Sylvia's Journal

I woke up with a terrible pain in my hands. I wonder why, why now and how it is that I must be sleeping to upset them so much. It takes awhile to get rid of the pain. I feel rather dazed because of the vivid dreams that mingle with the hand pain. I spent a few minutes catching as much of the dreams as I can remember and writing bits down. The themes are clear, it’s all about travel, long corridors, keys, lost luggage. I am reminded of a quote from Antoine de St. Exupery whose Wind, Sand and Stars is sitting on my night stand, ‘The trip becomes a journey after you have lost your luggage.’ We should all be traveling light. There was also something in the dream about shipping puppies. Sita is trying to talk us into getting a puppy.

As I am quietly contemplating all this information so early in the morning and starting to write, Joe calls up from San Diego where it is now 5 AM. We don’t usually get calls from him this early. Something is amiss. Four years to the day his valley is on fire again. Joe had learned much about calamity management and network mobilization from the 2003 San Diego fire that raged through his valley. He brought his expertise to manage our calamity and mobilize our network so successfully in July. Now he is back to his own calamity, calling from his car as he is moving stuff out of the way. Other than talking with him there is little we can do and we feel rather powerless. The wooden ramp he built for us is of no use to him. He needs prayers, not stuff that burns.

For us, as intended, things were quiet yesterday. We were blessed with another gorgeous fall day and the trees appeared in fire in their bright orange, yellow and red colors, the kind of fire that Joe would prefer. I spent a good part of the day outside sitting in the sun and reading. I also finally had a chance to dig up my potatoes, something I watched other doing over the summer and was so anxious to do myself. I harvested probably another 10 pounds, the last of the season. The little ones that Ann Lasman had left in the ground a few weeks ago had grown into full size spuds. We ate the new crop of the baby potatoes last night, ending, with that, the possibility of one more harvest.

And now we are off to another intense week of physical therapy and exercises. Axel’s eyesight is steadily improving and we are beginning to contemplate getting his driver’s license renewed. It expired in July. He is not ready to drive yet but we think the day that he will is getting closer. We saw no more muscle twitching in his left arm (I still haven’t seen it with my own eyes). Betty had prepared us for this possibility, so we remain patient as well as patients. I’ll get to see it one of these days, I am sure.

Yesterday started out so full of promise. For once the journal writing was a joint activity, me writing, Axel talking. I was full of plans and optimistic that I’d get them done. But life had something else in mind and it appeared I needed a lesson. The flat rubbery corn pancakes I made for breakfast should have been a sign that things were not going to be easy and from there things went downhill.

I tried to tackle a job I had postponed for some time, the re-strapping of Penny’s old lawn chairs. I should have followed my own advice about not taking on something new during this Mercury-in-retrograde period but I thought the re-strapping of old chairs would be OK. It wasn’t. Not only that, it was hugely difficult, physically strenuous and more or less impossible. Several hours later, with one chair only half done I gave up, exhausted. There are things that I am not physically able to do but it took me a long time to accept defeat.

This experience of not being able to complete something affected me deeply. Axel sat me down for awhile on the bench by the cove. He had hoped that sitting in the afternoon sun would cheer me up. It hardly did. I went inside, exhausted and settled on the couch with a book on my lap. Instead of reading I worked myself up (or down rather) thinking of the things I failed to accomplish.

Axel promised to make dinner, Sita and Jim had gone to their old stomping ground for the weekend and I calmed down and read and napped for awhile until it got dark.

Not one to take advice easily, I started to tackle another (old) project. I tried to finish a baby sweater I had been working on for awhile. But no matter how much I tried and re-worked the piece I could not get it right. I finally gave up, in a fit unraveled the whole darn piece and cried a long overdue cry. It was a cry of defeat, frustration and mismatched expectations. But it also was a cry of sadness and loss; about the things that had gotten overshadowed by all the good news and the encouragement about our progress. I either have a deep reservoir for tears that takes a long time to overflow, or a shallow reservoir with a very slow production of tears. Either way, last night the floodgates opened and the reservoir overflowed; enough with being strong, able, competent, optimistic and fit for the world.

