Sylvia's Journal

My vivid dreams vanished much like a spider net disappears when you walk into it. The only thing I remember is that my friend and colleague Cary Perry was in it. This is not surprising since I just discovered last night that her network overlaps with mine in yet another way. We had already discovered that she is connected to our children’s school network (in several ways), and the old Manchester network but now I discovered she is also connected to my organization behavior teaching society network, something that is not local at all (but the connection is of course always local). In an exchange about this new connection Cary wrote me that I am at the epicenter. I think not; for me she is at the epicenter. The thing is we are all at our own epicenter but many people don’t know it (as we did not). We can only hope some people discover this joyous fact without having to have an accident.

Much about these last three months has been about discovery. This was possible because we were going slow (standing still at times). When you slow down you can see more of the landscape. Trains are slower than jet planes, cars slower than trains, bikes slower than cars, walking slower than biking and lying in a hospital bed or sitting in a wheelchair is as slow as you can get. That is when our journey of discoveries began. I discovered the rhythm of ebb and flood as the cove filled and emptied itself. I am not sure I have ever seen the whole sequence in one single day. And while I was watching people shared with me their stories about broken bones and broken hearts and I discovered how much we have in common.

Through the EMDR therapy I discovered past traumas that my mind and body had hidden from sight; and then I started sharing those with my siblings, one by one and I discovered things I did not know about them or events that I had tucked away or entirely missed; much like they discovered things they had missed; hurts and feelings that I am still carrying with me as baggage.

But most important of all discoveries was what the Xhosa and Zulu people from South Africa have known from the beginning of times. It is called Ubuntu and it means a person is a person through (other) persons (umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu). Our forebears probably knew this also but somewhere along the way (in our planes, trains and cars) we lost this piece of wisdom. And it took our fall out of the sky to retrieve it. Might this be the lever Archimedes talks about?

Yesterday Axel had an EMG (Electromyography) which is the electrical recording of muscle activity. It took an hour and a half. I was his ride so I got to watch. I had had something like this done to diagnose my carpal tunnel syndrome (which vanished after the crash) and remember it as slightly uncomfortable. But this looked much worse and the doctor also stuck a thin needle into his muscle while I watched waves on a computer screen and sounds as if we were deep down on the ocean floor. The news was mixed and not much of a surprise: he has serious injuries in his left arm and it will take a long time (a very long ‘awhile’) for this to be fixed. There was some good news about his sensory nerve down at his wrist which was more active than expected. Although it is not clear what the nature of the blockage is the doctor assured us that nerves are quite good at bypassing blockages. However, considering all the work that is taking place inside his arm and the rest of his body, the nerves will need time, lots of it, do re-route themselves. So the recommended treatment is good sleep, patience, hope, much physical and occupational therapy to keep the muscles strong and active and avoidance of anything that contains neurotoxins (like alcohol). So please help him with that. He had just gone back to savoring a real beer or glass of wine. Nurse Sita and Sylvia are on high alert and watched over him like hawks when Ken and Carroll came over with and for dinner. He was good!

Progress is being noticed on both the foot and neck/shoulder front by my physical therapist and I can’t help but think that the acupuncture set something in motion. Ever since last Friday’s session there has been a lot of activity around the tender places, some of it quite intense.