Sylvia's Journal

Today is the day I had intended, for the longest time, to go back and join my colleagues in a more regular way at work. It has been four and half months now and it is enough. My cold threatened to spoil the plans but I went to bed again at 7 PM with a cup of hot Teraflu medicine. I woke up at 4:30 AM ready to tackle the day. I used to get up at 5AM but now there is so much to do in the morning that I can use half an hour more. I feel pretty good and so this will be the day that I join the world again, this time fully.

My dreams were populated with everything and everyone I remember from the last four months. It’s a bit of a jumble and I would not know where to begin to make sense of it all. I do remember there was much activity, boat rides, bus rides, with much preparation and lugging things around. It is as if everyone came out to see me off on my new journey. This will be it then.

Yesterday was a good recovery day. We took Sita to the airport. She is off to India. After a week of work she will be staying with our friends Nathalie and Sanjay. It is as if Sita is taking up the slack in her mom’s travels. There’s more travel ahead for her. She just got an invitation to scribe at the World Economic Forum in Davos in late January. We should all be so lucky.

On our way back from the airport we stopped to see Don and Brenda, Axel’s colleagues form way back when who gave us some office furniture they no longer need. They also offered us another refrigerator, which we politely declined. We have never had so many refrigerator offers in our life.

We had a wonderful lunch in the newly opened Cheesecake Factory at the North Shore Mall to celebrate a momentous development: Axel can move his left hand up an inch or so from the wrist. We hardly dare to believe it but it appears that the nerve is indeed regenerating. In a couple of weeks he will have another EMG to determine whether there is indeed more motor activity than before. This will be the ultimate proof. If this was just a figment of our imagination and there is still nil motor activity he will have to go in for surgery.

It was a night like the ones I remember, painfully, from early on in our recovery; a stop-and-go sort of night. I never slept more than 30 minutes before I woke up again and thus saw all hours of the night pass by. There wasn’t much room for elaborate dreams so there is nothing from which I can get some clues as to why this sleeplessness, except my determination to go to Cambridge twice in the coming week and do real work at home. I may not be quite as productive as I had planned today. After Abi’s massage, later this morning, I may find myself back in bed.

Yesterday I reached another milestone: I rode my bike to Quaker Meeting and back. That is a total of one hour on the bike. Axel had prepared himself for having to pick me up somewhere along the road. He does tend to underestimate my ability or he projects himself too much onto me. But it was too beautiful a day to take the car and I was ready to try it out. After all, I could ride the stationary bike at physical therapy without any trouble. I am glad I tried it. It was a joyous ride and it actually felt good; the repetitive motion seemed to lubricate my joints and the initial discomfort soon vanished. I did not even have to step off at the steep hill where Bridge Street crosses Masconomo Street. Actually, the hardest part of the trip was to put the bike away in the shed. It requires walking on very uneven grass. That’s where the deficient ankle hinges literally trip me up.

Maribeth showed up for lunch with a complete Thanksgiving meal. Having read about peasoup and pumpkin pie she took pity on us. She served us both a very full plate with all the trimmings, which we ate under her supervision. We have been cooking (for) ourselves for quite awhile now but this was a nice surprise. We had to go for a walk around the point to help with the digestion. It is great that we are sufficiently limber and fit to undertake such a walk now. The lack of cardio-vascular exercise and the good food we are eating have brought the pounds that we lost back on. We have to start paying attention to what we are eating and may have to fore go the ice cream that Sita is careful to replace as soon as the carton is empty. Or the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie.

In the evening we went to the St. Johns for an early dinner, armed with our own pretend-beer and pretend-wine. We had not seen each other in weeks and we had much catching up to as well as some progress to show off. We left when my yawning became too frequent. I had expected a good long sleep, going to bed at 9. Unfortunately, that part did not quite work out as planned. Still, I am determined this week to become a more active and visible part of the MSH workforce, both at home and in the Cambridge office.

