(Losing) An Arm & A Leg

     Dang if it didn't happen again; my right arm got whacked and I'm now temporarily disabled, my hand swollen to double its size and my movement virtually nil.  Now don't think I'm whining or feeling sorry for myself but if there's one thing this accident has made me realize is that I take a lot for granted when it comes to the other half of me, or my "other" arm.  Right now (day 4) I still can't lift, grab or hold any weight with my arm, my hand quick to send out sharp nerve pain "reminders" when I do so.  And with my hand now temporarily (I hope) out of commission, "simple" tasks such as pulling up a zipper take about a minute (I have to lean into a cabinet or something to "hold down" the bottom part of my shorts while I pull up the zipper); I've also discovered that getting those "child-proof" caps off of bottles is far too difficult for one hand (normal "capped" bottles I can press against a counter while I twist them off); and turning off a simple light switch on the wall takes a bit of planning and yes, elbow coordination (don't ask about toilet paper).  Even the old routines of placing my keys and phone in the usual pockets have to be thought out. 

     All of this has made me realize the shock others must experience when they unexpectedly lose an arm or leg (or both) in an accident or on the battlefield.  Or face the death of a spouse who basically handled the finances (when my dad passed away, my mother used to tell me that she never realized how much he did, now that she was doing everything by herself).  Companies adjust and replace CEOs if something unexpected happens, and soldiers and others return to face years and years of therapy in learning to use prosthetics.  Whether it's an eye or a leg or some other trauma, people survive and emerge as "new" persons, constantly adapting and learning as doors seem to close unexpectedly, people  don't seem to see you until the last minute, and things that you always thought were easy suddenly are a bit of a challenge...your life changes.  But what if physically you were fine but your mind was going in different directions?

     My neighbors recommended a book by Kurt Eichenwald titled A Mind Unraveled about his dealing with his epilepsy and how people reacted to it (the tongue swallowing threat proves to be a bit of a myth, he says).  The general image of an epileptic seizure is that of a grand mal seizure, the body stiffening out of control and shaking almost violently, the person seemingly helpless to "awaken" (they are indeed often not awake or aware when those types of seizures happen).  But Eichenwald progresses if you will, to a new level, that of the atonic seizure.  As Eichenwald wrote: Innocuous name, ghastly problem.  Unlike convulsions, where muscles tighten before the body starts jerking, atonic seizures involve a sudden, complete loss of muscle tone...The experience of a convulsion was akin to waking up after a car accident, nursing wounds from a calamity I didn't remember.  These new seizures were like driving down a busy highway knowing I would lose control of the car --maybe in a few hours, maybe in a few seconds-- and then skid helplessly into a tree as metal crunches my body and glass cut my face.

     The difference between the two, Eichenwald noted, is that you're fully aware of what is happening during an atonic seizure.  Here's his description of one of his atonic seizures while he was at college:  Without warning, my muscles went limp, and I plunged down a flight of stairs.  I was conscious, feeling every slam, every bump, every scrape, but I never flinched.  It was as if I had suddenly become paralyzed.  After crashing to the bottom, I was bruised and beaten but not in agony -- nothing broken...The falls occurred anytime; staying in my room at night accomplished nothing.  Witnesses to my collapses marveled at how quickly I went from upright to crumpled on the ground.  I frequently heard the words "You fell like a ton of bricks."  One friend likened it to seeing a marionette tumble after someone cut its strings.

     My own wound is healing, that I know; but the process itself is as astounding as something from a science fiction tale.  Here's the medical take from Monty Lyman's book on skin (I mentioned him in an earlier post): In wounds that are wider and more extensive than a paper cut, the skim recruits a remarkable team of especially brawny builders, the myofibroblasts.  These travel to the wound edges and contract, pulling the wound closer together at a speed of almost 1mm a day.  If needed, molecules released around the wound site are able to promote normal fibroblasts up the ranks, transforming them into myofibroblasts to join the effort.  During this period, new blood vessels also start to grow into this area of new connective tissue, filling the wound site.  This miscellany of new cells and blood vessels, known as granulation tissue, is disorganized and messy but it forms vital scaffolding for the rebuilding of our epidermis.  Keratinocytes from the stratum basale --the basal layer of skin stem cells that continuously repopulates our outer barrier-- now slowly crawl from the wound edges across this bed of new tissue.  The "maturation phase" completes the symphony of wound healing, with the chaotic granulation tissue continually rearranged to align with the normal tension lines of our skin.  Any cells or blood vessels no longer needed are destroyed over the coming days and weeks by programmed cell death.

