The American Mass Shooting: A Tragedy In Three Acts. Coming soon to a city near you.

I woke up this Sunday morning thinking I'd turn on the television and finally watch the final episode of American Idol (recorded over two months ago) while folding laundry. I was standing there in my pajamas with the remote in my hand when what I saw on the television stopped me in my tracks. The worst mass shooting in U.S. history has taken place in Orlando, Florida. I've seen this tragedy a bunch of times before. SPOILER ALERT: Even though we're only briefly into this tragedy, I'm about to tell you how the rest of this tragedy always unfolds.

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ACT I: Vitriol, Hatred, and Shooting

The play opens with a mentally ill person, or extremists of one religion or another, one color or another, one country or another, spouting hate against another group. The shooters voice their hatred against their intended targets, explain why everyone should hate the group they hate, and they explain how that group is ruining the fabric of America, threatening our moral fiber, corrupting our children, sent by the devil, and so on. The reason this play has been so riveting for so many decades is because the actors, costumes, perpetrators and victims change slightly from one performance to the next. It's always the same, but just different enough to engage us. Today's tragedy is set in a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL. Exactly one year ago today the tragedy was set in a black church, where a white man entered a black church and opened-fire on several people in attendance at a Bible study. The possible scene/plot/character combinations are endless: suburban high school, movie theater, office building, Jewish Community Center, Luby's Cafeteria, Muslim shooter on Caucasian victims, Caucasian shooter on African-American victims, and the list goes on.

In the next scene we see a venue full of unsuspecting people our antagonist is about to kill.

The shooter kills as many people as he can before being apprehended or killed.

This is where we become viewers of the viewers. The viewers include people all over the world who turn on a television and see the story as it unfolds. First the viewers are presented with aerial views of a crime scene. Today's tragedy gives us a glimpse of the roof of Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. This aerial view has become an iconic and necessary part of every Mass Shooting tragedy, whether the viewer is looking at the roof of a high school, a movie theater, a cafeteria, and so on. During this part of the tragedy a news anchor tells viewers about a tragic BREAKING NEWS story. Once crews are at the site of the shooting she throws the story to the news reporter on the scene. The reporter can't get close to the scene because of police tape and potential for continued shooting, so they do their best to grab survivors or witnesses outside that perimeter.  Depending on the varying setting, we may see screaming teens running from a school, or bloodied movie theater patrons sitting on concrete parking bumpers in the parking lot outside the theater where their friends were killed, or a mother crying because her son's boyfriend was shot and taken to the hospital, but she hasn't seen her son yet and thinks he's dead inside the nightclub. Also in this act are panic-stricken family members coming to the scene, hoping they'll be able to find and take home their children, spouses, friends, or loved ones. When the witness or survivor being interviewed, still in complete shock, becomes redundant or says something inappropriate for live television, the anchor interrupts the on-site team and brings coverage back to the studio.

During Act I everything -- from the attack to the rescue efforts to the reporting -- is frenetic, unscripted, haphazard, confusing, disorganized, and messy.

ACT II: We Can Now Confirm

During Act II the news anchor tells us what's happening, as far as she knows, while information continues to come in. During this part of the tragedy the messiness and chaos of Act I is replaced by gradually increasing clarity and understanding. Various "experts" from around the world are linked to the broadcast via satellite, to give their thoughts about the tragedy. The anchor adeptly shifts from the on-site reporter to the satellite expert to various podiums as they appear from one hour to the next. Whether the the person on screen is the news anchor, satellite-linked expert, witness, survivor, or law enforcement press agent, they share the screen with the crawler at the bottom that keeps telling us how many victims there are, who the shooter might be, when a press conference might happen, and other updates. The person on screen might also be sharing the screen with heart-breaking photos or video of the tragedy.

Most people on screen will be interrupted if someone finally steps up to a podium. A law enforcement public relations spokesperson addresses journalists about the specifics of the current tragedy. Reporters ask questions, and authorities respond with, "I am not at liberty to disclose that information at this time." or "This is an ongoing investigation, and those details aren't entirely clear at this time." The people at the podium know their lines, and at this point so do I, because I've seen this so many times.

From the time of the shooting until the identity of the shooter is confirmed there is a great deal of speculation. Viewers want to know who did this horrible thing, and why. The satellite-linked experts will speculate, and journalists at press conferences will ask leading questions like, "Is this a hate crime?" or "Is there a tie to Islamic extremism?" The person behind the podium won't be able to confirm or deny these leading questions, so all of these possibilities become topics of discussion during the hours and potentially days before the shooter is officially identified.

The cameras keep rolling, and news broadcasters need to keep talking, so expert after so-called expert will sit in front of the camera and just guess about who did it. It's good theater. It would be very unsatisfying if the news broadcasters just said, "We don't know anything else right now, so we'll just stop talking until we learn more." Viewers would stop watching during the empty space, so the news staff keeps guessing. The early speculation is frequently incorrect, and the consequences of their misinformation can lead to entirely new tragedies. While all of this guessing is going on, the scene splits. As one expert tells news viewers that the shooter may have been Muslim, the other side of the scene shows Americans attacking an innocent Muslim-American father, and others burn a mosque as worshipers who built that mosque watch in despair.

When the President steps to his podium he will tell us how tragic it is that Americans have been gunned down today. He'll ask us to pray for the victims and survivors of the massacre, as well as for the families of those killed or injured. This address from the president is a very consistent part of the tragedy, and it changes very little from one shooting to the next. After the presidential address we again see the news anchor, who will continue to rotate between satellite-linked expert guests who address everything from the type of weapon used, the efficiency of the police and medical response to the tragedy, the progress of the investigation, the likely profile of someone who would do something like this, and all the likely causes of gun violence -- from mental illness, hate crimes, terrorism, and outdated gun laws.

As this heart-wrenching act concludes, viewers finally learn the shooter's identity. They also see photos that have been taken from the shooter's online social media accounts. We haven't gotten any further than this in today's tragedy, but if you haven't seen this tragedy often enough I'll let you know what will happen next. The podiums in Act II will keep popping up, from the leaders of the city where the tragedy has occurred, to the spokesperson at the hospital where victims are still recovering, to the police station that is HQ for all levels of law enforcement, to the leaders representing the targeted group, to the White House.

ACT III: Vigil, Empty Promises, and Lack of Closure

While Acts I and II are dramatic, engaging, riveting, emotional, and spell-binding, Act III is just defeating and unsatisfying. In Act III viewers know what we've known since Act I -- the identity and motives of the shooter. Everyone despondently says, "I just can't believe this can happen here." No matter how many times we see this tragedy, the disbelief that "it can happen here" is a constant.

It is also in Act III that the vigils take place. We see portraits and other photos of smiling, happy people, now dead, and we learn more about them. Flowers and messages are laid at the site of the shooting, as well as at the homes and apartments of those killed. We'll find out that one victim was a mom, another a dad, another just graduated from college, another a star athlete, or stage performer, or community volunteer, or nurse, and so on.