I woke up this morning without much pain, stiff of course but not much more. It took a while to realize that the pains were minimal and if I could only get rid of that stiffness all would be normal again. Instead of doing my various stretching exercises in the shower downstairs I did them upstairs. As a result the walk down the stairs was good, very good. I could have fooled anyone; that is how normal I can be. The word normal keeps coming up. Normal. Normal. Normal. I so badly want us to be normal again and do the things we enjoyed doing. Like walking the Masconomo-Proctor Street loop. Axel can already do it but I learned, after doing the little loop of Smith Point that an up-and-down walk like that is still a huge thing for me.

We are daring to talk about other things that were part of our normal life, before, like skiing, hiking, kayaking. It’s a bit of a joke right now. But they are actually serious dreams, for next year, not this. Such conversations create images that pull me; a short term vision that fuels my determination to be serious about the exercises, not to slack off. They do the same for Axel. He was told by his therapist that he needs to take his exercises slightly over the edge of comfort. If he doesn’t do this she can see the difference and his progress stops. It is that direct and that simple. So now he is doing his exercises as if his life depends on it. It does!

Yesterday we went on two visits. We are a bit difficult to accommodate on such visits: Axel gets stiff and reverts to his zombie walk when he sits too much, especially in low comfy chairs, and I get a swollen foot when I stand too much. So I tend to install myself someplace and stay there while Axel keeps getting up and moves around.

We visited our new neighbors Ellen and Bill Cross who built a beautiful new house across the cove from us. They introduced us to friends who have recreated the estate (‘Cragsyde’) of George Nixon Black that used to be across the Cove as well in the early 1900s, on which Axel’s grandfather and grandmother, he the gardener and she one of the servants. It was a big rambling shingle style ‘cottage,’ built by architects Peabody & Stearns from Boston. Ellen and Bill’s friends rebuilt the house on Swan’s Island in Maine according to the original plans. The original Cragsyde was torn down in the 1940s. They showed us a video about the mansion and its inhabitants with old folks reminiscing over still photographs. We hoped to catch a glimpse of grampie and granma but they were not in it. Axel had brought a small silver cup to our meeting that was engraved with the words ‘George N. Black for his display of chrysanthemum plants, 1904.’ This cup had been on display in the Magnuson greenhouse with other prizes. As it turned out, Jane, who is a bit of a history buff about Black and his Cragsyde, had an entry in her chronology about when this prize was awarded, November 12, 1904, and that it was awarded to Black and his gardener, Axel Magnuson. It was very exciting to hear about all the history, knowing that Axel’s family is deeply embedded in the story.

Later in the day we went to see Jim’s family for a post-Thanksgiving dinner at their house. We all ate too much, as one is supposed to do and watched football games, which one is also supposed to do. The latter I don’t get and don’t want to get. For me American football is nothing more than a bunch of bulky men with angry faces tripping over one another. This description is considered blasphemy, but I just don’t get the attraction. Having a very large, 40-something inch screen with large men tumbling over one another flashing through the room is a bit distracting for me. I find it hard to converse with others. But for most Americans this is easy and totally normal. Ahhh, normal, some normal I like and some normal I don’t.

It is very early in the morning. After waking up every hour from midnight on I decided at 6 AM that it was OK to get up. I am putting in about 10 hours a night since I returned from Kenya. And still I feel crummy. It must be the cold.

I sit by the window and look out over a pink cove. The sunrise is breathtaking. The water in the cove is flat like a mirror, except when the mallards cross the part I can see from where I sit. There are traces of frost on the ground. It was our coldest night yet. Everything is completely still.

