A Second Chance

I made  a promise when I left the hospital after three months and I made it to the nurses who looked after me, and the therapists who repaired me, and the surgeon, Doctor Quinnan who spent hours sewing my pelvis back together. The promise was that if I survived the ordeal I would life a life worth living. 

I went back to the hospital when I could walk with a walker, with my still swollen feet in the hateful slippers, to thank everyone for their trouble and they were surprised I showed up,  telling me patients always say they will come back but they never do. I was and remain too grateful not to tell them in person. I wish I could go back now that I am walking as normal, to tell them that I am not holding back from seeing them, but they know but Covid has other plans for us all. Hospitals submerged by the virus are closed to us non patients. No visitors and I wonder at the burnout these brave workers face now...

I was reading an article about a man called Michael Caputo who was a fierce political consultant ripping opponents to shreds, until he got cancer in the head and came face to face with death and radiation. He has found God and a new calmer self. I can see how that might have happened even though I find my path forward to be rather less spiritual and rather more practical.

I didn't  find God but I did find myself questioning how to spend the rest of my life. I suppose to some extent that question has been in my head all my life with a  certain amount of thought and planning involved, and a certain amount of the usual blind luck. The accident and the aftermath gave me a great deal of clarity and certainty which translated into a much easier life, oddly enough. Bystanders  tend to think a severe accident will cloud your life but for me it swept away doubts and self questioning. That notion of making every day count became much clearer and simpler to me.

Too often the gurus tell the seekers to be mindful and aware and live in the moment which is all very well but impossible to do because perforce the effort wears you out and the notion slips away. Its absolutely impossible to make every moment count so have found myself seeking out curiosity as my way of being mindful. I try not to take things for granted and I never assume things "happen for a reason." Make lemonade out of lemons of course but in my world view there isn't anyone out there chucking lemons at you; shit just happens by chance, sometimes helped along by poor preparation. Those of us in the first world have better tools for coping than the helpless and hungry and abandoned of the world. Why they get ripped off and starved with no recourse makes me sick, but for someone to tell me everything "happens for a reason" makes no sense at all. Tell that to a Somali mother watching her children starve or Haitians getting flattened by earthquakes, or Yemeni families bombed to obliteration by Saudi Arabia. They suffer for a reason?

As I lay in bed wondering if feeling would come back into my legs I asked myself what to do for the rest of my life? The conventional answers came back but I have never been, by nature someone designed to sit still in one place and teach others to read or to cut carrots at a  soup kitchen, things I have done but not found satisfying. Webb Chiles actually proffered a solution to the question that accompanied my thoughts as I lay in my hospital bed motionless in the middle of the night as the Percocet wore off and the pain came back. (How is it that legs you can't feel and can't move can cause aching pain at the same time? Weird).

"While most think of me as a sailor, I think of myself as an artist and have defined the artist's fundamental responsibility as going to the edge of human experience and sending back reports. That is what I have done for almost half a century."

Webb Chiles

My wife was always there worrying about me, shopping for me, defending my treatment needs at the weekly meetings at the hospital, arguing with the insurance company to get me more days in rehab. She drove 10,000 miles over the weeks to keep an eye on me and manage her classroom in Marathon. Even Rusty was roped in to the support committee. I ended up with an unheard of 58  days in rehab, most people's insurance pays for a week or ten days. My wife wasn't having that and I got the full measure offered by Cigna.

I talked to her about what we might  do afterwards. She never allowed herself to think I might not walk again and as I tossed ideas around we settled on traveling as a form of self expression. Send back reports as Webb would have put. As he did in fact put it to me. Just so you know I was absolutely terrified of the parallel bars. I look at this picture below of me struggling to get to my feet and I recall the feeling of staring into the abyss as I hung on tight with my hands and tried to drag my useless feet under me. It might as well have been walking a tight rope across Niagara Falls

We had been thinking about retirement even before the wreck but we went into high gear. I stopped riding motorcycles partly from PTSD, no doubt, but also because I wanted to travel together not by myself anymore. I no longer felt the need to take time away. I quit being a  supervisor at work, took a pay cut and shed the burden of responsibility that I had never wanted in the first place. We had done this before when we went sailing and now we decided we wanted to see more, to be on land, to make travel easier and the exploration more in depth. We settled on a van for our retirement and found a builder to meet our specifications. Custom Coach Creations in Deland.