Politicians will attend funerals. So will protesters. One of the weirdest constants from tragedy to tragedy -- whether or not the victims were gay -- are the protesters who hold signs that say "GOD HATES FAGS."  These vocal protesters are the exception. Most of the haters who have consistently spewed hatred against the victim group will remain silent during Act III, because telling people the hated group is sent by Satan to tempt the righteous is not the same as actually shooting those people, so they don't feel any responsibility.

Another group that won't accept any responsibility in mass shootings is the National Rifle Association, which consistently and aggressively resists all forms of government limitations on firearms -- even fully automatic weapons with magazine clips full of dozens of armor-piercing bullets. Some politicians will urge legislation that would allow the Center for Disease Control -- the agency responsible for public health in our country -- to research gun violence. But even though gun violence is one of the leading causes of death in our country, and even though the CDC is tasked with researching and mitigating public health threats, Congress will not allow the CDC to research gun violence.

Toward the end of Act III the emergency vehicle lights have stopped flashing, yellow police tape has been cleared away, news crews have gone home, podiums have been rolled back to their conference rooms, funerals have concluded,  and flowers and candles at vigil sites have been cleaned up. Cries for gun regulation by the survivors, family members of those gunned down, as well as those who don't want this American Mass Shooting tragedy coming to any more cities, will be replaced by debates centered on "big-government" and "over-regulation." Vocal members of the NRA, in opposition to the large majority of the gun owners they claim to represent, will block all meaningful steps toward even researching, let alone fixing this public health crisis.

In the final scene of this tragedy we will see a guy reading baseless anti-[insert target victim group] propaganda online. He closes that internet window to reveal a website that sells fully automatic machine guns online.

Curtains close.

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As I write this blog we are still very early in the deadliest mass shooting in America's history.

In the days and hours to come we'll hear more from politicians from both sides of the aisle who want to prevent this from happening again. All of the politicians will voice their condolences to the victims and their families, and will look into cameras to say we need to take concrete steps to make sure this never happens again. We can expect one presidential hopeful to repeat his campaign promise to bar ALL Muslims from entering our country -- a country that was founded on religious freedom, and in which "Freedom Of Religion" is our First Amendment. We can expect some politicians and community leaders to condemn "big-government over-regulation" of firearms, while simultaneously pushing to extend The PATRIOT Act. We'll hear from the same politicians next year, if not before next year, after another mass shooting has taken place. The NRA will remain silent in the days to come, as their product is brought to everyone's attention after another mass shooting. But when the dust of this tragedy has settled and our legislators speak for tougher gun laws, the NRA will fan the flames of fear of tyranny, trying to convince everyone that gun laws are an obvious assault (they'll use the term assault) on their 2nd Amendment rights.

William Shakespeare wrote some of the most notable tragedies in literary history, In those tragedies Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, or others always end up lying dead on stage at the end of the final scene. In some of Shakespeare's tragedies there might be as many as 7 or 8 people laying dead on stage at the end of the play, and the emotion we feel at the end is sickening despair. But this is not Shakespeare. It's America. The stage of this tragedy has 50 bodies and counting. But today's tragedy isn't a play. The victims won't stand up and bow at curtain call. The feeling of sick, overwhelming despair is enormous. And the worst part is that this is only the most recent in a national tour of The American Mass Shooting, which may be coming soon to a city near you.

There's Nothing Wrong With The Bible

Have you ever sat down and read the Bible? Really read it? Not searching for some meaning or some devotional passage, but just pick it up and read the stories? It's incredible. It's more intriguing than any soap opera or dramatic series I’ve ever seen. It's got fantastic tales featuring heroes, villains, love, lust, betrayal, murder, and really strong faith in action. In fact, the word Action in the previous sentence should probably be spelled with a capital "A," because there's massive floods, rivers running with blood, plagues that kill thousands of people all at once, wars that consume entire regions, and sibling rivalries that end in murder (Cain/Abel) or betrayal (Joshua/Esau, Joseph/his brothers). The thread that holds the Bible together is its focus on a just God who generally gives you what you deserve in the Old Testament (Tanakh), or gives more than any of us have ever deserved in the New Testament. It spells out laws that are eternal and obvious (thou shalt not kill - Exodus 20), and also standards that are very hard for most of us to reach (when your neighbor strikes you on the left cheek, turn to him the right cheek also - Matt 5:38).

I've read the Bible in so many ways, with so many people, in so many Bible studies, in so many college courses, and in so many versions. I got to see a Chicago Field Museum exhibit about the Bible, which included a woman who was reassembling a 2000 year-old scroll from tiny, dried-up fragments of parchment. She wore a smock, white gloves and a face mask, and picked up the tiny little fragments with tweezers. I said, "Oh, WOW. I would LOVE that job." She had to know Biblical Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, or coloquial ancient Greek well enough to be able to puzzle the fragile pieces together. I was in awe of what she must understand and know about the Bible, and I am always aware that if I spend my lifetime in the study of Biblical texts I would still have only scratched the surface of what is knowable.

So I'll make my foundational belief perfectly clear. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE BIBLE.

What many Christians like myself find WRONG with the Bible is simply how Christians understand, or misunderstand, or intentionally manipulate and misconstrue the Bible in order to promote their own, non-Christian ideas. 

• Is slavery good or bad? According to the Bible, it is bad, and according to the Bible, it is good.
• Are men and women equal in the eyes of God? According to the Bible, they are equal, and according to the Bible, men are superior.
• Should we forgive and turn the other cheek when people harm us? According to the Bible, we should forgive and turn the other cheek. But the Bible also says we should kill those who harm us... or those who preach falsehoods... or those curse us... including a son who curses his parents, and if he curses his parents he should be stoned to death where everyone can see (Leviticus 20:9).

Many Christian evangelicals, who I define as those who see the Bible as the complete and inerrant word of God, place their faith in the Bible as the divinely inspired and infallible word of God. When times of trouble come, there's probably a passage that will provide comfort. When feeling confused the most sensible thing would be to turn to the Bible for wisdom and guidance. When joyful, a rousing Psalm is always a wonderful thing to add to a celebration. Turning to the Bible is a fine thing, and as I've said, THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE BIBLE.

But when the Bible supersedes God, that's when the Bible has become the idol, and God is being ignored. To an evangelical Christian, everything God could ever say to us has already been said. His every message to us exists within the pages of the Bible. Our understanding of the universe has evolved tremendously in the past 2000 years, but if the Bible says God made the earth over the course of six days then it was undeniably made in six literal days. Period. (Nevermind that our definition of a day is the 24 hours it takes for our earth to rotate on its axis to face the sun, but the sun itself wasn't made until "day" 4.) Evolution, therefore, is impossible. 