When I shift my gaze from the cove to the yard I see a square patch of brown dirt that needs to be reseeded. It is where the back door ramp was taken away. At the front door the grass has grown back in and nothing reveals that I wheeled myself over a ramp there, some months ago. Inside the house only a few things give away that something happened this summer; the big recliner at the dining room table is still taking the place of a regular chair; blue, red and yellow thera-flex bands hang in various places for our muscle strengthening exercises; in the living room there are pillows on the ground and a yoga mat and bolster are ready for ground exercises. On the refrigerator is the most telling picture, the one where our fingers touch, across our hospital beds.

Our recovery is still in full swing. We have been told to count on a year before we will be our old selves again; that means another 8 months. This phase of our recovery is without drama; it is tedious, at times discouraging and painfully slow, but that is the pace at which soft tissue revives and the nerves regenerate. A study in patience, again.

And then something mundane happens that gives me hope, like when Axel mowed the lawn, something unthinkable even a month ago. The exercise did him good. I watched him from inside where I was holed up in my comfy chair, the entire day, finishing another book. We had a quiet leftover dinner by the fire, more soup and pumpkin pie, more reading, while Sita and Jim when out with friends.

I’m very thankful to be with Sylvia, with Sita and Tessa, and Jim and Steve, with our families and and with our friends in this beautiful world. I am very thankful for all the family and friends who loved us, nourished us and talked with us to bring us back to life, back to this world with all its lights, its noises, it’s warmth, its smells, its surprises and most of all its people. I don’t regret anything. So much has been gained. The time has been one of mending, healing, and relearning. And into that time has cascaded more love then I had thought existed.

That loved healed. And it brought even more than that. It transformed. I am so thankful to all of you who brought that love into our lives

Today passed very quietly with cooking, playing games, baking bread, taking a walk, and talking with Tessa on the phone. I think we were all very conscious of looking back at the last 4 months at this time of Thanksgiving. We surrounded ourselves with ourselves and stayed out of the rest of the world, just for the day. We will touch base with relatives -including the Akerleys- and friends later. We had a very nontraditional-but exceptional-pea soup and breads made by Sylvia and Sita. Sylvia re-crafted 1 of our pumpkins into a delicious pie and Sita created some exotic whipped cream. We retrieved some beloved games from the celler and played several rounds among ourselves. Axel even remembered some of the rules.

So all in all, it was a loved, lovely day in Lobster Cove. Certainly one we will all remember, and be thankful for.

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US. Most people will be very mindful of what they are thankful for, aside from eating turkey and a whole host of traditional dishes. Not having been brought up in the US, Thanksgiving was not a meaningful day for me. I had none of those warm and fuzzy childhood memories that may be reponsible for this being one of America’s top holidays. But, taking the name of the day quite literally, Thanksgiving Day this year will be quite meaningful for me as well.

Since the crash we have had a Thanksgiving Week (the week immediate post-crash in which our full recovery was predicted). Each time we tell our story to someone and he or she says “amazing (thank god) that you are still alive” we celebrate a few Thanksgiving Minutes. We had a Thanksgiving Afternoon that day in late August when Fatou had prepared us copious foods and we enjoyed the company of all those who had come to our aid. In mid-October we had a Thanksgiving Sunday with the people who rescued us in Gardner. And when I hear Axel’s breathing at night, it is a Thanksgiving Night. Thanksgiving in our new lives comes in various shapes and sizes. It is continuous and without end.

In fact, there is so much to be thankful for that this day could sink under its weight. We will make this a ‘Thanksgiving Light,’ partially because Tessa, Steve and Jim are not with us and also because of the food we will be eating: pea soup and pumpkin pie.

Yesterday was another crummy day for me. I went to bed very early again, while Sita, Axel and Jim were watching a movie. When I woke up this morning, after a sleepless night, with my head all stuffy and feeling crummier than ever, I realized that I am simply having a cold. What I had thought had been my new reaction to travel and jetlag was nothing more than a cold. I had seen many people around me the last couple of weeks with symptoms of the common cold. I naively thought that our bodies, dealing with heavier stuff, would have no room for stuffy noses and things like that. In the last four months we have pretty much only dealt with conditions that were on our discharge forms.