Maybe this had something to do with my body coming out of its shocked state. I know this because old ailments and physical conditions have returned after an absence of three months. There must be some trigger, hormonal or other, that is signaling my body to go back to its old preoccupations. Menopausal symptoms, suspended as a result of the crash, are back, hot flashes and all. So is the tingling in my hands indicating that my right hand carpal tunnel is still pressing on the nerve. I had scheduled an operation for this on the 25th of July which was canceled for obvious reasons. However, the 15th of July the symptoms disappeared. They have just come back.

It is too easy to slide back into my old ways of trying to be superwoman. I am not as agile and not as strong as I used to be and I am rather stubborn in (not) acknowledging that. I suppose yesterday was a shot across the bow. So I am resisting making any plans today and just let the day take me where I need to go. Quaker meeting first. It’s Sunday, after all. A day of rest. Try me!

While the rest of eastern Massachusetts was out in the sun, we stayed shrouded in deep fog all day long. We have had that experience before, some three months ago, figuratively of course. It has been very easy to stay in that fog and there is a certain degree of comfort in not seeing far beyond one’s own place. On July 14 we became the center of a very small universe, a little foggy place.

As I am going back into the world, and soon quite far into the world with my trip to Kenya, I realize how small our world has been the last three months with everything and everybody revolving around our well being: the attention of friends and family, the attention of doctors, the health system, work; everything aspiring and conspiring to make us feel better. It was a great success.

Sita and Jim, the first to be at our side after the crash, are now also leading us out of our fog. They are still a great help, and wonderful to have so close, but they are no longer jumping up to attend to our every wish. They have a life of their own and that needs their attention first. What comes with the desire to be normal and part of the world again is the necessity to give up this place of privileged attention; we try to stop talking about ourselves and inquire about others; we try to stop complaining about our aches and pains and ask others about theirs. All you readers out there, are you well?

Having asked that question, let me tell you more about us and our aches and pains then. Apparently there is such a thing as too much exercise. Axel has stepped up his exercise level and had a bad night with many interruptions and needing a muscle relaxant in the morning. I have maintained my exercise level (3 sets a day) but with my added mobility it turned out too much. We went for a walk up our driveway, first to the right to the Merrill’s driveway and then to the left to Masconomo street; a distance of at most 400 yards. By the time we walked back our pace, and mine in particular, had slowed to a crawl and our uneasy gait increasingly visible. When I arrived an hour later at the physical therapist’s I was in great pain. She packed me in hot packs and then proceeded with the usual ultrasound and gentle massage. That helped and I emerged out of the session feeling nearly brand new; new enough to participate in dinner preparations: I did the Swedish meatballs, Sita the potatoes and Jim the vegetables. Axel was out on the town, hanging out with the guys at the Manchester club.

Yesterday I drove in to MSH for the first time since Friday July the 13th. That Friday the 13th was the last day that everything was right. It will be June 2008 before we have another Friday the 13th and I hope by then everything will be right again. Hanging in the eleven months between two Fridays the 13th, there we are, plodding, away from the accident and towards our recovery.

A few weeks after I got home in August we were told that our accident had something to do with Mercury being ‘in retrograde,’ a peculiar constellation in the skies that make it seem as if the planet Mercury is moving backwards vis-à-vis the earth. Mercury is in retrograde 3 times in 2007 and in those periods everything that Mercury rules over (the mind’s processes, studying, communication, businesses, travel) is affected we were told.

Axel has more of a Cartesian mind than I do and does not buy this. But I am more susceptible to contemplate the powers and energies that hover in the universe and do thing we do not understand. There was so much that went wrong in July that I had to know more. So I googled Mercury-in-retrograde and found more than a million entries; If it is superstition, at least I am not alone and I have plenty of stuff to keep me reading for years.

