And the award goes to...

Me. This is the award that I was given on Tuesday by Quincey, who was heading home - lucky guy! It has names and dates from spinal cord injury people from the past 25 years. An amazing amount of work has been done by these people to try to get their lives back. I am, and will be, doing the same - which is why Quincey chose to give it to me. (He also gave me his electric chair!) Thank you Quincey!

Patricia came to see me today and asked if I had been taking pictures of my PT/OT work, she was very amazed by it. I said no, not ready yet. But that will be soon.

Finally

I have been behind in my writing these past couple of days. Working through emotions about not going back to work, dealing with an incredibly tired neck that will not allow me to sit up and write and just being plain busy. I am like a retired person who has an appointment and then *poof* the day is gone! (Sorry Mom and Dad, Mary and Bill). A few significant baby steps have happened in the past few days, and all the baby steps add up to make a difference. Finally.

Monday was our "Family Meeting" where my family, the Parkwood Yellow team, Rehab First team and my legal council all came together to discuss what's next. The "it's all about Julie" talk was about 45 min, then we got to ask our own questions, which was nice for us. Solving some things that we identified as puzzles, more than problems. Because that is what our life is like now. A puzzle that has been dumped on the floor, you have no lid to look at and some of the pieces fell through the vent in the floor, never to be seen again. We have hired a few good people to help us put this puzzle together, but we have no idea what the image will look like when it is all done. And about the world of insurance...let's just say my eyes have been opened.

Wednesday was the day of all my follow-up appointments at Victoria Hospital. Plastics liked the look of my forehead, agreed that my nose is a bit crooked and wanted to make sure I could breathe through it. All good. The trauma team wanted to know that my lungs were clear and that the chest tube sites had healed well. Also, all good. Then we saw Dr. R. my spinal surgeon, super nice guy. He asked me if I would be doing cycling safety advocacy in the future, and he offered to help - even giving me his personal email address - Jane says Drs never do that! He was impressed by my rapid healing (on my forehead) and, after looking at my x-rays, said my vertebrae had healed well too. And I quote "you heal well". Which means...drum roll please...that I get to start taking off my brace!! Around here they call it "brace weaning" and by day seven I should be brace free. Here is what brace free will mean: I can get into the pool, I can have a shower, properly. PT and OT will be way more difficult because I will not have a brace to "keep me upright" and the truth about my lack of abs will come out. Scary. I will have to do more too, like learn to do my own catheter and dress the lower part of my body.

The other two bits of progress are that I have got an upgrade of wheelchairs. Now I have an electric chair that has a tilt mechanism which is essential for the low blood pressure days. The electric part of it gives me freedom. I no longer need someone to push me, I can go outside and I don't have to wait for company. Also, in the transportation vein is that I don't need to use the sling and the motorized lift to get in and out of bed any more! Yahoo! I am doing a sliding transfer from bed to chair and back again. I just need someone to supervise my feet and make sure they are where they are supposed to be.

And today, Friday, this just in...I got to do my bathroom business in the bathroom! I won't say more than that except that a tiny part of my dignity was restored today. I also tried reading again today, and with my new dollar store reading glasses and a large print book, it went okay. Note: this sentence was attached to the previous two for a reason. These things all take time...

Stay well, my friends.
Julie

My Madill Team

Good morning to my Madill Family. For a fleeting moment this morning I thought that I should do a video post for you; take the protective tape off the camera of my chromebook, show you how well my forehead has healed, my slightly off-centre nose and my two new front teeth but we all know that I would just end up being a blubbery mess in 30 seconds or less. So here instead you get your very own blog post, I call it my Madill Team.

Those of you who have been reading know that I am surrounded by a wonderful group of spinal cord injury experts, they are called "Team Yellow". The difference between this team and my Madill team is that here, I am a student. I have not been a student for a very long time. Down in OT, Gary tells me that athletes make terrible patients. And we all know that teachers make for terrible students, so therefore I have two strikes against me. But you also know that there is no way that I am going to let any of that get in the way of my recovery. In fact, I have already won an award - one that I didn't know even existed. It is handed down from person to person on the Spinal Cord Injury floor, given by a person who is homeward bound to a person who is new and is working their ass off in rehab. I guess that's me.

I am always asking for help from my Yellow Team: A hard thing for me to do. For my Madill team I have only one request: talk about me. More specifically talk to students about how I got here. The more I hear stories from my cycling friends, the more I realize how much work we have to do to educate drivers. And what better way to do it then before they start driving? It's not just about cyclists vs. cars. It's driver vs. anything on the road. And the reason for this is that no one is paying attention any more. Everyone thinks they are so good a multitasking that they can do whatever and drive. We can't. And it's up to us - the teachers. We spend more time with these kids than their parents. We don't want what happened to me to happen to anyone else AND we especially don't want one of ours to be the cause.

