Then and Now
January 15, 2007
Now that ten months have passed since the accident, my hands still shake as our friends have moved on with their lives, but it is still obvious to us that our lives are changed forever. In my youth, I had a vague sense that friends apparently envied me because everything just seemed to roll off my back. I once asked my girlfriend why she was afraid of going back to school for a second degree and she answered, “I’m not like you Erin. You’re not afraid of anything. You’re not afraid to fail.” She had graduated from the one school I had dreamed of attending but was not admitted. I wasn’t afraid to fail then, but now, there aren’t many things that don’t scare me.
Before the accident, I was far from naturally timid or worried. For college, I traveled 3,000 miles from home and took classes in whatever looked interesting. After 3 years I managed to make a geology degree out of the classes I took, though I had just as many in music study. I did field research with professional volcanologists in Mexico and was one of the few in my crew who was willing to see the countryside in the rickety Mexican helicopters. At our three year reunion, several of my classmates commented on how irritatingly ‘calm and collected’ I always seemed when they were stressing about the next test or presentation. I didn’t realize my demeanor was different from theirs, but I always thought the grade was secondary and the focus should be on the inspiration gained through the opportunity to participate in intensive studies. When I think now of going to another country, I wonder if the hospitals could save me if I had an accident.
When I graduated, I headed to New Zealand to study volcanoes in the southern hemisphere. I had always enjoyed climbing mountains with my dad in the California Sierras, but my first views of the Southern Alps turned my love into a driving passion. I climbed one of the most technical routes at mountaineering Grade 5 on Mt. Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain, in my first week down under. While climbing I was involved in several rescues, one in which I witnessed a close friend fall several hundred feet down a steep rocky glacial moraine and I was unable to move to help her, lest I kick rocks down on her. I yelled for help until several rescuers were able to extract her. After three years skiing and climbing in the Southern Alps, I had spent most of my time exploring crevassed glaciers and high knife-edge mountain ridges. I planned a trip around the world, with the intent to climb high mountains on five continents. When the opportunity arose, I did not hesitate to climb the highest mountain in the southern hemisphere, Aconcagua, unguided and spent months climbing technical mountains in the European Alps. Such was my eager approach and optimistic outlook on life. When I met Andrew I could tell his personality was similarly driven to extract the most from life and predicted accurately that he would be a wonderful life partner.
While ice climbing in France and camping in a 4 dollar a night campground, I met the most handsome man I’d ever seen, and that was quite a feat as well-chiseled men abound in the climbing world. I was climbing a rock and ice route, had reached the top of the second to last pitch and had run out of gear to make an anchor. I yelled to my partner not to climb, as I was not safe. She did not hear me and proceeded to yell, “Climbing!” I was starting to be a bit unnerved when Andrew, who was climbing the same route, came up behind my partner and relayed my actual words. At the end of the climb that topped out on one of the highest pinnacles above the Chamonix valley, I saw Andrew and, even covered in sunscreen and sweat, he took my breath away. He had dark eyes and hair, naturally dark unblemished skin, and was clearly more than 6 feet tall with strong legs and a lithe muscular build. He asked in a confident British accent if we’d like to join him for a drink. We planned a climbing trip together later that evening, and, after living in a tent together for 5 months, were married 14 months later.
That life seems a distant dream now, though it was only four years ago. The accident, not surprisingly, has changed us permanently. Andrew, formerly a model in British advertisements, now wears a tie and high neckline to work to cover up his scars from his tracheotomy and the marks left where his neck was dragged along rocks so that he won’t be forced to recount the incident to every nosy stranger who asks. He told me he didn’t feel handsome anymore, and maybe dressing up would make him look better.
After being dragged along under the truck for 30 feet, his scars on his back show the long scraping marks where each rock dug into his skin as his legs were broken and crushed into his lungs. As he travels regularly for work, he has a daily reminder of the accident when Homeland Security agents take him aside warily and run their hands all over his body, suspicious of a man so young claiming to have titanium in his every limb. Invariably, some insensitive agent will ask loudly, “What the hell did you do to yourself?” and Andrew will not respond, making the agent chortle loudly to fill the silence. The screws in his back are sensitive to the touch, but his British restraint keeps him from telling the agent more than necessary as he runs the beeping wand down Andrew’s bumpy spine. As the process normally takes two to three times longer than it would for a non-metalized person, he is constantly subjected to the accident stories of others or the rundown of an elderly person’s multiple joint replacements while Andrew is being poked and prodded.
