floor in the presence of disability. She will be taught that people with physical and cognitive impairments are to be looked away from, stepped aside for, treated as invisible or, if unavoidably noticed, viewed with beagle-eyed pity.
When I was walking home one day, two teenagers on bikes rode by and yelled, “Fucking retarrrd!” One wellmeaning man told me I should get a three-wheeler so I wouldn’t have to walk everywhere. Then he paused and said, “But no, then people would think you’re retarded.” How nice.
Our self-worth and self-esteem are tied so terribly tightly to our careers and possessions and physical appearance, and by how we measure up to the people next door, at the next desk or next in line. We hide behind suits and titles and gauge our importance by how high up the ladder we’ve ascended. We tally points for how many things we’ve accumulated, how expensive a car we drive, how big a house we own. We are judged by our manicured lawns and our platinum lines of credit. By the standard of youth and beauty. By our ability to eliminate or hide the effects of age. We are a society that binds, colors, tucks, hides and trims everything about us that makes us who we are, everything that reflects the entirety of our experiences. We worship the kind of beauty that comes from bottles, creams, pills and lotions. And we discard those who become too old, too weak, too damaged, too fat, too ugly or too poor.
I was a successful catering manager before my accident. Losing my job and my career was a blow I was ill-prepared to handle. Accepting that I would probably never play basketball or dance freely again made me confront a reality that arrived 50 years too soon. Half a century before I expected it. The idea that I might never drive again, at the age of 32, was incomprehensible. Utilizing a cane to ambulate safely, and equipping my home and lifestyle to accommodate the changes in my health and abilities, were unwelcome reminders that sometimes the future comes right up your steps, pounds on the door, and forces its way in whether you’re dressed and ready to meet it or not.
I gained 30 pounds before I stopped counting. While doctors worried about dizziness when I bent to tie my shoes, I worried that I would asphyxiate myself. I had these disgusting growths on my face from the medication I was taking. My breasts were lactating at one point. I was stooped over and shuffling around with the cane. If you get the feeling I was having a hard time finding the inspiration to get out of the house and participate in the new life assigned to me— you’re right.
The recovery process is a fine example of the “long and winding road” made famous by the Beatles’ song. At the beginning, we’re so adamant about returning quickly to the life we had. It’s hurry, hurry, hurry and fix me so I can get back to everything I’ve created and everything I’ve known. The system immediately sweeps you up, informing you of an injury you don’t understand and refuse to believe. It convinces you until you finally trade denial for acceptance. Then it sends you to more professionals to make sure you’re not lying. To keep your expectations realistic, the system is very guarded in its optimism and attempts to keep your optimism in check, too. A few months down the road, it sends you to more professionals to find out why you feel so hopeless and depressed.
The process starts with a shining mountain called “expectation of recovery,” slides down into a valley where no hope blossoms, and eventually evens out somewhere on the side of the road when you get off the bus and make your own decision about where you really want to travel. You have to get past the point of realizing you can’t go back but not yet knowing how to go forward. In the privacy of your own thoughts you find yourself battling naked, stripped of the armor you once hid behind, left to survive on the rations of a self-identity that feels as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.
Advice for climbing the mountain called success is abundantly available. There’s no shortage of experts to tell us what clothes to wear and what stocks to purchase and what courses to take and what foods to eat. Apply this moisturizer. Try these running shoes. Take these vitamins. Save this amount for retirement by the time you’re 30.
But we don’t offer fluffy pillows for soft landings when people stumble off that mountain. The rate of suicide and violence and depression in this country is astounding for those who don’t make the grade. Oh, you’re a model who just turned 40? Sorry. Hey you, over there, the pitcher who’s lost the heat on his fastball: see ya! Oh, wow, sorry you were downsized by a computer seven months before retirement. Lost your legs while serving our country overseas? Tough break, man! For these we have no vitamins or moisturizers or easy answers.
One of the most important steps in recovering from any traumatic event is realizing you need help—that you can’t always make it by yourself—and finding the strength to seek it out. Somewhere along the way, pride becomes not only stifling but also dangerous. A blow to the head means a blow to the ego, self-esteem and confidence of the victim. And these symptoms, unlike those of memory and attention, are likely to become worse when left untreated.
It only took seconds to sustain a head injury. But it took days to name it, weeks to deny it and months to understand it. My independence was gone. Not only did I depend on my parents for money and my friends for food and transportation, I had to realize and accept the importance of people who specialize in brain injury. I had to put my bull-headedness aside long enough to allow the doctors and attorneys and therapists to help me put my life back together.
We’ve got to stop snapping our children’s heads to the wall in the face of disability. If we teach them that “different” cannot even be acknowledged, much less welcomed, what will we be able to tell them if they’re unfortunate enough to end up on the bus?
Too many people become senselessly damaged and cognitively disabled by head injury. We cannot afford to let young minds be senselessly damaged by misguided fear and prejudice.
Double Take
GRIEVING THE LOSS My T h e r a p i s t
She is my full-length mirror
With a voice.
My honest mechanic,
Fixing even those things I don’t know to be wrong. She is a mile-marker in my marathon,
My safari guide to uncharted feelings,
The interpreter in the language of my life.
My therapist is the one in my corner who believes enough To never step in and stop the fight.
She is my rear view mirror,
Warning that objects in my past may be closer Than they appear.
My therapist is my calendar,
Reminding me that spring follows winter.
She is my interior decorator,
Helping to polish the structure I have built.
53 Therapists. Once considered mainly the paid companions of the wealthy, they have crossed the bridge from trendy luxury to household necessity. The microwaves of the ’90s: accessible means of bringing quick warmth to shivering souls.
My friend Christine, a therapist in Denver, called to tell me that she had heard a psychologist speak on the importance of psychotherapy in recovering from brain injury. Although I was willing to sing praises about therapy as a tool in understanding one’s past and dissecting patterns of behavior in relationships, I was not quite certain how my therapist was going to help me overcome the physical, behavioral and cognitive challenges I now faced.
I knew brain injuries to be as distinct and discrete as the people who sustained them. I suspected that effective treatment and support, though probably outlined in some “how to” manual for mental health professionals, would demand an open mind from both of us.
I was fortunate to have a therapist who not only anticipated my success, but was also extremely patient and goodhumored. She would be tested.
The problems associated with brain injury are complex and far-reaching. They run the gamut from acceptance to adjustment to depression to loss of identity and self-esteem, and the priorities—figuring out where to start—can be as incoherent as the injured brain itself. I had my therapist, Ginger Keena, metaphorically juggling bowling balls and flaming torches, and her challenge was not to drop any regardless of the distractions I provided.
I considered our sessions to be escapes from the medical battle I was waging, reprieves from the stoic soldier I had become. I had (prematurely) buried the feelings of self-pity and grief in the company of those who continued to remind me how “lucky” I was. Ginger encouraged me to allow those feelings to surface and to examine them without fear of guilt or repercussion. Gradually we began to integrate the compartments labeled “my injury” and “my life.” It wasn’t easy.
When I vacillated between the extremes of either minimizing my injury or being consumed by it, she urged me to lay it right out on the table and really look at it. By acknowledging its impact on my life, and by having a safe and consistent environment to work in, I was able to start getting some perspective of life beyond the injury. But it was a long process.