I was pleased that Webb gave his seal of approval and indeed asked me to name the van after his record setting boat, a Moore 24 called Gannet and totally unsuitable for the circumnavigation he made on board the 24 foot ultralight racing boat. In point of fact it's only the human that may be unsuitable, and even though no one thought you could sail around the world on a Moore 24 Webb did. I'm not of his caliber obviously (who is?) but I know a modest, comfortable Promaster van isn't deemed suitable for gnarly long distance travel but I trust I shall be able to muddle through with Layne and Rusty to keep me on an even keel. Most over landers drive four wheel drive monsters capable of scaling cliffs and fording rivers, but that's not for me as I prefer an gentler form of driving. So when Webb said to name the van after Gannet I, disbelieving, agreed of course.

Layne enjoyed pulling Webb's leg pointing out we were cramming 3 people (Rusty is a person here) into a 21 foot waterline and he sails alone with 24 feet to his name. But the honor is all ours. And whatever happens next is by our choice, a choice made with our eyes open wide. We left a  life in California in 1998 that didn't need to be left and we do the same in 2021 from Key West. We could have chosen to stay here, keep our benefits, keep our salary, keep our vacations, keep our seniority, but for me and it turns out for Layne that path leads to a slow inner death. I've died once and I don't want to do it again without seeking out something more. Perhaps I'm greedy. 

Whatever happens on the road, however far we get, however much things may go wrong, or right, none of it is planned, but none of it will be unexpected. I set off from home three years ago on a banal ride to work like so many others. It all went wrong, completely unexpectedly, for no discernible reason, but in the end I cast off with ease so many strictures of daily living that had held me back. I know what I want now and I have no interest in holding back. Whatever the experiences to come they are mine, I asked for them, Layne agreed and Rusty will have a better life than he otherwise would have. This is my last chance at life and I shall blame no one, not even myself, whatever happens.

The Madding Crowd

Summer is back because the southeast wind has dropped, at least for now. Humidity is my friend in September, though I keep it at arm's length with air conditioning until I step out of the car, when I release the hound and take a look through my camera to check the settings. 

With an all-in-one bridge camera and a built-in zoom lens I don't need to haul a  camera bag around with me. I do make sure I have a microfiber cloth in my pocket separate from the leash and plastic bag. To get rid of the fog on the lens it's best to wait for the camera to warm up and the external moisture to fade. The you wipe up the rest and you are back in business.  Tropical fun!

I was doubly pleased I rolled out of bed on my day off to watch the sun come up. On the one hand I hadn't been to Bahia Honda for a week or more and then on the next day I got a text at four in the morning announcing a dispatcher had called out sick. Rusty had woken me up for his pre-dawn mail check, the walk we take before I go to work, and on my day off he waited till five. The text meant no day off together as we are so short staffed one sick call out throws 911 into crisis. Off I went to save the day and make 12 hours overtime.

It's a schizophrenic life switching between closeted days stuck in a room answering endless calls for help, rants, and queries I can't answer without referring to my friend and savior Google. I'm a civilian and I have no idea how old you have to be to drive a jet ski in Florida. I never went to the police academy nor did I study law enforcement in college. I simply send  help and it is a misunderstanding to think a 911 operator can help you unravel legal questions.. The other half of my life involves me tramping around in silence with my mute dog and my unresponsive camera. What do you think, I ask the Lumix FZ1000..? It opens the electronic shutter as silently as Rusty or myself. We walk on silently together.

I drove back to Summerland Key to meet my wife and a friend of 15 years for an al fresco, distanced breakfast at the Galley Grill. I ate chopped up vegetables and eggs, Layne had shrimp and grits, her breakfast treat, and Carol had a selection of sides because she's even more high maintenance than Layne.  Carol retired from the school district and fortunately did a lot of traveling before Covid, by flitting to South America and Africa and adding to her long list of islands she has visited.