     Nothing as elaborate as that in my world of imagination, but in the spirit of healing I did want to see why the world continues to be so divided.  A recent July poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation had this to say about those yet to be vaccinated: Three-fourths of unvaccinated adults, including nine in ten of those who say they will “definitely not” get the vaccine, say they are “not worried” about getting seriously sick from the virus, less than half say they are worried about the Delta variant worsening the pandemic, more than half (including 75% of “definitely not”) say getting vaccinated is a bigger risk to their health than getting infected with coronavirus, and a quarter (just one in ten of “definitely not”) say the vaccines are effective at keeping vaccinated people from dying from COVID-19 or getting seriously ill.  With former President Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis, and commentator Tucker Carlson all receiving their vaccines, I wondered what was the reasoning?  So I turned to a left-right conversation between two respected white evangelicals --Matt Labash (a Never Trumpster) and Eric Metaxas (a Trump's our "real" President fan)-- as featured in The New Republic.  And I left...puzzled.  Healing didn't seem to be anywhere in sight...

     In a review of Ultimate Price, a book by Howard Steven Friedman questioning the placing of values on human life, reviewer Cass Sunstein wrote in the NY Review of Books: He argues that our practices "are infused with gender, racial, national, and cultural biases," which means that we "often value the lives of the young more than the old, the rich more than the poor, whites more than blacks, Americans more than foreigners, and relatives more than strangers...The criminal justice system is different from the tort system, in that it aspires to treat everyone the same...In fact, he shows, "some lives are more valued than others."  If you kill a white person, you might be punished more severely than if you kill a person of color.  And if you kill a homeless person, you might be treated more leniently than if you kill a wealthy businessperson.  Sunstein concludes her review with this: The death toll from preventable illness and injury is far too high.  In recent years, more than 450,000 Americans died annually from smoking, more than 120,000 died from not taking medicines as directed, more than 35,000 from road accidents, more than 18,000 were murdered, and more than 5,000 died on the job.  We do not have to answer the hardest questions about the value of a human life in order to insist that both private and public institutions take bold steps to reduce those numbers.

     It is not for me to judge, to echo the sign I saw in an old cafe's washroom that said, "It is common decency --and state law-- that you wash your hands before leaving this washroom."  When did you last hear that word?  Decency?  In The Four Agreements, a book based on ancient Toltec wisdom passed down in secret, author Don Miguel Ruiz wrote: We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do.  We assume that others think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse...We also make assumptions about ourselves, and this creates a lot of inner conflict. "I think I am able to do this."  You make the assumption, for instance, then you discover you aren't able to do it.  You overestimate or underestimate yourself because you haven't taken the time to ask yourself questions and to answer them...maybe you need to stop lying to yourself about what you truly want.

     On the other hand, there is a lot of resiliency in this world.  Kurt Eichenwald went on to write five nonfiction books (including The Informant which starred Matt Damon), was a senior staff writer at The New Yorker (for 20 years), and won awards in many fields including being a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize.  The inspirational Jill Wheatley wrote on her own blog: When an injury, illness, or sudden life change derails us, our natural response is to curl up and retreat from the world.  But it’s when we harness adversity and step into the storm that it becomes possible to recover, and even come out stronger.  When I wrote to her and mentioned that I had included a bit of her history in my post (I generally let authors know that I've mentioned them in my blog, if only to allow them to correct any information I may have erred in writing about them), she wrote back saying that she was doing so "from the shadows of Everest."  Still going strong.  

Cottonwood seeds lining a path...temp was 106F

    My mini-injury will get better over time, which only makes me recognize that so many others often don't have that luxury; their conditions are there to stay or may improve only slightly.  They are the resilient ones, the ones I tip my (swollen) hand to, the ones who are showing the world that life and its blessings and foibles come in a variety of ways.  Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware and author of Nature's Best Hope, wrote that: ...to raise a clutch of chicks, a pair of robins needs between 6,000 caterpillars and 9,000 caterpillars in just 16 days.  I won't pretend to understand how that is possible, or how I can round a corner and see suddenly the ground covered in summer "snow", the seeds from cottonwood trees blanketing the ground during blistering 100+F heat.  Nor can I understand how my dog's pannus (a hereditary disease) has taken 99% of his sight; his wobbly back legs hold him up for about 20 minutes of walking (unless he's in his doggie wheelchair) and then it simply becomes too much.  But every morning he continues the brave fight as if all were right in the world, excited to head out for a walk and catch a few sniffs among the bushes; to a dog, life is likely just is what it is (I still think they may be ahead of us humans in "getting" it).  And so it becomes with my hand, my cavalier attitude at realizing just how much the "other side" has contributed over my life and how that help (or lack thereof) is now being drilled into my memory...enjoy every moment it's telling me because things can change in an instant.  And along with that, never forget just how fortunate you are...