We pick up the story at Thanksgiving, less than a week after my last posting. I had just finished complaining about how my busy life was keeping me from projects, particularly the concrete counter, which needs a nice 60-degree room that can also survive a sloppy amount of cement mixing. The weather was no longer on our side, though a propane heater in the garage would likely have done the trick for a few days, until the curing slab could be brought inside in one piece.
Thanksgiving found us in Florida. Through a rare serendipity of schedule, both Hilary and Hadley were on break from school (Bates College and North Yarmouth Academy, respectively) for the whole week of Thanksgiving. This was our one chance to gather up the entire clan and head to the recently-opened Harry Potter theme park in Orlando. That Cora missed two days of school (Carrie Ricker Elementary) would have to be okay. I think she’ll still be promoted to fifth grade come June. Our coordinated children-of-divorce schedules meant we would not be together for Thanksgiving for two more years, when the elder girls will be at college and Cora will likely be a crazy, unpredictable pre-teen middle-schooler.
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| The concrete counter form, reinterpreted as a drop zone for random building materials during the reconstruction of the back of the house. |
This was the year. We came to grips with the cost of a trip. We came to grips with the fact that we would come home to $3,200 worth of replacement doors and windows (the one part insurance was not going to cover). We still got on that plane. We braved those crowds (though we did have passes to get us in early and past most lines). Those of us who really do not like amusement parks (don’t ask, it’s a whole other blog) actually had a great time.
Harry Potter world was amazing, if you didn’t look too closely and you ignored the massive throngs of tourists. The combination Hogwarts/Hogsmeade/Diagon Alley would likely have been home to 300-400 residents in the wizarding world of J.K. Rowling’s mind. In balmy Florida, there were tens of thousands of Muggles all jostling for position, waiting in 45-minutes lines just to enter a gift shop and seriously debating whether they would wear a Gryffindor scarf or if they were just getting caught up in the moment. The butterbeer was quite tasty! The buildings were well done. The castle was imposing. The rides were great. And in the end, they held off on the scarf.
After passing through the guards with their Probity Probes and enough security trolls to guard the Lestrange vault, we found ourselves on that ubiquitous Muggle transport device, the jet airliner, headed back to Maine. Hilary had to study for finals. Cora had to get to her Mom’s for the rest of Thanksgiving break. I had work to do. Kris drove Hilary back to Bates on Saturday, November 27th. She returned on one of the many back-roads between Lewiston and our corner of Freeport. The one she chose passed through rural New Gloucester. After cresting a hill and heading into a corner, the road tightened between two pasture fences and Kris hit a deep patch of sand, left on the road after a recent bout of freezing weather. Our intrepid Acura MDX spun out of control in the soft sand, first one way, then the other. After a serious impact two places on the driver’s side, the car came to rest pointing backward and off the road.
Kris hit her head quite hard on the area where the seatbelt connects to the side of the car, leaving a three-inch gash in the back of her head and causing a concussion. I’ll save you the riveting blow-by-blow (pardon the pun) of the ensuing few weeks and give you the summarized version only. Numerous CT scans found varying degrees of bleeding on the brain, brain bruising, etc. It all sounds awful. It wasn’t as awful as it sounds, but none of it was fun. The two weeks were comprised of an ER trip to one hospital, an overnight ICU monitoring (every half-hour) in another, a handful of doctor appointments and an unnecessarily-alarming trip to meet a neurosurgeon in the ER of a third hospital. In the end, it turns out that separate from the now-healing gash and the slowly improving concussion, Kris has a tiny, two-millimeter (again, tiny) aneurysm in the middle of the brain.
Now the word aneurysm is a big word. If you have been exposed to them, you certainly have a fearful picture of what is going on. An aneurysm is a bulging of the wall of a blood vessel. The site of Kris’ bulging is a T-shaped intersection of a blood vessel. The expansion of that vessel is across the top of the T. Two-millimeters. That’s about one-sixteenth of an inch for the inch-and-foot people. Those are the tiny little lines on your tape measure. The final, and highest-ranked doctor we spoke with believes strongly that it is not much of a concern. His hunch is that it is not growing and may even be the way the blood vessel formed naturally. In one year, he will analyze new imagery and see if there is any growth trend. It was going to be six months. He was confident enough to extend it to a full year.
Kris is still coming to terms with this. How could it not take time to be at peace with a thing inside your head that made a name for itself by expanding and bursting? It is the vice of gluttony turned into a medical condition. So why am I less concerned? A couple of reasons. First, it is tiny. When the doctors mistakenly thought it was six millimeters, it was at the high end of the small category and the small category of aneurysms has no record of bursting. When scaled down to 2 mm., the ratio works something like this: 6/0 = 2/x. I like the value of that x all day long.
Next. Our final doctor over the course of two weeks, the final arbiter of the condition of Kris’ jumbled brain, was quite confident. While stating that he could not predict the future (something undoubtedly ingrained in doctors by their malpractice insurance agents) he was quite satisfied that Kris chose the most harmless brain aneurysm on the market. Some quotes: “This is not what is going to get you.” And my favorite: “It is incredibly unlikely that this aneurysm will ever cause you any problems.” I made him repeat that to Kris on the spot. “Incredibly unlikely.” I have turned it into a mantra. Come on, say it with me… “incredibly unlikely…incredibly unlikely.” Isn’t that reassuring? Do you think the malpractice insurer lets him throw that phrase around willy-nilly?