Here is what I learned. Mercury in retrograde is upon us again (since October 12). It is a time in which the mind turns inwards to analyze its own thoughts and follow familiar thinking patterns. It is a good for time for meditation but not a good time for new intellectual pursuits. Since Mercury appears to rule computers, communication and travel you can expect that things will go wrong in those spheres in the form of unexpected failures, delays, and crashes. The advice is to be prepared and hold off on buying Mercurian items such as books, cars (or planes), computers and mobile phones. More importantly, this is also a time to refrain from signing important contracts, which includes marriage, by the way. Instead we are urged to do the things that the Mercury retrograde period is good for (in character with its reverse flow): re-do things, double-check, re-read a book, study an old topic, see old friends, and travel to places you’ve already been to before. Apparently this is also a good time to tackle that old unfinished project and everything else you never finished. And in order to prevent any bad things to happen, double-check your agenda, call your business partners to confirm that everything goes as planned, have everything ready before the deadline and leave some extra time for unexpected events. Make copies of your important files and documents, and please do back up that computer!!

I particularly like the suggestion to go on vacation or at least slow down the pace of your projects. All in all, the message is about going slow and stay on familiar terrain.

Now that I know all this, I did OK yesterday. Axel and I started off with our weekly massage (slowing down) and then I traveled to a place I had been before (MSH) and took it easy (half a day of work); I saw plenty of old friends and colleagues and we did a brainstorming in our meeting that only generated familiar stuff. After work I picked up Sita at South station and there I made a mistake of not re-checking how to get there and promptly missed the exit and got stuck in the 5-o’clock-leaving-Boston traffic. But everything turned out all right in the end. We came home to a dinner that Axel had cooked for us. And today I think I’ll tackle an old project.

I woke up from a dream that ended with me being given a present. That did not require much effort to interpret. On this day, International Spine Day, we can consider our in-tact spines a great gift; or, better, that we still have each other and that we are alive on this beautiful fall day. We gratefully accept this present of presence; every day!

After our recent visit to Gardner and seeing the pictures of the leftovers of the plane and the path it cut through the trees a movie has come back at night, just before I fall asleep; It is very different from the movie I watched the fist few weeks after the crash. For one, it is taken from a different angle. I had never played the movie from the ground, the landing spot (the bog), always from the sky. And secondly, it does not have a nightmarish quality to it. I have none of the physical reactions I had in the early days; of my head shaking no and my body wanting to pull back from the crash. And finally, it did not produce vivid dreams (or if it did I don’t remember a thing in the morning). Now the movie is more detached and there is a great sense of awe about the miracle of us being alive today and the resilience of our bodies. We have learned more about our bodies in the last three months than in all the years before the crash. They are stories of super heroes and of mission impossible; they are stories of perseverance and patience; and they are stories of system elegance that blow our minds away.

Yesterday, Axel’s neuro-eye doctor treated us to some of those stories which had Axel’s 6th (eye) nerve as the super hero. It was one of the more upbeat visits we have had in some time. The doc is a pilot who flies in from the Cape; so right there we had a connection. Once he heard of Axel’s good eye days he confirmed the good news: the nerve was damaged but is regenerating and sending increasing amps to the eye muscle. There is no need for an intervention. It is doing fine and soon Axel will forget what double vision looked like.

We celebrated the good news with a trip to the Common Crow in Gloucester to pick up 5 pounds of mustard seed. We are expecting an expansion of our Christmas mustard line to accommodate our enormous network of friends. Given the required volume I better get started with Christmas just a couple of months away!

We both had our physical therapy sessions. Arm and ankle are slowly improving but it is a painful process and oh so slow. We both ended the day very sore in various places. The pains are relentless and if we don’t watch out they could really bring us down. Sometimes exercises help, sometimes a strategically placed hot or cold pack, a massage, an Arnica rub or if all else fails a muscle relaxant or pain pill.

Somewhere in all this work got done and promised pieces delivered. Not quite at the before-crash pace, but delivered anyways.

Yesterday was a very moving day as we went to shake the hands of our rescuers at the Gardner Fire Department. We brought a bushel of coastal (Ipswich) apples, pears and cider donuts to this inland apple territory. We also made a donation to the Gardner Firefighters Benefits Association as a token of our gratitude that does not translate itself well into cash.

Sita and Jim drove us to Gardner, a long but beautiful drive that tested the limits of Axel’s endurance sitting in a car (one and a half hours). When we entered the Fire Station Lieutenant Ares who had led the rescue team was waiting for us with a few of his man. They had invited others, including the chaplain and the firefighters from the neighboring town Templeton. Soon there were about 25 people, including the blueberry pickers who had made the 911 call and tied a shirt around Axel’s bleeding head, a critical first step that may have saved him if not all of us.