In physical therapy, the most direct, or some might say rude, patients demand, “Why are you in here then? You don’t have any problems. Are you waiting for surgery?” Andrew just says, “I already had surgery” leaving them unsatisfied, whispering, and speculating. During Andrew’s first vacation after the accident, a sunburned man stepped up to him and said, “Whadya do?” at which time the man recounted his own accident and the trials he had suffered resulting in a limp for life. Andrew avoided eye contact with strangers after that and was violently moody for the rest of the trip. These encounters present themselves daily, and Andrew wonders why he can’t move on. In Safeway, a woman offered him a wheelchair, though he only had a knee brace, and he came home in a fury.
A friend commented that Andrew now walks with a hunch, and occasionally I notice him standing sideways in the mirror inspecting his scars and trying to regain his former posture. He says, “Look at me. I’m a mess!” and I can’t look because I’d rather remember his strong perfect back. Looking at his scars brings me immediately back to that day when I heard him frantically yelling for help. I walked around the side of the truck and saw his legs contorted and broken and blood coming from his neck. I could not see his knees which were caught up in the underparts of the truck, but I could see both his feet turned out at disgusting angles, nearly touching his head. The scene was so grotesque, I was repelled as one might be looking at a horribly deformed beast. I realized that he was looking at my face to mirror what I was seeing and I tried to mask my reaction. I told him he would be just fine and he said, “I don’t want to die like this.” I told him to focus on his breathing while I ran up the hill to get help, not expecting him to be alive when I returned. Months later when a friend jokingly yelled “Help!” when he couldn’t get out of the sheets wrapped around him in our guest bed, I jumped out of my bed and ran to him, crying afterwards re-living the trauma.
While I suppose many people would have been frantic at such an accident scene, I was told by the police chief that I was quite calm and helpful, so much so that they didn’t realize I wasn’t part of the rescue crew as I helped cut his pants off his mangled legs. In reality, I detached from the scene completely, and had the feeling I was looking down on myself witnessing a futile rescue attempt. It's a place I sit now in my mind, on that fence post overlooking the windswept desolate valley where I had my first and only out-of-body experience. It feels like I am chained to that post, watching myself run up the hill screaming for help wearing my red down jacket, overheating but not stopping to remove it lest I waste a minute. I was terrified of being left there alone, with no one to talk to when he took his last breath. Only when I saw a wildland fire truck driving slowly up the winding mountain road, did I bend over and wretch. At least now he wouldn't die on my watch.
Years later I heard stories on the radio of several women who were wives of soldiers returning from war with traumatic brain injuries. I recognized the symptoms of PTSD, but the difference was it wasn't just the soldier with the night sweats, because I had been there, and years later after all the drugs and rehab, he would almost completely block the accident out. Andrew's memory though, when the rare person could eek the story out of how he got his scars, was with me absent in the picture. He would never mention how I stood there, on that cold and windy day alone, yelling "Help!" to no one while the wind whipped my words away. Eerily, after what felt like an eternity, one shadow heard my cries. A woman's voice called from a half built ski condo and said she had called 911. She didn't come to the accident scene, and when later, I asked dispatch for her number to thank her, the number had been disconnected. Clearly, he was meant to live.
As the accident is ever present, I often have difficulty connecting with people. When Andrew and I left the hospital after a month, we both felt institutionalized and while he struggled with being around large trucks and cried at random times, I had trouble meshing the living world with the dead we had witnessed and I felt guilty for leaving the other families I comforted while my husband’s outcome was still uncertain.
Andrew was hopeful that the therapists could help re-align his hips, but they concluded after 9 months of grueling work, that his femur surgery and the impact of the truck levering his legs into his body made a leg a half inch shorter. Orthodics may help prevent severe joint pain in the future, or they may not. His knee, though stabilized after two surgeries and hundreds of hours of therapy, is weakened due to the traumatic dislocation and wripping of multiple tendons and he has decided to give up his love skiing, if only to avoid any more painful surgeries.