They went to Easter Island a few years ago to celebrate a birthday in their women's group and for a while the house was filled with replicas of granite heads and moai tea cloths and things. I busied myself learning about how the islanders screwed up their island with war and ecological destruction until the lesson seemed rather too apparent and uncomfortable to continue to read about.  I prefer to think about how that group of women exploring Rapa Nui and coming home with so many stories, are peeling off now and retiring and waiting for the world to welcome them back, far from their former classrooms.

I got a call from a person with a parking issue while I was at work. Its a routine 30 second call is a parking violation, where I get the address, the nature of the violation and a brief description of the vehicle so parking control knows what to look for on the street. Usually there is a long rigmarole where the caller wants to justify calling out a parked car so I let them rant if there aren't other calls waiting. The issue of parking in Key West is always anger provoking as too many people expect not to have to walk to a parked car even if they don't have off street parking or if they converted their garage into another bedroom depriving themselves of a private spot. I sit back and dream of my vast parking area at my suburban home in Cudjoe which easily accommodates my big-ass van.

This guy said there was a car parked in residential in front of his house. Fair enough: "residential no sticker" is my abbreviation for the notes...except this one did have a residential sticker. So... er... I asked what's the violation? No violation he said. I want to give you the license plate so you can find the owners name and phone and I can call him and ask him to move the car as I have just moved down to Key West and I have a truck coming with my furniture from the mainland.  Great idea! Except...

I am not allowed to give out private personal information to the public. I have access to a mass of private information, social security numbers, addresses, driving history and on and on and on for anyone with a  Florida residence. If I mess with this stuff I not only get fired but get criminally prosecuted. I am a civilian and only allowed to give it out to a sworn police officer and they decide how to use the information.  When I leave work I forget what I saw and I never talk about it. Do you want me discussing your criminal history at a cocktail party (if we ever have one again)? Or your emergency contact numbers? Of course not.

I tried to explain that what I could do was send him an officer who could assess the situation and perhaps make the call using information I could provide. Often we have names and phone numbers from previous encounters and the officer can authorize me to make the call to prevent a vehicle getting towed, say, or to ask someone to reassure an anxious relative Up North with a phone call. I like being able to help people where I can as an antidote to hearing about how screwed up the world is. The irate newcomer to Key West was thoroughly unpleasant and when I tried to explain the possibility of reserving the spot for unloading by getting advanced permission all I did was start another rant. I used to think new arrivals with this mindset wouldn't last very long in laid back Key West. Nowadays I fear they are the majority.

I think this bird is a long tailed swallow and you can see them soaring about looking like they are having a  thoroughly enjoyable life up there riding the drafts. They don't live as long as we do and I don't see them reading many books so I shouldn't envy them at all and I don't. But I do miss them when I am closeted up in that room listening to people whose circumstances prevent them enjoying life at all costs. Sometimes life really does suck, no blame or fault is necessary and its good to have someone to call about it, but I can't wait for it not to be me anymore.

Elizabeth and Greene

The city commission meets today to discuss how to handle the money making events next month that typically attract thousands of people to crowd downtown for ten long days. It is fashionable among locals (and if you plan to become one you must adopt this attitude immediately) to deplore Fantasy fest in all its crassness.

I felt the crude displays of witless stupidity reached a nadir and have been pleased to see an attempt to create a more witty, costume driven event. I don't mind Fantasy fest particularly as I live outside Key West and crowds of near naked people are at best peripheral to my life unless I choose to walk among them. The part I like about the holiday is the very fact of a purely local holiday in the middle of a normal part of the year for the rest of country. Its like having a private carnival. Every obligation gets put off till "after Fantasy Fest" which restores some of that much missed island time of yore.

