Spinal Cord Injury and a Wedding

From an article on CNN.com:

A bride-to-be is joking around with her girlfriends at her bachelorette party and is pushed into a swimming pool. She hits her head and suffers a C6 spinal cord injury with paralysis from the chest down. She can use her arms and wrists, but not her hands. She is committed to adapting as well as she can and to leading a vigorous and full life. Her fiance is committed to her. They plan on marrying as soon as her complicated insurance situation is resolved. He says, "We are built to last.

When I read about a situation like this I am horrified and amazed. Horrified at the fates who can inflict such cruel tricks on us. And amazed at people's resilience and ability to continue on with a sense of possibility.

I also can't help but wonder about what the future holds for this couple.

What do you think they need in order to make it as a couple?

Divorce and Illness

from The Daily News

Sunday, January 18th 2009, 11:34 PM

"Dawnwell Batista is in the middle of what will forever be known as the Kidney Divorce, and she is an amazing woman who’s been betrayed both by her body and her husband.

Her split from Dr. Richard Batista has been painful enough, dragging on for four years, and mostly, she’s been worried about the children.

But just as their trial was about to begin, the surgeon upped the ante. His lawyer announced that Dr. Batista had donated a kidney to her, and now he wants it back - or its supposed $1.5 million value"

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Speculations

Sometimes love can become a Steven King novel - you know the ones, about a killer car or a killer prom queen or a killer caretaker at a snowed-in, isolated moutain retreat.

How does this happen? How does a couple go from "I do" to "Gimme my kidney back?" From "love and honor" to "wound and maim?" Demanding a kidney refund is so much more mutilating and vampirish than taking back the diamond engagement ring. It's hateful.

And how does love become hate? Does that happen when such a critical mass of disappointment has accumulated that the pile starts to fester and breed hate bacteria? Does it happen when two people have been so blinded by their own illusions for rescue that they enshroud their partner with expectations no mortal could meet? Does it happen in the day to day, inch by inch annoyances that eventually crescendo into an unscalable wall of misery? Does a moment arrive when all murmurings of tenderness disappear leaving only a banshee shriek of hate?

How can you take back the kidney you once gave as some form of loving sacrifice?

And what role does the illlness that required the kidney in the first place play? (Dawn has supposedly had 3 kidney transplants and a double mastectomy). I can imagine illness as an amplifier. Whatever strains existed in this couple's relationship perhaps got overloaded by the extra burdens illness brings. Many of us have struggled with this.

But how many of us have demanded a body part be returned?

And finally, a woman's body is never, never to be used as a field of negotiation. This is the fundamental women's health right.

A Story About Trauma: Harry & Adele

This is a true story. All identifying information has been changed to protect confidentiality.

Harry fell, again, the second time in two months. He is in severe pain and can't walk.

Eight weeks ago he was blown over by a fierce wind and got badly bruised. He developed infections in both legs, probably from skin lacerations, and his doctor wanted him to remain immobile. He stayed in his armchair, watching Patriots football games, eating take-out Chinese food, and falling asleep to the 11:00 news.

He is 82, bald, overweight, and one of the most benign spirits his daughter, Sarah, knows. He tries to do good. When his mother was in a nursing home, he brought bagels for the staff every time he visited. He gives to many charities, often anonymously. He is the family communications hub -- celebrating good news, commiserating with tales of heartache, and trying to repair rifts. He is a light in his daughter's life.

Adele, Harry's wife, is 80, has the puckered skin and raspy voice of a dedicated smoker, and has succumbed to old age as if it were a gift delivering her a rare form of freedom. She sees Harry as unbearably controlling. While they live together, she has cut him out of her world as cleanly as one might excise a splinter from a finger, permitting only brief exchanges of necessary information.

Adele tries to do good. She is an ardent helper -- babysitting grandchildren, visiting ailing aunts and uncles, feeding people. When her daughter Sarah was in the thick of dealing with recently diagnosed fibromyalgia and uninterested in eating, Adele would make quarts of her favorite soup. Freeze them. Then ship them overnight to Sarah. She was unable to stare Sarah's illness in the face. Long distance soup became her get well card. Sarah feels the love in her mother's efforts and has learned to respond to that love and not get entangled in the snares that lie beneath.

Helping is not he same as doing good. Lodged in Adele's core is a sponge that soaks up the approval she receives, converts it into a facsimile of self esteem and then leaks out the leftover drops in the form of helping. The help arrives disfigured by her hunger for recognition. Harry has enough solid goodness lodged in his essence that even his belabored cautions about driving safely and staying warm come out shining.

Yesterday, Harry fell again while trying to get up out of his chair. He is in the hospital, and the family is waiting for the doctor's report on his condition. Adele is at home, planning on visiting him later tonight. Sarah can't imagine what the two of them will talk about when Adele visits.

Harry and Adele's story is a sad one. They were once two beautiful, young people who laughed, worked together, had children. Somewhere along the way the lights went out. In the dark, they stopped talking and started detaching. And now that they are both in their 80's and illness has inserted itself into their relationship, Sarah, their daughter, is afraid that her mother's helping and her father's goodness just won't be enough.

Sudden Trauma: What's a Couples to Do?

I just got an email from an old colleague. He wrote that his wife, on her way back from posting a letter across the street, tripped and fell, hitting her head on a rock. She was unconscious and had to be rushed to a trauma ICU where they removed a piece of her skull so the blood could drain out. The odds of people surviving the procedure are 50-50. She is part of the lucky 50% and is doing very well.

When I heard this news I was whiplashed by the fact that it happened to her – a vibrant, smart consultant, a vegetarian, a yoga practitioner with a high social and spiritual consciousness. None of these qualities protected her from the chaos that buzzes around us all the time. And, of course, the extrapolation is that we are all susceptible.

As couples, we drift from moment to moment, counting on the illusion of control while ignoring the ubiquity of chaos, so that we can chart our lives with a sense of continuity and security. We plan to buy our first home, to have babies, to find satisfying careers, to travel, to grow old with dignity, and to retire with secure income streams. Some of us may separate or divorce, have boring jobs, and wind up with cats instead of kids. But that is never the script we write for ourselves. And nowhere in our story is there a placeholder for the intrusion of illness or trauma.

I think the best we can do, which is what these friends have done, is to build a loving foundation and to have had enough practice at communicating about the smaller hard stuff, so that when the skies rip apart and the lightening bolts strike, we can still find each other in the storm.