Andrew reached his emotional breaking point when, after months of being stuck with needles, and ‘poked and prodded’ as he says, his knee doctor brought out a huge syringe and removed fluids from his knee. Seeing the needle, he screamed and cried and collapsed on the way back to the car. He could not get himself into the back of the van he was so distraught and a nurse offered a hand. For 15 days after that, I had to administer shots in his stomach, during which his eyes took on a wild look while he threw things around the room, hit me, and wailed uncontrollably. He screamed angrily, “I’m so pathetic. I’m such a pathetic cripple.” As his wife, it was excruciating to see such a strong man so feeble. Now that he’s back to walking, he aims to prove to himself and his work that he can work as hard as ever, but comes home and collapses even at the beginning of the week and is so physically spent he often looses his appetite and just wants to sleep. Though it is nearly a year since the accident, Andrew still has a long way to go, and as his work is so demanding for him, I wonder if he’ll ever have the energy to put into rebuilding his formerly strong handsome physique.
For me now, everything is a question I try to avoid contemplating. Friends want to know when Andrew will be back to mountaineering, climbing and biking, but we are still trying to walk from our house to the end of the block six houses down. One year after I found him under the truck, I was diagnosed with cancer and had bi-lateral mastectomies at 28. We would walk by the same bleeding heart bush in our front yard, me high on valium so my chest muscles wouldn't seize up when I tried to take a deep breath, and he still wearing an hourly dose Fentanyl patch. I am reminded of his first go on the bike after the accident. He was encouraged to try by his doctor, but I was unaware of this clearance until I heard it from the doc. I encouraged Andrew to try, and eventually forced him to take a chance. He got on the bike and cried all the way to the end of the block. I said, “What’s wrong? Are you scared?” He whispered, “I didn’t think I’d ever ride a bike again.” He has a similar approach to all other physical activities at which he formerly excelled. He doesn’t want to discover that he might never be able to do them again. With seven vertebrae fused in his back he has very little movement and suspects that his long road rides with his father and local village friends in England are over. It has been recommended to him that he increase his flexibility and mobility through yoga, but we both realized when I tried to show him the most basic pose, that his limitations are permanent and he struggled just pushing himself off the ground with a fused back.
Our first and favorite activity together, climbing, may be something he tries again someday, but I realize I have lost my dependable strong climbing partner. I know that with the uncertainties in climbing and the opportunity to re-injure his already pieced together back, he will most likely not be trying new difficult routes and may never want to risk having another stint in the hospital. One day when I got home from the climbing gym, he said, “I wonder what I might have achieved? That’s what gets me. I’ll never know if it’s this body that keeps me back, or my own natural weaknesses.” Before the accident, Andrew worked as a climbing and mountaineering guide with military, corporate and youth groups. I am certain that job is not now in his future as carrying heavy loads would further damage his back. Woodworking also served as an income when Andrew worked for a custom cabinet maker and developed into a fulfilling hobby. Now, Andrew’s back and knees start to hurt after a brief stint and he is frustrated with his weaknesses. Andrew was previously confident about his place with his current company and took pride in his work, telling me one day, “I think in the future the owners will make me an integral part of the company.” Now he sees his absence as letting down the company and feels he has to catch up on earnings lost, showing his anxiety about his ability to provide in the future. He expresses concern about his unstable position with the company and his reluctance to start a family as a result.
I remember being awarded the “most inspirational” student award in school and wonder why now, when chatting with friends, the conversation invariably turns morbid when I bring up a subject. Even if Andrew’s progress isn’t the topic, I notice my brain constantly spins around tragedy, dismemberment, and death. I can’t look at a magazine or newspaper or listen to the news without feeling physically sick being reminded of the feelings of weakness, horror, and loss as I looked down at my husband mangled beneath the truck. As he screamed to me to please get the truck off him, I wondered if I should leave him to get help, or say our last words as I assumed he would be dead when I returned with his rescuers. When he survived, it took me months to re-attach to the person I thought was gone to me, and ultimately, to believe he would live a full rewarding life. In observing his silent mental and physical struggles, I know that his suffering will not be over for a long time.