Let's imagine, for sake of argument, that God is really, really amazing. Let's also suppose that our infant-like comprehension of the cosmos is really, really, REALLY small compared to the being that created the cosmos. In fact, to bolster my argument I'll throw in just a handful of verses from my all-time favorite chapters in the Bible, which brilliantly convey the magnitude of our limitless ignorance. God's monologue can be found at the end of the book of Job. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, Job is the most perfectly faithful of all men on earth. Consequently, Job is a prosperous, successful, well-loved man with many children. Satan, an angel who not surprisingly plays “devil’s advocate” in this story, wants to test Job's faith in God, arguing that Job is only faithful because he is a prosperous, successful, well-loved man with many children. God agrees to Satan's challenge of Job's faith, allowing Satan to do anything to Job but kill him. I picture the two placing bets and shaking hands. In the first chapter Job faces loss after loss, which leads him to be rebuked and judged as unfaithful and unworthy by his friends. The next several dozen chapters his friends tell him that God doesn't make mistakes, and God rewards the righteous, so Job’s sins must be unbelievably huge to have caused his entire family to be crushed by the collapse of the house and Job's body covered in boils. Job insists on his unswerving righteousness, grieves his horrible losses, and questions aloud why God would allow such hardship to visit a man as faithful and righteous as he. In the final chapters of the book God rebukes Job for challenging his judgement, in some of the most beautiful and poetic of all religious scriptures I've ever read (although a section in the Bhagavad Gita is a strong contender).

Job 38:
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

16 “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.

25 “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt,
26 to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man,
27 to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?

….it goes on for another few chapters. It’s really worth a read.

If the infinite and limitless God described in Job would like to come back to us today, to clarify the cosmos issue with us, now that we have a far greater understanding of the physics of planetary movement etc, the evangelical Christian's response to God is basically saying, "Hey, God, shut up. If you have something to tell me you should have inspired the guys who wrote this book for you 2,000 years ago to write it down."

Couldn’t there be more for us to hear? Isn't it possible God has more to say to us? Is it fair of us to confine the limitless wisdom of a deity that could create the miraculous cosmos to such a small number of words? From the perspective of Biblical inerrancy the answer to that question is no. God has nothing more to tell us. 

God has said 25% fewer words to us over the past 2,000 years than are contained in the books of the Harry Potter series.

This approach to Christianity is Bible worship, not God worship. It is idolatry. Using the Bible as the only possible access point to God places a book on a pedestal where God should be. It effectively tells God to stop speaking. 

In addition to the relatively small number of words in the Bible, what if those words contradict one another? Genesis 1 shows us an omnipotent and omniscient God who commands the universe into existence in six days with "Let there be light" and other impressive commands that result in the miracle of creation; while Genesis 2 shows us a God who creates the universe in a totally different order, with no specific timetable, and then goes looking for Adam and Eve in the garden and he can't even find them until they call out to him from behind some bushes. Well? Did God make the first human beings, both male and female, on day 6, by simply commanding them into existence? Or did God form the first man from a clod of clay, then all the rest of creation, and finally female as the last of his creation? Is God omniscient and omnipotent? Or does he need to walk around the garden searching for the only two people in existence?

There are SO MANY contradictions in the pages of the Bible, all the way through. I use Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 as examples because those are the very first two chapters of the Bible! If our reading of the Bible begins with large contradictions in the first two chapters, we should not expect it to be inerrant, eternal, and definitive on any, let alone every issue we will ever confront.

Throughout Christian history the Bible has been used to defend all manner of social injustice, as well as to promote all manner of social justice. In recent months we have heard many people discuss the relevance of the Bible's from both sides of the Marriage Equality debate. Some use specific verses in the Bible to prove that God is against all gay relationships. Some would use different verses in the Bible to prove that God is NOT against all gay relationships. 

The BIGGEST problem, however, is the inconsistent outrage applied to specific issues based on Biblical authority. In Mark 10: 2-9, Jesus explicitly condemns divorce. The pronouns Jesus uses make it clear that it is HIS wife and HER husband. Herman Cain uses this passage to prove that Jesus was against same-sex marriage. But for some reason there is no corresponding outrage about the issue of divorce that is explicitly condemned by the passage! 

There's also a story about a mob of men demanding that they be allowed to gang rape the two strangers in Sodom and Gomorrah who found hospitality in Lot's house. Rather than subject the strangers to gang rape by the townspeople, Lot offers his two virgin daughters to the angry mob, hoping to satisfy their violent demands without jeopardizing the two strangers to whom he had offered his hospitality. We later find out that the two strangers are actually angels, and right before Lot pushes his daughters out of the house to be gang raped, the angels blind all of the men in the mob. Whew! That was a close one! This story is put forth as a universal condemnation of sodomy (a word that comes from this very story, as the residents of Sodom are called Sodomites). In this story sodomy would be male-on-male gang rape, but for modern social purposes it has been generalized to include all male/male sex. With stories like this one there are long debates about what the words meant in their original Hebrew or Greek, in context or out of context, in this translation version vs. that one. The violent rape of two men is not the same as two men who love each other entering a long-lasting relationship, and so on. But ALL of these arguments presume that the Bible needs to support one's personal viewpoint because the Bible is the ultimate authority. The deification of the Bible is in itself a fundamental error in one's effort to open one's mind and heart to what God is trying to tell us TODAY. There are MANY Christians who do NOT view the Bible as inerrant, and are therefore not bound by the need to defend ourselves with Biblical passages. We simply ask ourselves if what we are doing is consistent with an effort to be kind, compassionate, welcoming, humble, generous, and truthful. 

So, my dear Christian friend, before you click to "like" another commercial about how redefining marriage ruins children; before you say "Amen" to another sermon that praises straight relationships as righteous while claiming falsely that gay relationships are no different than polygamy, pedophilia and bestiality; before you share another story about a woman who "ached every day for a dad" instead of being raised by two moms; before you vote for a politician who claim that last week’s SCOTUS decision was the worst day in American history,…. please know that you are helping to foster misunderstanding, fear, anger, hostility, and violence towards many wonderful people. Some of those people are Christians who sat right next to you in church for decades, and only wish to live as equals in the eyes of our government, if not their church. Please show more compassion. In short, be more Christlike. 

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: The Toddler Years

In 3 1/2 weeks my brain injury turns two. Like living with any toddler, I don't sleep well, everything takes far more effort than it should, my memory isn't what it used to be, I have to turn down many social events, and I'm always exhausted.

When I wrote my first blog entry two years ago I was trying to inform everyone about why they weren't seeing me. At the time of my accident I was playing outdoor soccer during the spring and fall, and indoor soccer during the winter. I was volunteering with PFLAG, I was part of the Safe Schools Coalition, I was the Diversity Liaison for our school, I was teaching high school and writing course content, I was very involved with our then 4 year-old son, we attended church regularly, and I was always attending professional development workshops. In fact, I was on my way to a Holocaust Educators workshop on the morning of my car accident. My first blog post was my way of writing a single letter to answer the many questions I was getting from the many people who had been accustomed to seeing me. Two years later I'm writing this and wondering who will read it. I feel so disconnected. One by one all my involvement in all my activities stopped. I'm attending a brain injury support group now, and one woman put it this way: "At first your friends keep inviting you to things because you're still seen as part of the group. But little by little the invitations stop. ...and you find yourself grateful when they stop because then you can stop turning down invitations and you don't know what you're missing anymore."

It's New Year's Eve. My now 6 year-old son is at a kids' climbing gym, celebrating with noise makers, hats, snacks, lots of other kids, and walls that are literally made for climbing. Amy dropped him off, and will celebrate the last day of 2014 with her brother and sister-in law. I've been having occasional searing pain in my head today, and don't want everyone to keep quiet on my account, so I have elected to stay home tonight. (I'll be asleep well before midnight.)