What I had forgotten is that colds were one of those ‘gifts’ that I would often bring back from a trip overseas. Catching a cold like this is part of my recovery and return to the normalcy of my pre-crash life; a normalcy that has its own challenges and bumps in the road.

Wherever you are in the world, and whether you are eating turkey or not, may this be a happy Thanksgiving Day.

I knew that this week was somehow going to be important and different than the previous ones. I woke up with the idea that I had nothing to write about and then finding my head overflow with stuff to explore this morning.

This is the ‘pregnant’ quality of any transition. It is clear that I am in that phase. I’d recognize it from a mile away. We have a saying in Dutch ‘walking with your soul under your arm’ (met je ziel onder je arm lopen) which is what I did pretty much all of yesterday. Having your soul under your arm, and not being able to put it anyplace is tiresome. This soul is a heavy thing and while carrying it around you cannot do anything else. Axel saw me shuffling around the house, sitting down, picking up a book, putting it away again, checking email, responding to some, and walking away again, and so forth. Restless. Breathless.

I found myself gravitating towards the section of my bookcase where the B-authors are grouped. Transition is Bill Bridges’ territory. He has written much about the topic. I am a big fan of his. I pulled out the book he wrote about his own personal transition after the death of his wife. I looked for the marked pages of which there are many. The very first underlined phrase was “There is no beginning that does not require an ending, and no ending that doesn’t make possible a new beginning.”

So what’s ending? I think this week I am ending my status as a patient. But I am not quite back to where I was on July 13th. I am not whole, or healed. The new beginning is not there yet and so I continue to remain in this no man’s land of transition, with my soul under my arm. How long this wandering will go on I cannot guess. It is an uncomfortable time, a time of suspense and not having much of a focus or direction; it’s time in which I have to admonish myself to “hang in there!’

Having written about what happens inside me, there is, in this household, always much to write about what happens outside me. Our neighbor Kurt and his grounds keeper Paul, who had made our back door ramp last July and then dismantled it again in November, showed up in the morning to do the refrigerator switch again, the old one back upstairs, the new one down to the cellar. Sita had been haranguing us about this fateful switch made sometime in the summer. But all is back to the old normal again and Sita stood in front of the old refrigerator with its freezing compartment at the bottom, beaming.

After dinner Axel, Sita and I sat with three large cookbooks on our laps trying to figure out what to cook for our very small and intimate Thanksgiving dinner. Jim is pulled back into his own family so there will be just the three of us. You don’t cook a turkey for three people. We finally agreed on pea soup, a home made bread and pumpkin pie for desert. That will give me some focus for today and force me to put that soul down for a bit.

Earlier in the day I talked with Joan who is having surgery today on her shoulder and her elbow. The doctor will be removing her elbow plate and loosen up her shoulder joint by removing some of the scar tissue, or something to that effect. She was dreading the surgery, as I would. Keep her in your thoughts. She will be back at home tonight where her son who flew in from California, is caring for her, as Morsi is still in Egypt.

It is very cold, just one degree above freezing. Coming back from Africa, this is a new experience. It is also a new experience for my foot which takes longer too limber up in the cold. I am trying to fall back in my old routines but it’s hard. I am getting up too early and having more trouble than before the accident in getting myself organized. My desk is still a mess and I have a hard time concentrating. I don’t think I ever had a concussion but I act as if I did with this being a delayed reaction.

The accident and our recovery have been dominating our life the last four months. Everything had orbited around it, including our daily schedules of exercises and therapy. In Nairobi my life was organized around the needs of the task at hand, which filled each day and evening. Now, without this focus, I am feeling a bit lost. I am no longer incapacitated, having proven that I can do the work as I did in Nairobi; yet on the other hand I am not yet ready to get in the car three times a week and head to work and complete the forty+ hour week with two days working at home. But something is shifting.

