It wasn't that long ago that I felt that my life was shimmering with happiness, that it was just sweet and beautiful, with my amazing beach house as refuge so close to the roaring ocean, with my new found surge of creativity for bead making, my deepening immersion in hospice work, and the sounds I was producing on my piano: Bach's Goldbergs, and now Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Yes, it was a charmed existence, and I breathed it in and was thankful.
Then as I was crossing the street in my neighborhood a week and a half ago, everything changed. A heedless driver ran me over, or literally ran my foot over, knocked me back onto the street. It was a surreal event that I saw coming, and that I could not prevent though I tried, screaming out to her. Splat I went on Polk Street, and the screaming burst from my body. People gathered, wanting to help, 911 was called, and I writhed on the hard concrete while an anonymous guy from Starbucks offered me his knee to rest my head on. I screamed and looked down at my foot now flattened and deformed from the tires of that woman's car. She stood silently on the sidelines looking as though she were viewing a ghost. I fell back in a shivering state of shock while we waited for the ambulance, and people formed a circle around my body on the street... I even tried to get up, deranged enough to think I could actually escape this state of being. An ambulance took me to the best trauma center in the city - SF General - and an amazing team of people worked to discover, to ward off pain, to mend, to reassure. A warm flood of painklllers streamed into my body, filling my torso as I thought blankly about how sorry I was that I had missed dinner at Pesce, my local fish bistro. Then, a burning thirst in my mouth, uncontrollable shivering, my mind moving from wildly high speed to a drugged hiatus, and then more horrible thirst....
The following morning I was operated on for 5 hours for a broken elbow, a badly broken elbow. I now have some titanium plate and screws beneath the surface of this crook in my arm. My leg was broken close to the ankle, the fibula bone, and no surgery was done. Encased in a large splint, and expected to heal on its own over time. I spent a bleak, frightening several days at General Hospital as I waited for word of my future landing place. I was to go to a skilled nursing facility to be rehabilitated until I could manage the challenges of my 1912 San Francisco house with all its stairs. A deep sadness came over me as I realized I would be away from my little refuge, and my beloved cats, for an indeterminate amount of time. I would be under the control of the medical establishment for better or for worse until they deemed it viable to release me into the world..... Helplessness gave way to anger and stubbornness as I remembered my mother's outrageous resistance to authority, and then I saw the story begin in my brain and then I stopped myself and said, yes, this is what is happening.
One of the reasons I want to chronicle this is that I want to create clarity where there was deep chaos, and fear, and because I have been in a drugged condition ever since this horror occurred. Drugged though I've been, I have also been able to reorganize parts of my life, and relay information to relevant people, etc. Percocet has been a helper in the tending of this extreme pain, but I don't want to count on it as a savior. There is something so inexorable about profound body pain.... It is the ultimate reality, and it never really goes away. Just relaxes its grip a bit, I think. I do sense the scrambling of my mental process on and off, and the whooshing in and out of deep fatigue, and I yearn for a spacious, stable place inside.
As I rest in a rehab facility in Los Altos, amidst trees, rose bushes, and lovely planting, I am trying to stay open to the upheaval, and the grim feelings rising to the surface. I will be walking soon with the aid of a crutch, and my arm will hopefully look and act like a normal arm, and I have no trouble believing in that, but I am weighted down by despair and anger that I have been so assaulted. At the same time, though, I try to remember that I am a person alive and breathing, and healthy -- that I still have a life. Yes, and with that gratitude. And then the whoosh of sadness : will I feel crippled and deformed as I resume my journey into elder-hood? And how will I hold that reality? And threaded through all of this is my compassion arising - in response to myself, my very wounded self, in response to those who work the grueling shifts to care for the fragile and ill, in response to people who are so numbed out in life that they cannot focus as they go about their daily lives ........ Yes, the Buddha had it right. THERE IS SUFFERING IN THIS HUMAN LIFE. And the only way through this suffering is on the back of compassion, that opening of the heart in response to pain.
There has been an outpouring of generosity and compassion toward me that has given me space to breathe, and cope, and finally, to rest. I need to rest and welcome those feelings of helplessness, of anger, of fear. They are as real as my injuries. I need to hold myself as a mother would hold her wounded child, tenderly and softly. Along with this holding is the witnessing: the looking at my broken limbs, the discoloration and abrasions and deformity, with acceptance not fear. The ugliness I feel is there is not -- it is simply injured body parts. Do not judge. Love instead.
I want to continue my exploration of this event because I know that there is profound learning to be had here. I already know that my body is healthier than I had ever given it credit for, but I need to shepherd my heart through this life changing act. Healing will come at its own speed, in its own time, and I must stay steady and patient and loving. I feel proud to say that I can do this. Stay with me in your thoughts and with your attention -- it will be an interesting ride.
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