I joined a Traumatic Brain Injury support group just last month. At one meeting I reported that I was surprised that when I worked with a Rubik's Cube for about an hour one evening I suddenly got a killer headache, and the next day I felt like I was nursing a severe hangover -- tired, groggy, sensitive to light and sound, and dragging myself through obligations I wished didn't exist. They looked at me with astonishment that I would attempt something so completely insane. "A RUBIK'S CUBE?!?! FOR AN ENTIRE HOUR?!" I shrugged dumbly. "I love puzzles. In the past I might pull a jigsaw puzzle out of its box at 7:00pm, and at 5:00am I'd still be working on it, surprised that all that time had passed. Why should I assume that one hour at a Rubik's cube, TWO YEARS AFTER MY INJURY, would cause such strong symptoms?"

And that is the question that continues to perplex me. How can I still be like this after two years?

It was during that same meeting that we celebrated the accomplishments of another member of the group, who had successfully sorted hundreds of record albums by genre and then alphabetized them with her boyfriend -- a major undertaking that left her very tired, but feeling proud and accomplished. She's an engineer, so alphabetizing and sorting are not typically things one would celebrate. Such is the aggravating condition known as Traumatic Brain Injury.

My expectations of myself are shifting of late. Six months after my injury I was trying to schedule comprehensive cognitive testing with a neuropsychologist. She said she wouldn't be able to get me in for a couple of months. I expressed concern that by then I would be so much better, and might not get a good baseline if we waited too long. She assured me that two months wouldn't make much difference. That confused me at the time. Now that two years have passed I get it. Eighteen months ago I was looking forward to when I'd be able to return to soccer, and go skiing, and go backpacking when Kaiden got old enough. The injury has aged me. Now my first reaction to plans for camping or vacations is that of anxiety. I've accepted that I won't play soccer again, because another blow to the head could have devastating effects which would impact all of us.

In April of 2014 I was informed that my job with Boulder Valley School District was being cut, so I found myself unemployed when the school year ended. The previous year I had gradually let go of all my extracurricular activities, and now I was out of a job as well. Despite being unemployed, which seems like it would result in dozens and dozens of hours of extra time in my week, I am just as exhausted and behind on projects as ever. I didn't write the annual Christmas letter this year. Last year at least I wrote the letter, and ordered photo greeting cards, but never got around to mailing them. With all those hours I'm not working it seems I could at least write and send Christmas greetings to our friends and family.

This inability to keep up with ordinary tasks simply reveals how much my mother was doing for us. For the first 18 months after my accident she was here every month, staying anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks. She would get Kaiden up and going in the mornings, get him to school, shop for groceries, cook our meals, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, walk the dog, wash the cars, play with Kaiden, get Kaiden to karate, read to Kaiden, get Kaiden bathed and ready for bed, and on and on. Since I lost my job my mother hasn't had to come out here, and instead of working I'm doing all the things just listed. I'm so grateful that my mom was able to lend so much assistance, which allowed me to continue working through my brain injury for 18 months.

Even though I am still taking one pill to help me sleep, another to keep my heart from racing wildly while I am sitting still, and another in the morning to help me focus, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) has been shown to be the only thing that can heal brain injuries. I have now had two courses of HBOT. The first course of HBOT consisted of 40 sessions, 80 minutes per day for 40 consecutive days, every day of the week except Sundays. Patients enter a chamber that is sealed and pressurized to 1.5x sea level pressure. Once the desired pressure is reached (about 10 minutes) the patient puts on a plastic hood into which pure oxygen is pumped for an hour. After the hour is over the hood comes off and the pressure is slowly let out (another 10 minutes). The idea is that the tiny little blood vessels in the brain are forced further into the cortex, and then filled with tissue-healing oxygen. The first course of treatments had profound improvements. I noticed my sound and light sensitivity had diminished. This meant that I could go out to restaurants, I could follow conversations, I stopped needing daily naps, I could interact with others more effectively, and I had more endurance to interact with Kaiden. In June I noticed the benefits wearing off a bit. While I spent the entire month of June with my parents in Illinois, I was unable to visit several people I had intended to see. I started needing my afternoon naps again. I was forced to go lay down because conversations and normal Doyle household family commotion were overwhelming to me.

I just finished the second course of treatments -- twenty this time -- last week. To have the headaches I've had today is bewildering. The pain is more severe than normal. I can only hope that the headaches are indicative of newly operational regions of cortex, and not signs of doing too much with my brain.

Despite what I am realizing is extensive whining in this blog post, Amy and I are continually aware of how blessed we are. Her job has sustained us, and she was given a promotion in 2014, so my unemployment status has not left us in financial crisis. She travels a lot with her job, so we are both stretched to the ends of our capacities, but while we're usually exhausted, we're getting through all this okay. Kaiden seems none the worse. We have very good health insurance, which we've been needing A LOT.

Additionally, we know that we have wonderful family. It is because of my accident that my mother has been a very supportive, consistent and wonderful presence in my life and in Kaiden's life these past two years -- something that would NOT have otherwise taken shape during our annual or bi-annual visits to Illinois. Having heard from so many who have lost their mothers, I am fully aware of the incredible value of the time we've shared since my accident. Finally, we are also aware that it could have been so much worse. I'm not sure how much of my former energy and cognitive ability will return as I continue to heal, but the accident was a doozie and I'm happy to have survived it at all, and with four working limbs and no more significant physical or cognitive ailments than I have. Life is Good, and we are blessed.

If you've made it to this point in the blog post I applaud you. Thanks for continuing to be a friend, despite my disconnectness. It's always good to hear from friends, especially through emails I can respond to when I am able, and with enough time to compose a reply that makes sense. Take care, and be well in 2015!

Reproductive Rights, Marriage Equality, and Sochi

I'm sitting here with a jumble of thoughts about what I'm seeing in the world today, and I've decided to write a blog post that is less about convincing others about my views and more about launching a dialogue about what's happening. With the lead-up to the Olympics we have heard a lot about Vladimir Putin's Anti-Gay Propaganda laws that have made it open-season for violence against gays in Russia. I look around myself and see one state after another passing marriage equality measures that will someday spread to Colorado where I'll be allowed to marry.

The tide is turning here in the U.S., but there's plenty of resistance to it. DOMA and Prop 8 were overturned by the Supreme Court, but the vote was 5-4. In most states where marriage equality has passed there are protesters outside arguing that I am an abomination. In no state so far has marriage equality passed as a landslide -- it's always very close and the conversations are heated and passionate in both directions. When I step back from the personal implications of the situation I can see a much bigger historical picture, and it occurs to me that railing against Putin and Russians for being against gays is like getting upset about bathroom fixtures of a house when the foundation still hasn't been built. Don't get me wrong -- my right to marry isn't an unimportant thing to me, and I'm sure some of you appreciate the critical importance of functional yet aesthetically pleasing bathroom fixtures, so I am not trivializing this aspect of social evolution. But for now let's start at the foundation and look at the institution of marriage through the ages...