I think my dreams of last night carry some clues even though it is hard to find them in my nearly undecipherable pencil scribbles on yellow Post-it Notes next to my bed. This is the text I found when I woke up this morning: “Something about (health) services – it is easy to render lots of them of dubious quality or outsource them and no longer pay attention.” There were more scribbles about a feeling that came with the words, a sinister and ominous undercurrent that combined two topics with which I occupied myself: Rwanda’s genocide and coaching. I read the chapter in State of Africa on Rwanda and with my colleagues Lourdes and Barbara I discussed the revision of a forthcoming publication on Coaching. I can only think, at this early hour, that there is some tension between an inner-directed self-centredness (Rwanda) and an outer-directed attention to others (coaching). I have a hunch that this week is going to contain some turning point for me in my recovery and return to normal life.

I started the day with a badly needed massage from Abi. Later I went to physical therapy. In between there was one work-related call (on coaching), an a few tasks such as writing my assignment report and completing my expense report in addition to a half-hearted attempt to organize myself and plan my week. If I apply my work standards from before the crash I was singularly unproductive.

My physical therapist was curious to hear about my PT experiences in Nairobi and announced that she, too, will get more aggressive as the swelling of my foot subsides (which it hasn’t). She worked hard on mobilizing the ankle joints and gave me a new set of exercises to build up the weak and tight muscles around them.

Axel also had his appointment for OT/PT in Peabody to which he still needs to be driven. He found himself in some bureaucratic mess-up related to re-activating his driver’s license that may require weeks if not months to sort out. It appears that someone inadvertently checked a box that should not have been checked on his application for a handicapped parking sticker. He was placed in the category of high risk drivers who are either post-stroke or epileptic. Given our litigious society we fear that no one is willing to take the risk of calling him fit by placing a signature on some form or another. It is a bit of a nightmare of which the end is not in sight. The fees required to pass each barrier (hundreds of dollars) also undo the benefits of the handicapped sticker which absolve us from putting quarters in parking meters. We’d have to park entire weeks at parking meters for the next few months to offset the re-instatement fees.

I am sitting in my bed with a pillow as desk and the computer on that pillow; much like I have done since July 21st minus the last two weeks. It is very early in the morning.

My dreams were many and mysterious. I was doing exercises with my foot on a raised platform on a square with lots of people looking on. At some other point I gave directions to someone to a hotel in Kathmandu. The directions were so precise, with street name (Khatra or Khadra street)l, that I could check with my Nepali friends whether it really exists. I also dreamed about being with people who push boundaries and who innovate and in some context or other used the terms innovation and denovation. I think in my dream state I invented a new word. I suppose innovation and denovation are opposites. Maybe coming back to one’s own house, hearth and loved ones is denovation, as in: going back too what was before.

It is wonderful to be home again. This is the best part of traveling after all: coming home. This homecoming was a bit different from all my previous homecomings. I used to be full of energy, no matter how far I had traveled, bring my suitcase in, unpack it, distribute gifts and goodies, have tea, dinner and whatnot, take a shower, put the laundry in the washing machine, clean off my desk, and have everything ready for a new workday. I would go to bed at a normal US time and everything looked as if I had never been away.

Not this time. My suitcase is still sitting on the floor, unopened. The Dutch cheese did not even make it into the refrigerator. I was completely exhausted and went straight to bed for an uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep. That woke me up at 3 AM.

I am stiff beyond belief. Once more I wonder when and if I will ever be limber again. I am curious what my physical therapist will say about my foot; it doesn’t feel like there was any progress and possibly even regress. My neck and shoulders are sore and my range of motion feels limited. I was allowed to travel business class but even there it was a challenge to keep my leg up and get comfortable. I don’t think I slept more than one hour on all the flights combined.

Nevertheless it was wonderful to be out in the field again and do the work I love so much doing. It was worth it and I’d do it again if the opportunity would present itself. But not right away. I think I am going to take it easy for a little bit.