Last year there was no Fantasy fest of course and this year there is talk of  Covid tests and hand sanitizers and best of all, "social distancing." Which sounds ludicrous to me. Covid exhaustion is obvious across Florida including in the Keys and I don't think Fantasy Fest will much care about masks, vaccinations, Covid tests or being a  super spreader. They have canceled the Grand Parade and the Locals March on Friday night is up in the air. The Zombie Bike Ride is also off this year. But no doubt people will keep coming to the private parties that are still scheduled and will no doubt spill over in the street. It's a compromise decision  and as always mixed suggestions produce mixed results.

I don't see the avalanche stopping at this late stage. Paying lip service to the virus is one thing but turning paying customers away is quite another and Key West has been doing well by virtue of diminished international travel. The organizers faced no good choices so I suppose this mixed bag is the best they could come up with. The city commission's response may be interesting.

Recently a Federal investigation into illegal hiring practices ended up with a contract labor company being shut down with the principals facing long jail terms for using foreign visitors unauthorized temporary employees. I'm surprised it took them that long to figure it out because Key West has a massive population of eastern Europeans, as evidenced by the reduced labor force in the city now.

I have no doubt a solution will appear somewhere or other and things will lurch back to an uneven normal but the search for employees is as bad in Key West as anywhere in the country.  The problem is a question of math as usual. If you can barely live while working three jobs, what's the point? You can slice it any way you like but that's the nub of the problem. The other side of the coin is that corporations that can do more don't pay enough and small businesses already struggling can't pay enough.

The city commission can meet till the cows come home, they can pay consultants all they want but the problem is simply mathematical. The numbers don't add up. Two of the great things I will enjoy when I retire is not hearing the tone to alert rescue to a call for help, and the other will be not listening to pious proclamations about affordable housing. I've heard it ad nauseam with never a solution. If you need housing for workers the only way to solve the problem is to build it.

From the Citizen, August 28th:

In the past week, 386 Monroe County residents tested positive, which is an average of 55 cases per day, according to the Florida Department of Health. The positivity rate is 15.8%.

Also in the past week, 717 people were vaccinated that week. The cumulative percent of Monroe County residents age 12 and older who are vaccinated is at 76%, according to the local health department.

Lower Keys Medical Center is caring for 30 patients who are COVID-19 positive. Seven are in the intensive care unit and five are receiving ventilator care, according to the hospital. In the past week, Lower Keys Medical Center moved from a green status to yellow.

“Yellow is an indicator that we require some additional resources, in this case, additional staffing, which we are in the process of obtaining,” hospital CEO David Clay said. “We occasionally bring in temporary staff to supplement our teams when the hospital is busier than usual, such as in season.”

Of course it is worth noting that this is the very low season and the idea that the hospital needs extra staff should have everyone up on their hind legs but there we are.  

I have noticed that governments are now talking about us learning to live with Covid as just one more manageable disease which I will  be happy to be vaccinated for annually just like the 'flu.

The police department is riddled with unvaccinated employees and that leaves me sitting at my desk all day wearing a  mask which is tedious but I see no way around it until my wife can get vaccinated successfully. She saw me on a  ventilator at the hospital and is completely aware of the agony of breathing through a  machine so she has a huge incentive to avoid the plague. 

I find myself resigned to living among people who have always exhibited a preference for short term gain over long term rewards. Even at work my young colleagues look at me jealously as I inch toward my last day. I'm twenty years older than you I say and they ignore me. Do you have a plan to retire I insist and they stare back at me balefully. I came to work at 911 for the pension.  I was always clear on that and I wonder why they prefer to buy expensive cars and daily lunches than look into their own futures and figure it out for themselves. They don't wear masks and hope for the best. I don't want to screw up after months of avoiding the plague for want of a little self discipline. 

I was talking with Rachel a few weeks ago and she told me how one either retiree who moved to Georgia sends her emails occasionally and asks how dispatch is getting on without him. " You aren't going toc are are you?" she asked looking thoughtful. I told her I've given it my all for 17 years and I've got other fish to fry now. She nodded. I plan to slip silently away and move on. I have no tell all confessions or snarky revenge memos to publish. I'm grateful for the career and the benefits and from time to time the companionship but the chapter has already ended for me.