I love you guys so much and I am completely heart broken to not be with you tomorrow. Imagine, wanting so badly to go back to school? That's me, except the school I am at and the team I am with is not the one of my choice. Thank you so much for all the love and support you have sent me and my family, words can not explain our gratitude.

My goal is to be back in to see you by the end of October, on wheels or otherwise, time will tell. And I will be back on the Madill team some day, have no doubt about that.

PS Tell the kids I miss them too. When I talk about "my kids" here people stop my story to see which kids I mean, my own or my students.  It feels so much more natural for me to call my students "my kids" because deep down I love them all too.

A Date

There are many significant dates that have come and gone recently, some that have had to do with me and many that were others'. For example I missed Mary's, David's, Anne's and Madeline's birthdays. I missed my parent's and my brother's anniversaries. I feel badly for missing these special occasions, but I realize that I have been selfishly focused on myself. I had my own anniversary, for instance, Saturday was exactly one month. And I learned on Saturday that another cyclist in our region was hit by a car. I have not been able to learn more about it. My heart goes out to them and their family. We still have a lot of Share the Road work to do ladies and gentlemen.

The reason I am writing about dates today is because this morning we are having a Family Meeting. It has been booked since my arrival. I am not entirely sure what will come out of this meeting, but I know it will all be talk about me. You see it is not just my family, but also my Parkwood Team, my lawyer and my insurance team. I think the goal is to see what needs to be done in order for me to go home. Oh, and I have my discharge date - October 22. They gave me that last week and I have been stewing about it. I was thinking more along the lines of 6-8 weeks, including "time served", but this is a whole 10 weeks, so 8 more weeks to go.

I have other dates too - like the six weeks from my surgery when I can take my collar and back brace off. Well my collar is gone - it was never necessary in the first place (it's for C-spine injuries) and my Dr. recognized it was not helping me. As for the back brace, I will learn my fate on Wednesday. Tuesday I will get X-rays to take over to Victoria on the 2nd to see all three teams - plastics, spinal and trauma. This are my follow-up appointments where I get to stun them with the speed of my recovery (hopefully) and the X-ray will (hopefully) show that that L1 vertebrae is healed and I can take the brace off. Taking the brace off will be another story. Think: core of a jellyfish.

All the other dates on my calendar are in red (using a whiteboard calendar, of course). Red means company! I love and need company. I need company to help pass the time, keep me connected to the real world, bring me fresh food (like washed and cut veg. and in season fruit), take me outside and sometimes to cheer me on during a therapy session. I need to be honest here, too much company tires me out as I end up doing most of the talking. And it changes from day to day how much talking and sitting up I can tolerate. When it's my family I can say more easily, that I just need to close my eyes for half an hour. With guests I find that more difficult; they have come all this way to see me, I should keep my eyes open. That is why I am trying to book only one, maybe two things (above therapy sessions) in one day. My blood pressure can be low for a whole day or it can just crash if I have been sitting up for two long. Today I hope it to be high as I had Theo bring me in Swiss Chalet for a good extra high dose of sodium chloride to boost my bp. (jk - but it sure was salty)

The other crazy thing about my days is I never know what for sure is booked for me until 7:30 that morning. Now my PT and OT are usually at the same time each day, but often other things will get thrown in. For example I had asked Paul to come and see me last week and just after I heard from him that he was leaving home I found out that the Psychologist wanted to see me at 10 and that I had recreation therapy at 11. So poor Paul was here for 10 minutes before I got rolled away to meet with Steve and then I made him come bowling with me and my RT!

So send a text if you feel like coming this way and we'll make it a date!

Science Explains Everything

I have been waiting to write this blog post since August 11th, two weeks after the incident. It was prompted by a text conversation with a friend. You see, at that time I was already in the "acceptance" phase of the grieving process.  I have since realized it came pretty early - the phases of grief are pretty fluid and occur in no particular order. My friend wanted to know how I was so accepting of being paralyzed. I responded by saying that it might not last (my acceptance of my new life) but that what helped was understanding the science of it all.

Let's start with car vs. bike. It's obvious who will lose and who will win. A bike travelling 25 km/h hit from behind by a car travelling 90 km/h. The 140 lb rider forced into the air with incredible speed will hit the ground with massive force. Mr. Hoba, I'll leave that one for you to figure out, not sure I want to know the answer. So the rider hits the ground and the helmet absorbs most of the shock of the impact instead of the riders brain (just like the egg project). The unprotected face is another story.

There are other issues related to the impact, like the explosion of T4. The vertebrae releases a triangular shape piece of bone and fires it toward the spinal column. The dura (membrane around the spinal cord) is not strong enough to withstand the edge of the fragment. The fragment therefore has the ability to damage the nerves that operate all of the motor, sensory and interneuron cells below the T4 region. Nerve cells are like telephone wires. Cut the wires and the conversation ends. If the cells were not severed then there is a chance that they will come out of shock. But the body keeps that a secret, and tells it to no one.

