Untethered

During the mid to late 1950s, the US military conducted Project Manhigh, in which they sent men into the stratosphere in balloons to see if they could endure great heights.  We recently watched footage of these balloons.  They were huge helium-filled balloons.  On the ground, these balloons were very, very tall, with a little bubble of helium at the top—nothing like the rounded hot air balloons we see today.  The reason was that as the balloon ascended to where the atmospheric pressure was far less than it is near the surface of the earth, the helium would expand and there needed to be sufficient room in the balloon to contain the helium.  It was amazing to watch the footage, as the balloon ascended up, up, and out of sight, nearly 20 miles!!!

The events of my life in early April 2015, left me “untethered”.  God only knows what really happened that left me face-down in the pool with a very slow heart rate and a lung full of water and apparently hundreds of clots in my brain—but over the next week or so, they put me on paralytics, pain medications, intubation, and cooling—basically in an induced coma.  Between the brain trauma and the medications, I have very patchy memories of those 10 days—though apparently for some of it I was awake and responding, holding eye contact and recognizing people—though I have no sense of time or order—it’s all a mish-mash in my memory.  But I know that for a while at least (though for how long, I have no idea) I was without awareness of self—at least, those things I think of that identify myself as ME.

For the past 15 years, I have been typing a phrase that doctors use as a standard part of their exams, “Alert and oriented x3” (or sometimes x4).  The x3 is person, place and time, the fourth is event.  I think, if I responded to anything in those first days, beyond pain, it was my name.  That doesn’t mean I knew who I was—just that I had a name and when someone called my name, I knew they were talking to me…I don’t have any memory of not knowing my name, or my birthday, or my brother’s birthday, for that matter.  And I don’t remember not knowing that I was any of those things that I define myself by—mother, wife, daughter, transcriptionist, pet owner….but I know that I must not have known them, because I remember remembering them for the first time. 

I apparently couldn’t talk at some point, because I remember hearing an oddly slurred voice from somewhere down deep, with the greatest effort, ask for orange juice.  It still seems surreal, how slowly those words came, and with what great effort, and how foreign they sounded.

At one point, someone asked me if I had any children.  It seemed like they waited for an answer and then went on about whatever they were doing—but I was trying to answer.  It was like it stirred something very deep inside me—but I didn’t know!  It seemed like I thought about that question for a very long time—but of course, time wasn’t flowing for me like it was for the rest of the world—because of the drugs? Or the brain injury? Or ?  But out of the blackness—looking into my memory, trying to answer that question was like looking into a pitch blackness and trying to find something but I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for—then out of that darkness came a name, Laura, and images of a baby, a toddler, a woman.  However many hours or days later, I could finally answer that all-important question—even if there was no one there to hear me answer it.  “Yes, I have a Laura.   She’s beautiful.”   And, as if I knew there was more in that darkness, however much later, came the name Keary.  I  have a Keary too! 

In the neurology wing, however long I was there, 3 or 4 or 5 days, every day (or possibly many times per day) strangers would come in and ask me what day it was and if I knew where I was.  I think the “bubble” I was in was rather small, as the date was written on a board in my room and if I looked out the window, I should have been able to see a very familiar view, since I have spent many days in that hospital both as a patient and also visiting others, but in my memory, I couldn’t see that board and all I could see out the window was white (though apparently I recognized people in the doorway).   None of it makes sense to me—but I think I have a new empathy for how babies see the world now.  I don’t know when they first started telling me the date, but the first date I remember was April 17^th.  And the only reason it had meaning to me was because my brother’s birthday is April 18^th, and I felt like I needed to call him and wish him happy birthday.  They asked me what his phone number was, but I didn’t know-but I asked if they could call the operator or information to get it—and they looked at me like I was crazy.  (Now I know they were just too young to know what an operator was or that once upon a time you could call information to get a phone number—ah, the good ol’ days). 

I would tell them the date (whatever date they had told me last) and then I would tell them I was in Hawaii, because I imagined the white I was seeing out the window was a white sand beach, and the swallows flitting around were birds at the beach.  Though they told me I was at RiverBend, I didn’t really know what that meant.  As my “bubble” grew bigger and I could see cars driving out on the “ocean”, I asked what road that was and when someone told me it was Pioneer Parkway.  I then knew I was at RiverBend—as if this was a new revelation…but even then I didn’t really know it…until they took me out into the hall, and through the gym to the outside balcony, and I remembered the gym from 2009, when I was there with a foot infection, and I remembered the balcony from that same stay….

On April 22, I left RiverBend and moved to a rehab center in downtown Eugene.  Things were still surreal.  My brain wasn’t mapping very well.  Though I tried to see where we were going on the ride over, I didn’t know where I was.  Though they took me to a room where I would spend the next 9 days, it looked completely different on that first day than it did on the last, and I never could remember where my room was, except that it was across from the dining room—when I went back after I was discharged, several weeks later, it looked completely different still…

I don’t know how many days I was there before it dawned on me that I had a job and I was supposed to be working and I needed to get back home so I could get back to work.  Time, and the pressure of time, had come back to my life.

When I first woke up, it was like the best vacation ever (except that I couldn’t walk or talk or eat or take care of my bodily functions).  I didn’t have any stress.  No one needed me for anything.  I didn’t have any deadlines.  There were no expectations.  I woke up with the feeling that it was just God and me.  Other people popped into my world to do things, like clean me or feed me or just come sit with me and talk to me and tell me they loved me.  In fact, I woke up with an intense feeling of being loved, or being at complete peace.

Even when I started to recognize, one by one, the tethers that tie me to this life—my children, my family, my friends, my job, my home, my yard, my pets….they were just plusses.   But as I woke up more and more, they slowly became tethers again—someone else was doing my job—I would have to fight to get it back, or lose it.   My dog was wanting to see me, was running away from home to find me.  My bunny, with no one to care for him, died… My grass was growing—someone, I still don’t know who, mowed it for me.  My son was not doing his school work because I was not there to crack the whip…my house was starting to look very bachelorish….

Even before I left the hospital for rehab, something inside me was pushing to come back to earth.  I knew I could not live 20 miles up forever---as lovely as the view was, and as peaceful and relaxed and wonderful as it was up there, just me and God with occasional visits from others—something inside me knew I had to come back down and knew I had to do it NOW.  Something inside me started fighting for physical therapy—fighting to stand, fighting to walk, fighting to run my life again, to get home, to be on my own turf.   Although I was probably not screaming on the outside, I was definitely screaming on the inside for someone to help me—get me up, help me walk, I need to GO. 

As awful as that hospital time is in my memory—all jumbly and disoriented—I still long for that peace, that knowledge of being completely loved—even though I wasn’t deserving by any of the things that make me ME.  I was loved just because I am. 

I am loved—not because I am a (good) wife, not because I am smart, not because I am determined and strong, not because I am a mom, not because I’m good at math, not because I have a cool sense of humor.  I am loved because I am.  I didn’t, nor could I ever do anything to deserve it.  And yet I AM loved.

The first thing I remember when I woke up—maybe before I woke up—was this song, “You dance over me while I am unaware.  You sing all around, but I never hear a sound.  Lord, I’m amazed by You, and how You love me.”  Even while I was “untethered” by the things of this life—the good things and the stressful things—I was still in God’s presence.  It’s comforting to me to know that even when “I” am not here, I am still with God. 

My friend, Doug Capps, before he died, said he knew that while I was sleeping, God was talking to me.  I wish I could bring to mind all of what He must have said to me, but for this moment-and forever-it is enough for me to just know that He said, “Oh, my precious child, how I love you.”