Things used to be so different. No one married who they wanted to, and marriage was never about love. It was an economic necessity that protected members of both sides of the family. So the parents of a boy (or sometimes a grown man representing himself) would meet with the parents of a girl and decide if the union between the two would be in everyone's best interest. Would the man be able to support his wife and children? Would the woman be able to make a good home and eventually care for the elders of her husband's family? Everyone hoped they had sons, because it was his wife who would care for the elders when they grew weak. Our early teen religious rituals like Confirmation and Bar Mitzvah are wonderful celebrations for our 13-14 year-old children. But they used to mark one's entry into adulthood. If a girl was old enough to have a period she was old enough to bear children, and at that point she was an adult. There was no dependable birth control, so from her early teens until menopause (or more likely death) the wife would probably be pregnant. Life expectancy was between 20-30 years old (which is why death was more likely than menopause). The thought of a woman leaving the home to pursue a career never entered anyone's mind because it was a physiological impossibility for most women, who were pregnant their entire adult lives. The entire culture was built upon men earning money and women caring for the home and offspring. This led to a clear distinction between the Public Sphere, where the men could exist and do business, and the private sphere, which was the realm of women.

This division between Public Sphere and Private Sphere has lasted for 10,000 years, and it had some obvious but unintentional consequences. If a man was abusive to his wife she couldn't leave, because she was completely dependent on him to provide money for food and shelter for herself and their children. A man, therefore, could be unfaithful to his wife, pursuing a relationship with the woman he actually loved, but a woman was never able to be unfaithful to her husband with the man she actually loved and who may have loved her back. ...at least not that anyone could ever know about...

We can look at a famous Bible story that reveals a lot about marriage, and it makes sense to look to the Bible because this is where so much of the argument against marriage equality comes from. Jacob fell head-over-heels in love with Rachel the first time he saw her, and immediately asked her father's permission to marry her. Rachel's father Laban agreed, but only if Jacob provided seven years of hard labor on the family property. Jacob agreed to the terms and worked 7 long years. Then he married Laban's daughter, only realizing the next day that it was Leah he had married. Rachel's older sister Leah hadn't been married in those seven years, so Laban needed to marry her off. It was an economic necessity and she was older, so Jacob got the wife he earned, but not the one he wanted. Laban told him if he still wanted to marry Rachel he could work another 7 years. So one week after marrying Leah, Jacob married Leah's sister Rachel, and then worked another 7 years after that marriage. But he never loved Leah, so it is said God comforted her by making her fertile and Rachel barren. What would it be like to live in a marriage where you knew you were reviled? What would it be like to see your husband fawning over your younger sister all the time? And what would it be like to see him giving Rachel's son Joseph far more love and attention than he showed to the other 10 sons he had (with Leah and two servants)? There are few stories in the Bible about true love, because love wasn't the point of marriage in those times. To use the Bible to defend "marriage between one man and one woman" is a farce, because modern marriage isn't the same as ancient marriage. David had dozens of wives, but he only really loved one in a "true love" kind of way. He sent Bathsheba's husband to the front lines of battle to be killed so he could then have her as his wife. David's son Solomon had hundreds of wives and hundreds of concubines. Abraham had a son Ishmael with his wife's servant Hagar so his line wouldn't die out. Judah ordered his second son to marry his deceased oldest son's widow, but later Judah had sex with her when he mistook her for a temple prostitute. (Having sex with a temple prostitute would have been completely acceptable if it weren't his daughter-in-law.)... I'll stop there, but I could go on and on because this is what marriage in the Bible really looks like.

Fast-forward several centuries... Or no... several decades... or wait... in some parts of the world it's still completely like this! Most underdeveloped countries, for example, still have arranged marriages. Russia is considered a modern country, but it's nearly twice the size of the United States with half the population, many ethnic groups spread over vast regions, and it has gone through multiple oppressive regimes before arriving at today's autocracy. This has influenced their social evolution a great deal.

Let's look at our social transformation. In 21st Century America we are slowly coming to realize that being gay isn't something that a man does behind his wife's back. It's part of who he is. But there are still many in our 21st Century American society who still see being gay as a behavior instead of as a character trait, and they consider this behavior to be an abomination. When they talk about rehabilitating the homosexual to become straight we're not even speaking the same language. How can a person stop being gay -- in the U.S. or in Russia? If it's a character trait, the way I see it, they can't. That would be like asking a white person to stop being white, or a curly-haired person to stop having curly hair. But if it's a behavior, they simply need to marry and/or have sex with someone of the opposite sex and the problem solved! In societies with arranged marriage, everyone is being forced to marry and have sex with people they don't love, while denying themselves the life they wish they could have with whom they love. In this context it is no more of a hardship for a gay person than a straight one. Everyone is equally miserable in their arranged marriages, gazing across rooms at the person they truly love but won't get to go home with. But today, in our society, we mostly agree that marriage is a choice two people make together and is borne out of love. And if you can marry the person you love, then I'd like to marry who I love as well. And more of us than ever are realizing that if I marry a man it won't make me any less of a lesbian.

What happened to create this dramatic shift in American culture? I think a LOT of things have led to this shift, but I'd guess that first it was the widespread access to effective contraception. In 1916, right here in the United States, a woman named Margaret Sanger was jailed for 30 days just for distributing information on birth control! It wasn't until 1938 that the Supreme Court reversed the Comstock Laws and allowed people to discuss and use birth control without fear of incarceration. If a couple has the ability to determine when to have children and how many to have, this doesn't lock a woman into the endless cycle of birthing children year after year. She looks outside the house and wonders what else might be possible.

After this revolutionary shift in procreation we had a dramatic women's rights movement. During two world wars women found themselves in the workplace to earn the money to support their families and our country while the men were overseas. First they had control of their bodies, and now they experienced financial control for the first time. Not surprisingly, divorce rates increased. At that point, to an extent, women had control of their bodies, their incomes, and their relationships. They could enter into marriages when and with whom they wanted, and they could divorce husbands if the marriage wasn't working. Marriage stopped being an economic necessity. The average age of marriage rose dramatically, as people decided to wait until they were ready, and keep looking for "the one."

So if straight people can marry for love, why can't I?
From a historical perspective this is a VERY recent and radical step in this social metamorphosis.

Could we have gotten to this step without all the others that preceded it?
And where is Russia in terms of these steps?

The 20th Century saw a huge improvement in life for Americans. Two world wars overseas fueled our economy and improved our quality of life (life expectancy, availability of technology that improved health, improved infrastructure,...) without devastating our land and civilian population. Civil Rights movements illustrated the need for equality across race and gender. Widespread protests on college campuses and at political conventions led the American people to realize their power to influence legislation on Domestic and Foreign policy in this democracy.

