Sylvia's Journal

Axel’s OT appointments are coming to an end, at least the regular ones. Betty his occupational therapist who focused on his left arm and hand, is letting him go. He is on his own now to bring his hand, upper arm and shoulder back into full service. It is a matter of exercise discipline. The radial nerve is continuing to regenerate slowly but surely. Yesterday he came back from Abi’s massage in great spirits. He suddenly realized that his hand felt like a normal hand. It certainly looks normal; the skin tone is again the same as the skin tone of his other hand and he can extend his fingers, albeit with considerable effort. His lower arm gets sore after doing this for while but that is to be expected after this long period of inactivity.

I can tell when he gets tired because of his stoop. It reminds me of his dad (he doesn’t like it when I make that comparison). Herman walked like that in his later years, stiff and stooped.

Axel’s scar is healing nicely. When we saw Tim and Rhonda last weekend they did not even notice the scar at first. And Tim, of all people should remember, having seen Axel practically scalped. The only part that has not gotten much better much is the ‘woody’ feeling in his head. His hair has grown back nicely and even starts to curl again. But underneath it is a considerable ditch that crosses his scalp from front to back. We should have drawn the outline of the part with the wooden sensation in permanent ink to see if anything has actually changed. It may be in the same category as my tingling toes – something we’ll have to learn to live with.

I had a long and intense workday at home finally finishing a considerable chunk of a big writing project that has been in the works for months. I took some time out around noon to have my weekly massage with Abi which was, as always, wonderful. She is the one health provider who will never discharge us and that is fine with us. We expect to be needing those massages for a long time to come.

The excitement about the primaries had momentarily made me forget the weather which sucks this time of the year. This is why so many people escape the winter and go south. I drove through freezing rain, braving black ice early in the morning and made it in one piece. On such days I am afraid of getting into a traffic accident. There is not much I can do about it other than driving defensively and complying with speed limits. The chances of a ‘pilot-error’ accident are not as high as they are in the sky but it is so much more crowded with people who are not driving defensively and who are distracted by life. As I am learning more about how our emotional state can drive out critical thought and attention I wonder why there aren’t more accidents.

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, voting day for Massachusetts and many other states. I don’t think Tessa got her absentee ballot in on time and Jim discovered that his voter registration transfer had not taken place as planned. He was not excluded from voting but would have to do it in Amherst. As a result Obama lost two precious votes from our family, much to Hillary’s luck. She carried Massachusetts and many other states. But Obama carried Manchester-by-the-Sea, not just over Hillary but over Republican candidates as well. This is quite amazing for a small town of wealthy people that has been staunchly Republican as long as Axel can remember.

We went to the poll station as a family (a family that votes together…) and we were all surprised to find Axel’s name on the ballot and so we voted for him, as well as for Obama. Finding his name on the ballot for (Democratic) Town Committee is something we still don’t quite get, we didn’t know he was running. I voted for the entire Democratic slate but Sita voted only for those she new and trusted.

We had been invited to watch the returns with friends but Axel was still too punky to mingle with company, planning for a simple meal at home. Instead Sita and Jim took us out to Cala, our favorite local restaurant to celebrate our voting. Sita has discovered ostrich (in Davos of all places) and Cala happened to have it on the menu. It was a high carbon footprint meal with the ostrich being flown in all the way from Australia. We enjoyed four wonderful dishes, by taste rather than sight, since we were seated in an obscure corner of the restaurant. The returns came in too late for me to watch on TV. I got them early this morning instead.

Axel and I drove two hours to Orange to see Tim and Rhonda. We probably have Tim to thank for Axel’s life and may be mine too. I remember Tim holding my hand and talking to me as if we knew us well. He was chattering along, forcing me to respond from time to time when I really had wanted to close my eyes and get out of this really bad spot I was in. Tim and his friend Chris tried to stop the bleeding of Axel’s head. Chris took his shirt and covered Axel’s head.

Tim’s description of Axel bleeding profusely with a faint voice and glazed over eyes gave me a jolt. I never saw Axel like that and I sometimes forget how close he was to death’s door. But look at him now. We continue to be immensely grateful, even with all the pains and stiffness. This was the happy ending story of the day.