Now why am I choosing to believe this last doctor instead of some of the ranging opinions of the others? Is it faith? Is it grasping at the most positive thing I heard? No, not really. For one thing, he had the most scans and the most opinions from which to draw a conclusion. I trust his opinion, and inherently him, because he was super tall. He was a bit awkward looking. He had goofy hair. It was clear that he wasn’t in this line of work to wear the best clothes and pick up the best chicks. Some docs stereotypically go buy the red sports car. Now I don’t know what auto our fair doctor drives, but the dude bought a friggin’ lighthouse.
Really? Who buys a lighthouse? That’s awesome. Further research found that our fair neuro-doc ranked fourth on the list of the highest-paid doctors in the state of Maine. However, the three above him and the one after him all serve as CEOs of hospitals. Let’s call him the highest-paid practicing doctor in the state of Maine. While that doesn’t guarantee that he’s good, it does mean that he makes a lot of money and if he could make more money by fussing over Kris’ little brain defect, then that would be a down payment on a second lighthouse or maybe a nice teak dory with a small Yamaha outboard to get to his new digs. If he’s not good, then he’s probably greedy. Either way, he’s not milking this 2 millimeters for further expensive tests and visits.
Taken all together, I think the CT scan in eleven months is going to look eerily like the one from two weeks ago. In 23 months, that one will appear to be a photocopy of the other two. At some point, I’ll finally see Kris feeling more at ease. It looks like I will have her by my side for a long while to come.
This Christmas season was just strange. Luckily, since we had all three kids for Thanksgiving, the schedule says we would have no kids for Christmas. Everyone scattered on the wind to their respective other parents. It made the fact that our tree (cut 40 feet from the house) went up far too close to Christmas a lot more bearable. Weather delayed Hilary and Hadley’s return from Colorado, so we ended up having our family Christmas last night, New Year’s Eve Eve.
Normal life is creeping back in. The first couple of weeks found me doing all the driving for the two girls still with us, getting most of the dinners, Hadley or I getting the dishes done, Hadley doing all of the laundry and me still trying to make as many track practices as I can. (Ed. Note – I am entering my 5th year as an assistant track coach at NYA)
I’m still driving Kris a lot, but only because it saves her energy for more important things. She is back at work, but luckily plowing through some holiday days right now. The Acura was totaled and taken away, less than 3,000 miles shy of 200,000. We were planning to keep it until 300,000. Now we need a new plan. Hadley and Hilary learned some manual transmission skills over break, so Hadley will eventually drive my little white truck here and there, when it’s not stuck in the woods hauling rocks. That allows my love affair with our 2007 Mini Cooper to continue into the winter. I’ve promised to go easy on the turns until the snow tires come off again in the spring.
Perhaps most importantly, I’m able to get back to work a little bit. I got a bit behind last month. I have the opportunity to play catch up this month with some understanding from my bosses and a new one-time project. That means there will be little project activity to describe in this blog in the coming weeks.
I could say something pseudo-profound about the problems that arise in renovation or other projects, but that would be pretty lame. Life happens. I’m just glad it is all smoothing out. Brain injuries demand a lot of patience and relaxing. It seems a lot easier to stay off a broken leg. Brains are tricky. It is really difficult to sit around and do nothing that engages the brain. We live in a non-stop, stimuli-filled world.
I’m thankful for those around us who were able to help us in the past weeks. Kris’ parents Dian and Roland were invaluable support, as was my friend and advisor/coach to both girls at NYA, Chris Mazzurco. My thanks also go out to Hilary and Hadley’s dad, George, or as they call him at his workplace, Dr. Gibson, MD. His hunch that our emergency trip to the ER at Maine Med to meet the neuro surgeon was not necessarily as life-and-death as the initial phone call suggested was spot-on, and that was reassuring to all of us here in Maine. Thank you Todd Paige for words of advice about concussion and to others for their kind words and thoughts. We didn’t spread the news wide because we were just too busy and too tired to handle telling the story so many times. Please forgive us for that.
The form for the counter will eventually get cleared off. The temperature will rise, allowing wet concrete to set properly. The house is finished up (though not without a lot of loud banging during Kris’ immediate recuperation) and we’ll throw some paint up on the new cedar siding come spring. There are some indoor projects to get to, but for now, I’m taking some time to enjoy and appreciate our family.
It is the end of 2010. We miss our loyal Acura. We absolutely miss our great little dog, Lily. She is still loved daily around here. We’re glad Hilary has found a home, interesting new directions and some great people at Bates College. We’re excited as Hadley prepares for yet another lead role in an NYA play and begins college-hunting herself. We all wait in wonder to see what our little Cora is going to become. Kris and I couldn’t be happier together. Well, we could if her headaches stopped, but you know what I mean. I’m very lucky. I’m very happy. I hope I can report on lots of fun stuff in 2011. I’m hoping it is a year with some different directions. Happy New Year, everyone.
Oh, and my fingernail is 75% grown back now. That was creepy.
Dave
PS – Brian, you will note that I snuck this entry in roughly six hours before the month ended, thus avoiding the penalty for a full month passing without an entry.