Layne and I were having an outdoor breakfast with a friend at the Galley Grill in Summerland Key when a group of Sheriff's deputies strolled in. I recognized one as a former police department colleague. He drove a lot of dispatchers crazy with his low volume radio traffic but I loved working with Kevin. He got the job done with no fuss and cleared his calls and moved on to the next job with no wasting time. I trusted him to call for back up or to know when he could handle a situation alone and dispatching the shift was always easy when he was working. My wife was astonished to see him back in uniform. He loves his children I said and he has lots of them. Besides, what else would he do? He has health benefits and a second pension to work for on a solid salaried union job. That's the life that many would find very appealing and I get it. But I also get its not for me. 

Sitting back and watching the world go by...another way to live!

Catastrophe August 31st 2018

Three years ago a woman with a child in the back of her white Sebring pulled out of Cutthroat Drive across from the Square Grouper restaurant a mile from my home. She and her husband had no assets as they were already under a quarter million dollar court judgment and she carried ten thousand dollars of third party insurance, the bare minimum under Florida law. I was following a large pick up truck on my Suzuki Burgman 200 and ploughed at 40 miles per hour into the front wheel well of her car which stopped in front of me after it tried to dart through commuter traffic to get across the highway. I had full insurance coverage with a $4,000 deductible  from my job with the city and I was wearing my crash helmet which was the first in a series of fortunate steps that saved my life.

I remember the white car wheeling in my vision as my pelvis crunched into the handlebars then my head and shoulder hit the windshield scratching my helmet and breaking my shoulder, before I cartwheeled again. a massive kaleidoscope in slow motion in my head  as I hit the ground on my feet further damaging my pelvis and breaking my right thigh bone in two places. I was conscious the entire time and found myself lying on back looking up at a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds. 

I lay there unable to move and I could feel my right leg felt spongy as though sticking up in the air and I wondered if I had amputated it. A man appeared looking freaked out and i asked him if my leg was in place. He looked down and stuttered it looked okay ( I was wearing long pants) and I saw over his shoulder a  woman holding her hands to her face.

You've fucking killed me I said looking into her eyes and she backed away. Does anyone know where we are I called out from my prone position on the road. Someone said yes so I told them to call 911. It seems absurd now but this sort of accident was my job and I suppose I had an automatic response. I yelled out my wife's phone number and told someone to call her. She was actually in Miami on a trip and ended up with a  short drive to the hospital. Lying in the road immobile I was really worried about being late for work, because when one dispatcher doesn't show up another one can't go home. Such are the thoughts of a dying man.

I knew I was dying, I could feel myself getting cold and I had the frequently described out of body experience floating up to the clouds and away from the noise and the commotion of the rather spectacular accident scene I had left behind. It went quiet and I rather hoped I was going to meet the dogs of my life who had gone before me. You may have seen that meme of a circle of dogs looking down through a  hole in the clouds and I wondered if I would get to see Bobby and Sandy and Emma and Debs and Cheyenne again. The prospect pleased me. What I didn't know was a woman had knelt down beside me and was holding my hand talking to me apparently. She wrote to me later and told me. My peaceful ascent was stopped by a paramedic who had arrived and woke me back up. Someone gave me my cellphone which survived the wreck perfectly in it's Otter case and which I only recently traded in for a new iPhone. I took the selfie  (above) as I lay on the backboard. I only had the use of my right arm (I'm left handed) and that phone held over my face was my only entertainment for the next few weeks.  I wanted my wife to have a last picture of me, and looking back I was disappointed I wasn't smiling. The surgeon said he'd never seen someone take a selfie at their crash site before so I suppose the badly angled picture of me staring away has some historical value! 