As we drove to Orange I kept looking at the blue skies overhead, thinking “we could have flown.” I could have. But I am not sure we could have flown together. Axel is still undecided about when to get back in the cockpit although he is a trooper and has indicated that he will one day. I am much clearer about when I am ready to fly together again. I told him that I need to build up my experience for awhile and the last thing I want is a nervous Nelly sitting next to me, pumping the foot pedals as if they were brakes (they are on the ground but not in the air). I am asking all the pilots around me to come flying with me so that it becomes second nature and I can handle nervous Nellies, Axel or another, and deal with things that require my immediate attention. Martin Imm, our handyman of this summer and fellow Quaker has already agreed to be my flying partner. And Arne has been of course for the 12 hours I have put in since the accident.

In the evening we went to the Lash/Stevens to watch the Superbowl. I had waffled about going since I couldn’t care less about the game (saying this is as close to blasphemy as you can get in New England). Axel assured me that there would be other women, like me, not interested in the game but interested in the company and the food. So, in the end I decided to go. I had after all made my favorite potluck desert, Undescended Twinkies. The recipe comes from Square Meals by Jane and Michael Stern. The cookbook, which is a hoot to read, describes recipes from the back of food packages in the American fifties. They are new to me and fun to make; they are also without any emotional load, except maybe that the ingredients and dishes are as far away from eating local and green (and healthy) as you could go. To Axel and his Baby boom cohort they are familiar and comforting foods. This is funny and sad because, in large quantities, such foods have been known to kill Baby boomers.

We sat in the back of the room with the giant screen and talked about movies and other womanly things. When, during the third quarter of the game the mood began to descend Peggy and I decided to move to a side room where we watched a re-enactment of Jane Austen’s life. And that was the sad ending of the day. What happened to Jane Austen was just as sad as what happened to the Patriots. But at least Jane Austen left us some good stuff to read.

Yesterday was Groundhog Day. The ‘marmot’ Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow in the presence of thousands of people. This means there will be six more weeks of winter in 2008. For us in Manchester it was a mild and windy day, with a faint promise of this distant spring in the air. The amaryllis and Paper Whites are showing their buds, no longer Christmas flowers but harbingers of the new growing season instead.

We decided to combine our civic duty with our physical duty by walking downtown to participate in the Manchester Democratic Committee Caucus. This was my first experience in the American democratic process at its most grassy roots. It was also my first participation in a caucus, a process that mystified me. On the way into town we passed a cluster of Obama campaigners standing with signs and buttons in front of the Manchester Post Office. We supported the cause by handing out home baked cookies and holding a sign for a little while before going on to the Town Hall for the caucus.

In a real grass roots election, including a stump speech, Axel was elected to be delegate to the Massachusetts State Convention in June. He won hands down (10 to 6) in a tight field of two.

After the delegates were chosen we got to the political part of the meeting to which Independents were admitted. We listened to the Obama and Hillary people making pitches for their candidates. The Obama people were very present with their signs and stickers. The Hillary people were not. As a newbie to the American political process I experienced its power of engagement. A few of us spoke about why this or that candidate. This will be my first presential election as an American citizen. My first voting experience was in the race for Massachusetts Governor and there I picked a winner. I am planning to do so again. It was fun. I could get into this.

The rest of the day I spent sorting out the huge pile of bills and receipts that we have accumulated since July 14 and balancing ‘the crash books.’ I sent off a thick stack of receipts to the plane insurance company with the faint and probably unrealistic hope that it will pay for things the health insurance disallowed. Since we had already written all this off it can only be good.

Today, after Quaker Meeting we will drive to Orange, MA to see Tim Bowers and his family. Tim was probably the first responder on July 14. He and his family were picking blueberries when we came crashing down. It scared the wits out of him but he stayed with us and held my hand until professional help arrived. We did not see Tim on October 14 because the trauma was still too raw. Recently we have started to talk and email which led to this invitation.

The tree is down. There is nothing but a stump left of that proud towering giant. And when it was down we realized that we had dodged another bullet. It was rotten to its core. The thought of what damage it could have caused should help us when the tree cutter’s bill comes in. It was two days of work, part of it in hail and sleet. We also won’t have to order wood for next winter.

