WHAT HAPPENED

Commentary 057

4/25/2013

 

 

As many of you know by now in varying degrees and as I now confirm, things started going wrong with me and thereby my work in late December of 2012. Ignore any rumors as here is what really happened.

On Christmas morning 12/25/2012. I left my home for a trip out of town to spend the day at their invitation with my deceased wife's sister and her husband as well as with their children and grand children. Two days before that in anticipation of approaching Christmas day I had been in the local graveyard cleaning and straightening up there and putting out fresh flowers for my parents, for my wife's parents, and of course for my wife for this special day. It was sad when one is missing all these people formerly so close to me, so much a part of my life, and now all gone.

On my way out of town I passed through the graveyard intending to briefly say goodbye and check a final time on the flowers. However, I found the flowers at my wife's parent's grave site were scattered about on the ground. So I stopped to get them back where they belonged. Perhaps I was distracted by the grief and/or thinking of the long anticipated drive ahead. Also, I did not adequately take into consideration that it had rained lightly during the night and some of the granite ground slabs might still be a little damp and slick with a light film of mold that was not readily apparent to the eye. More than likely all of that.

The grave sites we have are relatively spacious but have a lot of granite work in and around them. Although I had basically stopped using a cane that I had been using learning to walk again when recovering from the pacemaker install months earlier that left me immobile for 11 straight days in the hospital, I decided to be cautious and use the cane as I navigated the grave site. When I test placed the cane tip on my father-in-law's ground slab, it got plenty of traction and I must have "assumed" the same would be the case with the mother-in-law's ground slab laying right beside it. However, apparently my mother-in-law's ground slab may have been a bit earlier in some shade from an oak tree on the edge of the site and not yet quite dry.

Any way, I had to lean over this spot to pick up flowers and I put my weight on the cane on her ground slab. The cane shot out from under me quick as lightening perhaps due to the ground slab being damp and slippery with mold. I fell hard dead center on the granite ground slab and it didn't give a bit. I couldn't get up. The net result was a broken right hip, a lot of pain, transport to hospitals, repair surgery by an orthopedic, and a months long stay essentially incommunicado (this is a rural area) in a rehab facility that was longer than usual due the complication of a large open wound hematoma in the original surgery area that refused to heal until finally fixed by a second surgery.

Yes, the stress from loosing my wife and mother within 3-months of each other with me as sole care giver for both is great enough to result in dragging my health down resulting in heart problems and a pacemaker and then just as you're beginning to get adjusted to that new reality, it's Merry Christmas welcome to intense pain and being at the complete mercy of others for months. At least I'm thankful that this didn't happen at the gathering crapping up their time together.

In any case, I discovered something with this injury. First, when one is alone, it leaves a slow to trust person like me completely powerless, defenseless, and vulnerable for the first few weeks. Believe me it comes home to you when nurses are having to move you from a bed to a wheel chair via a hydraulic sling and the pain is nearly unbearable because you aren't the kind to retreat into the haze of pain killing drugs. In other words, with no trusted wife to look out for me, I was completely at the mercy of strangers and had to stay alert avoiding pain killers. For a person like me that was the hardest part of all.

Considering what I do in my work and who my adversaries are, I decided to essentially not identify myself to anyone under the caution that something a lot worse could easily happen to me while under such control by others. In fact, not even my wife's family knew what had happened to me or where I was at for the first several weeks. This was also exacerbated by the fact that the rehab facility held me essentially incommunicado. It was worse in many ways than being in a prison.

Eventually a distant cousin by marriage doing volunteer work in the rehab facility discovered me there by accident while she was walking the halls and at my request placed a statement about what had happened to me online. A short time later my former associate in L.A. had me tracked down and at my request also placed a statement about what happened to me online. Both good people.

Although the isolation strategy may have worked, it of course had its down side. For example my wife had years ago set up my website hosting account on an auto-pay basis. This naturally turned out to have changed at the time of my difficulties and at of course this most critical point. So, although I did have someone paying my monthly bills, the website hosting account was closed by the host for non payment of the monthly charges eliminating my website online. In March, I learned that my website had been closed and offline since February. This already being the case for so long also resulted in many additional technical problems including the permanent transfer of my IP Addresses to another party.

So I had to leave the rehab facility a week or so ago to start trying to handle these problems. It was premature and I'm now home hobbling around still learning to walk here via a walker. The good news is that, even though I'm moving so slow and it takes 3-4 times longer to get anything done, I have the website back up and I believe that I am now able to edit it again. This posted article will be my first test of that. If you are reading this, then that is the proof of it.

I must tell you that I've had some dicey experiences in the last few months some of which thoroughly reinforced the idea that one just cannot turn ones health and welfare over to others including medical professionals at any level. If you want to survive, you've got to stay on top of everything and be prepared to resist medical "expertise" intimidation if it is called for. Otherwise, it's just the luck of it that can stand between you some grim realities. It may be unavoidable but if one defers to others it can be at one's peril.

In any case, it will be a while before this ship is running right again. During the meantime, I can only ask for your continued patience and thank you so much for the patience that you have already exercised. I can tell you that it's good to be out of the dark places I've recently been in. It's still a struggle but worth it.