The experience for Russia in the 20th century was the exact opposite. Russia lost more citizens in World War I and World War II than virtually all other countries combined. And that doesn't even include the Civil War that led to the rise of the Soviet Union. In fact, Russia lost more civilians than most other countries lost soldiers. Surrounding World War II Stalin's system of work camps in his Gulag incarcerated and caused the deaths of over 23 million people -- over twice the number lost in Hitler's Holocaust. Reasons for incarceration included "Marriage to a Spaniard" and other things Stalin couldn't bear. While Americans were finding their voices and power in a democracy, the people of the Soviet Union were learning that there is no use in protesting -- because those who speak up disappear, and they are probably being worked or tortured to death. What if Rosa Parks was arrested for not surrendering her seat, and then she was sent off to Alaska to be worked to death in a camp while our media painted her out to be an enemy of the state? Where would our country be in terms of racial segregation if that had been the outcome of her protest? Our country was embroiled in Civil Rights marches and Voting Rights marches at the same time as the Berlin Wall was going up. In the 1990s the post-Soviet era saw Democracy finally come to Russia under President Yeltsin, and regrettably the results were a disaster. Economic hardship hit the people hard, and the combination of Russian Mafia-type gangs and political corruption led Russia right back to the autocracy under Putin today.

Russians have a long history of learning that they are powerless against the government. As long as Russia is living in an autocracy where they aren't allowed to control much of what happens in the policies of their government, how likely is it that they will spring to defend the rights of LGBT people in their culture who are being persecuted? Will they even know if gays are being persecuted if Putin controls the media? If Putin uses the media to tell everyone that gays are pedophiles, how will the people be persuaded to fight for those they discover are gay? Why would anyone come forward in such an environment? Should we be protesting the anti-gay laws, or should we be protesting the non-Democratic culture that perpetuates it? Maybe we should fight for freedom of the press there? Should we be fighting for a woman's reproductive control and access to birth control and gainful employment? Should we be fighting for gender equality?

Shouldn't we address the foundation, walls and roof before arguing about the bathroom fixtures?

Entry #3 - 7 Months Later...

Hi all. It's been quite awhile since the last update. Some of you are asking how things are going, and some of you may have forgotten about us entirely, so here's the latest from the Doyle house.

Today marks the 7 month anniversary of my car accident that left me with a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury. My decision to write has nothing to do with the anniversary. I just decided to write this update (probably a subconscious motivation to avoid creating pacing guides for the courses I'm teaching this quarter) and happened to notice just now that it's the 26th. I don't write based on dates or moments of importance, but during bouts of energy (and/or work avoidance). As a new school year begins I am doing more than I was able to do a few months ago, but still far less than I did before the accident, and I hope I'm currently able to do far less than I will do once this injury has reached its maximum healing point.

Last week Amy and I attended the Heart concert. Rock concerts are too overwhelming for me even without a brain injury, so I rarely attend them. But Ann Wilson is one of the greatest female vocalists ever, and the chances to see her perform are running out (she's  63!), so as my birthday gift Amy bought us tickets in June to attend an August concert. The conversation was something like this:
Amy - "Do you think you'll be able to attend a rock concert on August 20th?"
Me - "That's 2 1/2 months away! I'll probably heal a TON by then! Let's do it!"
August 20th arrived and far less healing had happened than I had anticipated. The conversation on the day of the concert went something like this:
Amy - "Do you think you'll be able to attend the concert tonight?"
Me - "As long as they play very quietly with no bright lights I'll be just fine."

We got there and I discovered that Amy got us AMAZING seats. In this case AMAZING is code for the loudest spot we could find. We were very close to the speakers and bright, flashing lights. It would have been quieter behind the drums. In fact, it would have been quieter inside of Ann Wilson's microphone. My sunglasses never came off (even when the moon was high above us) and the ear plugs saved me from passing out. To be clear, I haven't had an alcoholic beverage since the accident. Nevertheless, the next day I felt HORRIBLE. I din't want to see any lights or hear any sounds. My head hurt, I felt weak, trembly, and ill. It felt like I had a MASSIVE hangover. But as I told Amy, judging by the number of beer cups on the ground at the concert, and having seen one woman assisted out of the venue before the end of the concert, I was probably not the only one with those symptoms on August 21st. It was totally worth it.

Work also started last week. I have a new computer with a new operating system, and all our courses have been moved to a new Learning Management System, so there's a lot to keep my brain busy and confused. I'm hoping that fumbling through the new systems for two weeks with will get me through it.

I'm still having light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, mild headaches, and word-finding difficulty. The fatigue is the most consistent factor in all this. For those who can relate, I've compared this to being in the first trimester of pregnancy all the time. I wake up with aspirations of completing a handful of things on a modest to-do list, but by noon (or sooner) I realize that list was ridiculously optimistic. A list I used to be able to complete in a day might take me a week to get through now. (If you're still waiting for thank-you cards from Kaiden's birthday party the first week of June, some have been written and they're on my dining room table.)

In late July I was in Morton Grove to stay with my family for two weeks. I took Kaiden, while Amy stayed back home in Longmont to get some much-needed rest from keeping our family going since the accident. While in Morton Grove I'd come down for fantastic breakfast and Kaiden might already be fed and clothed and ready to join his cousins for play at the park. I'd go upstairs and sleep while they played, then come down for another great meal (or homemade cream puffs!!!) before retreating to bed for the night. I'd recommend this experience to any and all mothers out there. I got to do a few fun things while I was there, but I was able to check off very few of the things on my list of what I wanted to do and people I wanted to see while I was home. I did get a lot of rest, however, which is exactly what I had been ordered to do.

I haven't done anything physically active since the accident, but I'm eager to start swimming again when it makes sense. Just wanting to be active is a good sign. For a few months the thought of physical activity was awful because of the injuries to my right side. Once the side was feeling better I didn't have the motivation because of the persistent fatigue. A brief bike ride two days ago proved to me that it's too soon to do that. A one-hour yoga session when I was visiting my family proved to me that it's too soon for that. Twenty minutes of yoga seems to work, and short bouts of walking is just perfect for where I'm at right now. I've surrendered to the fact that I'll not play soccer again, because the risk of another head injury is just too great. I was gleefully active in two women's leagues when the accident happened, so giving up soccer is a bummer for me. I'm sure I won't have trouble finding other ways to keep active and gleeful outdoors in Colorado. ;-)

As for progress... In June I never would have been able to fly to Chicago with Kaiden. In June I never would have been able to go to the Heart concert -- or even near the venue. I'm eating in restaurants again, which was really overwhelming to me in June. I had no desire to get on a bicycle or into a pool just a few months ago. Progress is slow, and expectations are lower, but healing continues.

I continue to be incredibly grateful for everything Amy does for our family when I am not at my best. I'm also really grateful to be teaching online, because I'd never be able to continue work if I had to go to a classroom every day. Please forgive us for not being better about getting out and about with friends and family, and thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers. We appreciate them all!

Entry #2: After The Vicodin

“Oh cool! ‘Spamalot’ is coming to Denver! Oh. Nevermind. I bet that would hurt my brain.”

This and other unusual sentences have made their way into my thoughts lately. The car accident was January 26^th. The aftermath continues. I’ve disclosed bits and pieces of this chapter with a number of people now, but now that Spring Break has arrived I have a chance to update everyone on what’s been happening.

For the first month after the car accident my biggest concerns were related to the pain in my right side. I was lucky to escape rib fractures and a lacerated liver, but I had lots of muscle strain, join sprains, soft tissue adhesions in my rib cage, diaphragm, and surrounding muscles from my arm pit to my right hip. Everything hurt, including breathing and lying down. I didn’t wear a bra, or shoes that required lacing, for weeks. I couldn’t lift Kaiden, which caused both practical and emotional setbacks for both of us. Sometimes he needs to be picked up to be taken to the car seat he doesn’t want to enter, and other times he needs to be picked up because he just skinned his knee. But I couldn’t pick him up and hugs were intolerably painful. I wasn’t there for him all that much due to my injuries.