The tear in the trachea changes the respiratory system. The whole idea being that it is a sealed container with only one way for air to get into or out of the thoracic cavity. A hole in the trachea changes all that. For some reason I escaped having a tracheal tube inserted in my neck, but instead had a breathing tube and two chest tubes. Chest tubes help remove the excess fluid or air that is outside the alveoli, but inside the pleural cavity. It's funny to think that air inside the lugs is a bad thing. But what it means is that air is inside the wrong parts of the lung, making the alveoli in the lower regions of the lung not able to expand and fill with air. Not getting enough air means lower oxygen levels in my bloodstream and less oxygen getting to the cells that are trying to heal.

All this science; the physics of motion, the biology of cell division, the mystery of nerve cells, it all explains why I am currently sitting in a wheelchair in Parkwood. So although I don't like it, I get it. What I don't like is that someone else is responsible for all of the science that was put into motion to get me here. And there is no science that explains that.

Update: still working on getting my blood pressure a little bit higher. Seem to have good bp days and some not so good bp days (I am currently tipped pretty far back in my wheelchair). Another good thing that has come back is that my rectum is now considered to be "spastic" which means it responds to stimuli and and makes me one step closer to establishing a bowel routine (and therefore some more independence).

A Good Day

Funny that I am having a hard time starting this post.

Finally. It was a good day. Likely it has a lot to do with the fact that I got to spend the whole day with Theo - we have been apart for three days, and getting him back just sooths my soul. Holding his hand, watching him get to know other patients, how he voluntarily cleans up my space, when he asks the exact same questions as me at OT and feeling his skin. It all reminds me why I love him.

The vain part of me also knows why it was a good day...I got my teeth fixed! I can smile again. I love to smile, and for the past four weeks I have been very aware of my two front teeth. I have limited smiling or even covered my mouth to prevent those two awful teeth from showing. How vain is that? I couldn't help it. I loved my teeth - they were perfect and all with not a penny spent. I never had braces or a mouthpiece or heaven forbid surgery. It was a free, perfect smile and I showed it all the time. I work with a very wise woman who once said "Always be the best dressed person in the room". And I totally agree with her. Now that my teeth are back, I no longer have to waste precious energy trying to hide my smile.

Down the road I will spend more time writing about PT an OT, there is so much to tell, but one thing must be mentioned today as it's another reason for my good day. While sitting on the physio bed (called a plinth) Kristen was wanting me to balance sitting up without help. Which is hard, but I was trying. Shoulders back and relaxed, head tall, chin in (no turtle) and abs tight. I give her a look when she says "abs tight" and she says "just imagine you are pulling in your abs" and she places her hand on my belly. So I do as she says and imagine my abs tightening. And I did it. Kristen said she felt me do it and she made me do it again. And I did. I don't know what it means, but it must be good, some signals are getting through.

I also had company tonight for dinner, and I didn't have to eat hospital food (I'll save that topic for another post). Steve and Lisa brought nacho night (minus the margaritas) that we ate outside enjoying the fresh air and catching up. Lisa asked if I was ready for more visitors and I told her that I am. I am limited as to where I can go in my wheelchair on my own - so I make it the job of my company to get me outside. I have been living in a bubble here, so I need outside people to keep me sane. And make for more good days.

Tears

My social worker says that tears are therapeutic. That the chemicals released when you cry have a positive influence on the brain by relieving stress and elevating mood. Maybe that explains why I am such a positive person, because I cry so much? Just so we are clear, I cried a lot even before my accident. Example: I cry at Bell commercials. Remember the ones from some years ago? Where the teenaged boy is standing on Juno Beach and he calls his grandfather and says "Hi Grandpa, I just called to say THANKS". Yes, when ever that one came on the TV, I cried.

I have been crying a lot these past four weeks. And not all of it has been a pity party (even though some most definitely is). A lot of my tears come from a place of gratitude. Knowing that so many people are thinking about me, wishing me well, praying for me and offering help. Hugs make me cry, I wonder if it is out of relief? That someone is here to help me greve a little bit, and help me pass some time - time that at this point seems endless because I have no discharge date. People who are making plans to spread the Share the Road message and coordinate a fundraiser for me also make me cry.

Talking to my parents makes me cry. Because they are so stuck, wishing there was something they could do to help. And I just wish that they could know that being with me, holding my hand and spending time with my kids is helping. Thinking about the future makes me cry. I can hear the nurses outside our door laughing and enjoying each others company. I will not be teaching this year, and I will miss all the laughing that we do everyday together, me, Julie and my Science Boys. Being outside and having the sun on my face makes me cry because I miss that feeling so much and it feels so precious.

I have an endless supply of tears and I never seem to know when they will spill over. I cried today at the end of OT. I am not sure what it was that Gary said, something about what I needed to do so I would be ready to go home. He was being kind and helpful. And there they were, just springing from my eyes. More tears. Maybe tomorrow I will be less stressed and more elevated from today's tears? Let's hope so.