Upon his return from PT Axel demonstrated his new finger dexterity. It takes tremendous effort to lift part of his fingers but the fact that he can was the best news in a long time. He is not quite there yet. The finger tips cannot come up by themselves yet. As for my nerve re-regeneration project, the regrowth of the nerves that go to my toes seems to be on a stop and go schedule: for weeks at a time nothing happens and then suddenly the line between normal sensation and abnormal sensation shifts by a few millimeters. I too am not there yet. I have actually resigned myself to the idea that this may never get completely right. It is annoying but not really a handicap and therefore would not be a bad outcome of a plane crash.

Axel had another session with Ruth and remarked that they are still not talking about the crash. I am not surprised. When you go into any therapy there is a lot of bagage that comes along and getting it inside the door is a lot of work.

I spent my day on the kind of detail work that is very stressful for me and hard to get in and out of. I am finetuning and cleaning up the facilitator material for our leadership programs that has to be easily accessible via the internet for all our leadership development teams that are operating around the world. I have now seen teams using our notes with less and less of our direct (as in stand-in-front-of-the-group) involvement and so I have a good idea of what the materials need to be and look like. It has been tested with teams in Nepal, Zanzibar, Swaziland, Kenya, Guyana and now Ghana. It is the sort of detail work that drives me crazy but I have to bite through it since the rewards (and cost savings) will be enormous. It has been something that is on my ‘to-do’ list since October and needs to be crossed off in the next few weeks, before I go to Tanzania in late February. I made huge progress yesterday.

I rewarded myself, after a wonderful soup meal cooked by Axel, with watching a movie and then reading another chapter in the book that Chris Kessler gave me in August called Deep Survival. That book turns out to be very much about our brains and how they help or hinder survival. Suddenly everywhere around me books and articles about the mind, the unconscious and brain bio – and neurochemistry show up. I find myself drawn to learn more about this exceedingly complex and fascinating part of our being. The EMDR therapy and the body memories it rakes up, the period of black out that may not have been unconsciousness, the sudden and unexpected bodily memories of the crash, and the conscious remembrance of the seconds before and after are all part of this reservoir of experiences that I am seeking to place in a meaningful and larger context. It seems that the universe is conspiring to do that; even an article mentioned on one of my professional ListServes – the Neuroscience of Leadership – turns out to be about the same thing(s).

This morning the remaining stump of the venerable old Norway maple tree that was hovering high over the barn and the house is cut down. We have worried through a few storms about it falling down on the house or barn and creating considerable devastation. But now that is being cut down memories come flooding in, especially for Axel. They have known each other for a long time. He wrote, “I will miss its sheltering presence and remember the swing in its branches that provided so much joy to me as a kid just arriving here to live, when we (tree and I) were both much smaller.” This refers to sometime in the 1950s.

And as the branches are being disconnected from the trunk, something else has reconnected. Axel just called that his extensor digitorum communis (EDC) has reconnected. In our language that means he can straighten his fingers at the knuckles again: the nerves have been busy regenerating. Axel is one step close to whole again.

Yesterday morning I overslept and had to dash out to see the shoulder doctor. These are not appointments to be missed because it takes weeks to get a new slot. Because of my rushing I had to forgo the 20 minutes exercise in the shower and so I discovered what happens when I skip the exercise: my muscles and tendons take a few extra hours to gain the fluidity of movement that make it look like I am healed. It was a reminder that I am not there yet. The shoulder doctor has a physician’s assistant who does most of the doctoring that happens before and after surgery. He checked out my shoulder and declared me no longer a patient after which the doctor himself showed up to confirm the judgment. So this is one more discharge and one more health provider to cross off my list. The remaining ones are the EMDR therapist, the massage therapist and the ankle doctor.

In the evening Axel and I had dinner with Jody and Gar Morse at their house in a section of Manchester that I did not even know existed. We watched the last Obama and Clinton debate which was more of a polite conversation than a debate. It is clear with the field winnowed down to two that their eyes were already on the general elections. They covered the big topics that will pit Republicans against Democrats next November. I had been sitting on the fence about who to vote for but was leaning increasingly towards Obama and what I saw yesterday clinched the deal. I only wished that Obama would stop looking down his nose. When he looks like that he reminds me of someone I don’t particularly like. It is funny how some of these things get in the way. I do admire Hillary for being a pioneer and taking on all the risks that go with being in front. I know that she is held to higher standards simply because she is the only woman in the field. I am sure that because of her a few girls in the US can now imagine that one day they’ll run for high office. For me the whole thing is a win-win no matter which one of the two gets the nomination.