But something else started happening. In early January I had taken 8 hours of continuing education on the use of Therapeutic Yoga in Sports Rehabilitation toward my Athletic Trainer certification upkeep. After the accident I told Amy, “I think I would really benefit from… (*imagine awkward, pained stretching mime action here*)… you know… the stretching practice…” She volunteered, “You mean yoga?” Oh, what a relief it felt like to hear the word I was working so hard to find, which I thought I knew so well. Later the garbage disposal started leaking, and I referred to it as “the spinny thingy… in the sink...” That was happening more regularly than seemed normal, so Amy made me promise to bring it up at my next appointment. I shrugged it off. I had been on Vicodin and Valium for pain and muscle spasm for a few weeks. And pain can be very distracting in itself, so of course I was off my game. I just needed to heal physically and all would be well mentally.

I brought it up in passing at the end of my next appointment, after my doctor had already closed her laptop (signal that the visit is over). “Oh… and I almost forgot, but I promised I’d share with you on Amy’s behalf that I’m having some trouble word finding.” I fully expected, “Of course you are! You’re on Vicodin and Valium, and pain can be very distracting!” Instead she asked more questions, re-opened her laptop, and brought up the possibility of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI). “Given the impact with which you were hit, it’s not unlikely.” With every fiber of my being, and with every rational argument I had, I argued with that conclusion. I had never lost consciousness, I had been completely alert at the accident, while being removed from my car I was noting that my blood pressure being read off by the paramedic indicated no internal bleeding… She dismissed my arguments and told me I’d need to stop multi-tasking immediately, which I am still wondering how to accomplish. I also began to realize at that appointment what it might mean for our family if I had to drastically cut back on my activitiy. That was the first time I would weep after the accident, but not the last.

After the Vicodin and Valium weren't needed for pain anymore, things got worse. I had blamed the medications for the sluggishness and fatigue, but didn't realize how much they had masked until I stopped them. Increased symptoms after I came off the meds made it clear that I was indeed suffering from MBTI. Light and sound sensitivity are the most significant symptoms so far, so the blinds have been closed for weeks, and I’m walking around with ear plugs a lot. Then there’s the headaches, major sensitivity to smells, and persistent fatigue. I’m terribly slow getting anywhere, and when I’m in conversation I’m not as mentally nimble, so I can be derailed from a sentence if there’s a background noise or if someone cuts into the conversation to add something. I’ve been doing a lot of, “Now where was I?”

The emotional roller coaster has been an interesting thing I’ve never experienced. I’ll have to return my “Mother Of The Year” award (the one I was awarded after catching Kaiden’s vomit in my hands in order to save the sofa a few months ago). Last week Kaiden and the puppy were playing like crazy, running around the main floor, and neither seemed to be hearing me tell them to calm down, so I screamed at the top of my lungs, “JUST STOP!!!! STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!!! I CAN’T STAND IT!!” They both stopped. But coming unhinged isn’t something I strive for as a means of achieving peace in the home. Symptoms of anxiety just creep up, not due to any thoughts of anything anxiety-provoking. I could be watching a funny show or something, and suddenly my heart is beating like crazy and I feel a major surge of adrenaline to help me through whatever crisis my body thinks is happening. It’s all neurological. I’ve never had any experience with anxiety attacks in the past, but know so many people who do suffer from them, so this is a whole new understanding of what that’s like.

The treatment is mental rest, which feels like a seriously defeating suggestion. I’ve got a job and a 4 year-old, and Amy travels a lot, so there are days when resting mentally just isn’t possible. I’m grateful to be working from home, as it has allowed me to take naps in the middle of the day, which I have discovered help me recharge enough from a morning of grading papers that I don’t suffer from the headaches as much in the evenings. Amy has been very understanding and supportive. It has felt awful to ask her to do more than she’s already doing, but we have always made a pretty good team, and when one is down the other can usually step up. On several days she’s had to do the the drop-off at pre-school routine in the morning, the pick-up routine after pre-school, taking Kaiden to his weekly gymnastics lessons, and the bedtime reading routine. We’ve suspended swim lessons, and thankfully ski lessons are finished for the year, so that’s a few items off our plates. I’ve also been ordered to stop volunteering for things, and to stop attending really interesting professional development opportunities that come along (It was a full-day professional development workshop I was headed to when I got into the accident.) We don’t go out much, because the background noise feels like it’s flicking my brain and I spend the whole time wincing. Life has taken on a slower and more reclusive pace for me, while Amy’s life has sped up considerably.

Despite the increased stress levels, I continue to count my blessings on most days. I’ve been in very good hands medically, from the ER to my doctor, physical therapist, massage therapist and the speech therapist doing my cognitive rehab. Finally, through my years of working with injured people in hospitals and in sporting venues, I’ve known many people who have been in collisions far more minor, who ended up with injuries that were far more severe. It could have been so much worse. All I can do is follow everyone’s medical advice and pray my brain will recover to its pre-injury capacity with some speed, but realize there may be a “new normal” for us to adjust to in the Doyle home for an unknown time to come.

I hold no malice toward the other driver. I am working on the assumption that he was not impaired by drugs or alcohol, wasn't texting, and wasn't doing anything else terribly irresponsible while driving. Even with these assumptions, I know that accidents happen. I have coasted through intersections twice in my life on black ice, and by some miracle in both cases no one was in the intersection for me to hit. Driving is a dangerous activity, and things like this are always possible, and sometimes result in far worse than what I'm dealing with. In this accident, despite several witness accounts that the other motorist had a red light, and a police citation for running a red light, he continues to insist he had the green light. From his side of things he experienced a 45mph head-on collision that sent the other car (me) across three lanes of traffic and spun his car 180 degrees and left it un-drivable. He was walking around the accident scene after the accident, but as much as I’m having after-effects from the accident, I have to believe he is having after-effects as well. I hope he’s ok. He’ll turn 80 this year.

Thank you to all for your questions of how you might help. Amy’s dear friend Donna has cooked and frozen enough meals for us to feed us for a few weeks, which is an incredible help for us. The freezer is officially at capacity. We’re making adjustments to our daily routines and reallocation of workload around here, and have removed some of the things I used to do. Spring Break has finally arrived for me and my mother is coming to the rescue from Chicago for the second time in 6 weeks in order to let me rest even more. Finally, now that Amy and I have embraced this new reality, and have experienced our new limitations, we’ll do a better job of reaching out and asking for help when we need it. We know we have a lot of wonderful people around us, so now we just need to impose upon you when it’s sensible. Thanks again, and for those who pray, continue to send prayers for all three of us. J

My Fun Adventure

For those of you with questions and want to know the whole story, yesterday’s accident was quite an adventure. Maybe not a “fun adventure” as Kaiden put it, but an adventure nonetheless. I was heading to a Holucaust Educator seminar in Lakewood, which was to start at 9:00am. At about 8:15 I was southbound on 287 when I approached Baseline Road in Lafayette. I had the green so I didn’t slow for the intersection… and unfortunately neither did the guy with the red light coming from my right on Baseline. He was probably moving at the posted speed when he struck the right side of my car, and I didn’t even know he was blowing through the red until he was just a few feet away from me. It sounds cliche', but it happened so fast.