In an understated observation of our marriage, a friend said, “It seems like you two are having problems.” I didn’t like to recount the incidents individually, but overall I had noticed a change. Andrew’s comments about politics, perceived weak beings, and his friends were more brutal, angry, and judgemental. His grief at his loss of time, strength, mobility, and enjoyment of activities with me and his friends comes out as unrelated angry accusations against me. My constant fear is that this is the new Andrew I get to live with, and that each new activity at which he tries and performs poorly, will revive the anger. I encouraged him to come snowshoeing with friends and he refused, finally admitting he would be out with skiers and everyone would be talking about waiting for crippled Andrew. I took him to the climbing gym, where he could not bring himself. He avoided looking at the walls and worked hard to restrain his tears while talking to friends there. Every weekend friends call to ask if I’d like to join them skiing, climbing, or hiking, and Andrew encourages me to go, though he can come up with very few activities his body can endure for another entire day alone.
Recently I had a small wrist surgery and thought nothing of the procedure until I reached the surgery prep room where I was reminded of the sounds, smells, and moments when Andrew was wheeled away to surgery while another one of his neighbors in the Trauma unit were wheeled away to the morgue. A nurse was so confused when she found me crying uncontrollably that she checked my chart to verify that I was, in fact, just having a small wrist improvement.
A friend was recounting the joys of seeing her new baby for the first time. She said the most moving moment was seeing his little hands feeling all the new things in his world. I immediately had a wretching sensation as I remembered Andrew in a comatose state slowly feeling the tubes around his head with his long thin fingers, trying to discern where he was. I had not spoken with him for a month as his vital signs were too unstable to perform surgery for three weeks. Andrew was kept in a comatose state tied down so that he would not paralyze himself thrashing around. I have never felt so alone as during those weeks, and driving home from the hospital I nearly drove off the highway thinking of returning home to an empty house and how I planned never to return for our things if he didn’t live since life without him was no life for me.
Now, when I curl up with Andrew at night, I am so grateful to be with him, but my mind immediately registers his warm skin and imagines all the likely scenarios that could have occurred on that day that would have made his skin long cold now. I hold my breath, as I see his chest rise and wait for the last breath to come. Then the darkness surrounds me, and I feel like I'm suffocating, sure my heart is about to beat for the last time any moment. And though optimism was previously my forte, I wonder where I would be now if I had not joined Andrew for that one day of work. I know exactly where he would be, and in my uncontrollable imaginings, I am somewhere else while he is forever trapped under the truck with no one to hear his cries for help. The bleak stark winter landscape on that day is etched in my mind, and my heart feels trapped alone in that place, with no one to help, and too weak to save him. Certain that he has suffered enough, I keep my images to myself, so that he only has to comfort me when I wake up crying from my nightmares. When he leaves for work in the morning I have a sinking feeling, and call him all day long to see that he is ok. When he arrives a half hour late home, I am sitting quietly by myself, re-living every part of the accident alone in my mind. I am constantly preparing myself for the worst news, as though being prepared would make it less painful next time. Being inspired by his strong hard-fought recovery isn’t enough to dim the experience because the memories continue to shadow my world view. I guess in war they call this shell shocked, and just as my grandfather still re-counts his painful memories from two wars in his last days, I don’t expect the memories to ever fade because each day something reminds me of the accident as though it were yesterday.
I think back now to the night before the accident. Things has been hard for us, with me working as a field geologist and living in Arizona in a hotel for weeks at a time. I finally started looking for a job closer to home, and I had only flown back days before. I was supposed to start my new job the next day, but the computer wasn't ready yet, which was why I had a day off to go to the remote job site with him. We had gone for a sunset walk around the rolling hills with our new dogs, and with the prairie dogs popping up and chirping as we passed by, for a moment it seemed liked all was right in the world. When we got home, Andrew sat in his chair and fell immediately asleep. I got a wild hair and rustled up all the candles in our house and surrounded him with light while he was sleeping. As it turned out, that ended up being the séance before the letting of the blood. Now, life is divided before and after that moment, when he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When I’m not having panic attacks, I try now to focus on one thing: the day he waited at the hospital sitting up for hours to show me he could walk. He had been lying strapped in the rocking bed for nearly a month, and on this day he said he had something to show me. I came from work quickly, and found him sitting proudly upright in a chair, flanked by two nurses. The helped pull him to standing, his muscles so wasted that even his swallowing muscles had atrophied and he’d lost nearly half his body weight. I watched as he took several steps then, too exhausted to continue, the nurses helped him back into bed. This was my 27 year old husband in front of me and I could hardly look, because I realized now how long the road to recovery was in front of us. Only then did it occur to me that he might actually live again. I wondered if I could ever again say the same for myself.