They put me into an ambulance and drove me a couple of miles to the airstrip on Summerland because I was lucky Trauma Star was available and the weather was good for flying. The nearby ambulance station on Cudjoe and the helicopter were the next steps in keeping me alive that day.  The flight was horrible, and as the shock wore off I felt every blow of the rotors overhead shaking my pulverized bones. I lay on the slab in the middle of the tiny cabin counting the rivets claustrophobically as we flew. My condition was deteriorating so instead of flying to the main hospital further north they took me to Jackson South and they kindly called my wife on my phone so she could get there quickly. I was wheeled out onto the roof landing pad and I could see the sun and the blue sky behind the doctor's flapping white coat as he walked alongside the stretcher. 

The MRI was funny as I couldn't move anyway and all I had to do was stop breathing  when they asked. I don't mind the confines of the tube but I couldn't stop giggling inside as I thought how this was the perfect condition to be encased in an x-ray tube unable to even twitch. I dare say I was quite off my head at this point. I didn't know it but my wife and a friend were in the waiting room to hear what was going on. Even before Covid I wasn't allowed visitors I guess as she only saw a glimpse of me being wheeled about as they figured out how bad my injuries were. The nurse told her I had a fifty fifty chance of living through the night which didn't do much to cheer her up. I had no idea. Apparently all your nerves and arteries are bundled through your pelvis and any small tear can cause fatal hemorrhaging before you know it.

The pain in my leg was excruciating and I guess they decided to do something about it. In a photo above I took a picture as the on duty surgeon came to my room with his team and a drill apparently at 12 minutes after eleven that night (!) and he drilled a hole in my leg. The sensation of the skin being torn by the drill is very vivid in my mind still but the pain of my misaligned thigh bone broken into three pieces overruled all other pain. They lined the bones up, put me in traction pulling the bones apart and settling them back in their places, and miraculously the pain went away.  I came to love Dilaudid a powerful narcotic pain killer which has the unfortunate side effect of bloating you and constipating you in spectacular style. Based on my limited experience drug addiction must be an extremely inconvenient way to live given the problems these very useful drugs bring in their wake.

Of course I worried about Rusty who I did not get to see for three weeks until I was transferred to the rehab hospital but Layne had called friends and Wayne and Chuck made sure he was okay while I was away trying to stay alive. He took all the weirdness as it came and was never a bother. A remarkable dog.

I had four surgeries, one lasting seven hours to rebuild my broken bones and they only started after my condition settled down and they figured I had a chance to live. I got eighty stitches and through it all I spent a day on a ventilator which I had to keep down my throat after I woke up from the pelvic rebuild. 

I spend a great deal of time wondering how Covid patients go for days and weeks on that infernal machine. My wife said she never saw me so angry in the hospital as when I woke up with the tube down my throat. If you think dying of Covid is the only measure of misery that disease brings, think again.

This story had a happy ending for me. My wife suffered in many ways a great deal more trauma than me. I can say that as creepy as it looks from the outside being in a hospital bed and struggling to stay alive is a relatively simple proposition. She was worrying about everything, dealing with the staff managing the bureaucracy handling the expectations. All I had to do was lie in bed, reassure anyone who asked how I was doing  and call the nurse's aide when I thought I might have taken a shit. You really can't feel anything in this condition unfortunately. I couldn't even wear a diaper at first owing to my injuries. That's a pretty basic struggle for anyone who is used to managing their life functions easily and on their own.

Sean my first Physical Therapist got me going right away. He sat me up in bed like a giant doll unable to hold myself up. He lifted me into a wheelchair and supported my head as my neck muscles tired after a few minutes and my head flopped around like a cartoon character. My broken leg I called my dead sheep as it was wrapped in some scratchy material and held straight by a brace. A nurses aide had to support it whenever I was maneuvering in and out of my chair and when I was in bed my legs, which I couldn't move had an annoying habit of slipping out and I had to get help to put them back in bed. Oh the indignity!  Nowadays aside from having no feeling in my thighs I walk pretty much as normal. My wife says I roll a bit when I'm tired and sometimes I drag a foot, hopefully when no one is looking. But I can walk and almost keep up with Rusty.

I promised the surgeon before they put me to sleep that if I lived, and no blame to him if I didn't, I would do my best to live a life worthy of his efforts. Three years after all this drama I now want to put it behind me and get on with that very phase of the program.