After the impact I couldn’t see anything because all the air bags deployed, I had the wind knocked out of me really bad, and there was smoke filling the car from the air bags. I had no control of the car as it slid left across several lanes into oncoming traffic.  The horn went off with the airbag deployment, and it wouldn't go off, which added to the chaotic feel of the event. My visibility was no good, so I don’t know if anyone was northbound as I was crossing those lanes, but no one else hit me, which feels like athe first of many miracles.

My first thought was that I was probably very seriously injured. My right side hurt terribly and it was hard fo me to breathe, so I assumed I had broken ribs, maybe a punctured lung?, hopefully not a flail chest injury, hopefully no internal bleeding or liver damage… I looked for my phone and called 9-1-1 to request an ambulance to the intersection. Many people had pulled over to help.

The first person to my car said, “I’m here to help. I’m an EMT, and [pointing to the woman next to him] this woman is a nurse.”  Seriously?! An EMT and a nurse are the firt at the scene?! The nurse was actually wearing medical scrubs and a stethoscope around her neck! I replied, “Oh good! I’m an EMT, too.” We all knew what to do. I stayed still. I got back on the phone to call Amy. It hurt to talk and breathe, but I was able to tell her I was going to be taken by ambulance to the hospital for an evaluation, and asked her to meet me there. Then I added, “I’m at Baseline and 287, and I can practically see Christina’s house from where my car stopped. Can you let her know?” Christina is one of my closest friends and favorite people, so it felt natural to let her know. While on the phone with Amy she could hear the sirens approaching.

The ambulance was there in no time, and the off-duty nurse and EMT who had come to my aid didn’t leave me until the ambulance arrived. When the paramedics go there I was put into an immobilizer collar while I sat still in my driver’s seat. I asked a couple times if anyone could find the glasses I had been wearing. No one could find them. They put me on a spineboard and loaded me onto a gurney then into the ambulance. They were thoughtful enough to ask what I’d like from the car, and they grabbed my purse and computer backpack.

My friend Christina was first to arrive at the E.R. – a most welcome face to see. She joked that if I had wanted a new car I didn’t have to smash up the old one quite so bad. She assured me that my car had done an incredible job saving my life, as she had seen the wreckage on her way to the hospital and couldn’t believe it. Soon Amy was by my side in the ER, too. She also saw the wreckage on the way, and it had her pretty shook up. When she gripped my hand she couldn’t contain her tears of relief. Kaiden was busy checking out the Emergency Room and all its interesting beeps, lights, and people in scrubs with masks and cool machines. Amy said that when they had gone through the accident intersection Kaiden saw “Little Blue” (our Honda Civic) and looked very sad as he said, “Little Blue is all broken?” Amy reassured him that it’s okay. She said I was okay, we’d get a new car to replace Little Blue, and he could even help us pick it out. His grief over our beloved “Little Blue” disappeared pretty instantly with that sentence.

Christina continued to be an amazing friend as she took Kaiden home with her to play with her son Jameson while Amy and I remained at the hospital, then she even offered to provide me with a pair of her pants to wear home, in liu of the ones I was wearing that had been drenched by a brand new 32 ounce cup of iced tea from Qdoba that had splashed into my seat during impact. Only a true friend will give you their pants.

The police officer from the accident scene came into my ER room and handed me my prescription sun glasses. “Are these yours?” Indeed they were! I asked if she found them in the car. She said, “No, they were some distance north of your car, in the intersection, close to the point of impact.” It turns out my glasses flew off my face and out of the side of the car where the windows had been smashed out. I have a scratch on my nose from that – maybe from the air bag knocking them off my face? I'll never know, but it was certainly a hard collision.

After lots of tests, IV pain killers and a CT scan, we were told there was nothing life-threatening for us to worry about – just bruises and sprains on my right side and ribs – and we were told I could go home. I opened my purse to find my regular glasses. They had been in my purse in a rigid glasses case in the passenger floorboard, and they were broken. Had anyone been in the passenger seat – or in Kaiden’s child seat in the backseat – there is no doubt in my mind they would have been killed. The whole event helped us realize how incredibly lucky we are to have one another in this family.

As for the man that hit me. I never did meet him. He was up and out of his car, which was also un-drivable after the collision. He sustained no injuries. When the officer came to my room in the ER she described him as “an older gentleman.” She said he reported that he thought he had the green, but several witnesses affirmed that he did not. He was cited for running a red light. The officer said there were no skid marks or reports from bystanders that he had tried to break or swerve before the accident. The impact was completely unrestrained.

Amy and I headed home with a prescription for Oxycodone. Christina kept Kaiden for a few hours while Amy was getting me situated at home and picking up prescriptions. Within minutes of arriving home I received a call from our family doctor and dear friend Mary. We weren't about to bother her with this story because she was leaving town for a nice weekend in the mountains. But the ER had called her office, and the office then called her – on a Saturday morning. She called me to get the details of what happened. She wasn’t satisfied that they had just prescribed Oxycodone, so she called Amy to keep her from picking that up until she had also called in Valium for muscle relaxation. Then she called the pharmacy to order the prescription, then called Amy again, and then called me to let me know it was all taken care of. All that on her “day off” while she was in a car headed out of town for vacation.

Once at home, Kaiden came into my room to give me a big hug. “No no no no no, Kaiden. You can’t hug me like that. I’m really sore.”
He replied, “Why are you sore?”
I said, “You know how you saw “Little Blue” all smashed up this morning?”
“Uh huh.” 
“Well, I was in Little Blue when it got smashed up.”
He gasped, then said, “What happened?” 
“Well, I was driving, another car hit me really hard, the ambulance came and took me to the hospital, I had lots of tests done to make sure I was okay…”
He said with bright eyes, “Wasn’t it a fun adventure?!”
That boy is the best. He’s so quick to smile and see things from a positive perspective. If I wasn’t so sore I’d have hugged him harder than ever.

So I posted his comment on Facebook and DOZENS of friends and family from all over the country - over 3 dozen and counting, in fact - sent kind thoughts, prayers and offers to help. John Rostykus even offered some fresh green chile stew, which appeared on our front porch within the hour! Thanks, John!!

It was quite a day. We are feeling remarkably blessed, and so fortunate that a) I lived; b) my injuries were minor; c) the strangers who pulled over at the scene were so capable and kind; d) “Little Blue’s” safety features all worked perfectly to save my life; e) we are able to call some really fantastic people our friends! And if that wasn’t enough to be grateful for, I also got a pair of socks with little rubber traction nubbies on the bottom at the ER, and I got John's fantastic green chile stew when I got home!! My gratitude is boundless.

Thank you to everyone who jumped to our assistance, to those who conveyed support online or in text messages and phone calls. And for those praying for speedy healing. It seems to be working, as I awoke this morning with far less pain than I was anticipating. We are exceedingly blessed, and exceedingly grateful. J Love you all!!