We added our apples, pears and donuts to the brownies they had prepared and the coffee and drinks. And then the story telling began; sometimes in small groups and sometimes all of us standing in a big circle; the small and the big stories; the fright; the reaction of the children. One couple brought their children to show them what mom (EMT) and Dad (firefighter) do for a living. The Chief showed us pictures of the wreck after we had been extricated and we finally understood how the plane came down and probably how we were saved as the left wing folded under the fuselage at the very end. It was eerie to see pictures of the right wing, dangling high up in a tree and the path that the plane had cut through the trees.

And then we finally got the straight story on how long it took our rescuers to get to us; how long it took to saw us out and why Mary Hitchcock Hospital in Dartmouth got involved; Axel never went there as we had concluded from the hospital bill. It was the helicopter that was sent from Dartmouth because at first none were available from UMass in Worcester and there were three needed. We found out that it took 55 minutes from when the 911 call was made to Axel’s extrication; we also learned why it had been so difficult to get Joan out and how easy it was to get me out after that (2 minutes). As it turned out, my sense of timing had been quite correct; I was extricated about half an hour after Axel. We received a copy of the handwritten log and other papers that the Fire Department had to fill out. They also showed us their file of paper clippings and we made copies of the ones we did not have; for our scrapbook, for later.

We hugged and thanked everyone at the end. It was an emotional event. Our visit was rather unusual. “Usually the people in a plane crash do not survive,” they told us, “and with other accidents, we rarely hear what happens afterwards.” It was like another opportunity for a debriefing and the Chief thanked us for that.

Before we left we were given a tour of the trucks and equipment, especially the extrication equipment that saved our lives. We promised that we would never vote down equipment requests from our own Fire Department if such ever came up in Town Meeting. As it turned out our rescue was the first time they used brand new and very powerful extrication equipment that turned out to be critical. I tried to hold one of those humongous power cutters and could not. We understood the purpose of the exercise/weight room upstairs. These tools require enormous strength. We left with a bag of Gardner FD shirts and an invitation to come back. We also left with great awe and gratitude for what all these people had done for us.

You can see pictures of the event by clicking on the links section and then on the second flickr link (the one with the word vriesneus in it).

Annette is gone and everything is quiet again. Nothing was cleaned or moved yesterday. Axel was also gone most of the day. David took him to his physical therapy session. After that they joined Chuck and Anne in Salem for lunch and a visit to the Peabody Essex Museum. I was curious how he’d do since I have always found a museum hard on the body, even when it is in good shape. It tired him out but the acupuncture session afterwards allowed for some rest after the needles were placed.

While he was away I tackled a growing list of tasks for work, went to my EMDR session and then met up with Axel at the acupuncture clinic in Beverly at the end of the day. I also made arrangements for what is likely to be my first trip, to Kenya, early next month.

I walked around most of yesterday with a fairly intense pain in my neck. And that is how I arrived at my EMDR session. We decided to tackle this pain and inquire into its meaning using the EMDR technology (two buzzing biscuits in my hands). It was a bit of an unusual session in that I seemed to take off on a course that did not quite conform to the protocols but it released some tears. I had started off with an image of a closed gate which I did not know what to do with but now I realize that this might have been about floodgates. I walked out without the pain in the neck. And when it came back later in the evening it was much less intense. I am still not sure what this is all about, other than that the physical therapist has been working hard on re-aligning my cervical spine and the neck muscles are being strengthened. But the pressure of the tears that did not come out was strong. It puzzled me. Ruth asked me what the few that did escape were tears off. I finally settled on tenderness and recounted the two experiences of this last weak where I realized I could have been a widow.

The acupuncturist targeted my belly scar, shoulder and ankle. I told him about the change in sensitivity at the sole of my food and that I wanted more of that. This morning I keep checking it hoping for a miracle and fearing no effect at all. I think there is another change but I am not sure. As for Axel’s acupuncture session, it is too early to tell; besides, he is still asleep so I cannot ask him.

In the evening we fished Lynndsie’s shepard pie out of the freezer and enjoyed it while watching Brother Where Art Thou.