The Ghost In The Machine

Back in March, my husband was told he would be undergoing surgery on his ankle to repair years of damage. For months now, this was the day that he was to go under the knife with a very long recovery afterward. In preparation, he's been going out on fishing trips, as he was to be eight weeks of no weight bearing and he wanted to enjoy the outdoors before he was "incarcerated".

The last of these trips I was to go with him, and beginning on Saturday, June 18 with a tribute concert for a group called Rusty Rocket that collects money for musical instruments for schools, our vacation began.

Heading north on the morning of the 19th, we made our way deep into the Great North Woods of Maine, camping out next to a boat landing roughly 50 miles from Millinocket. He likes to fly fish and it's a great lake for it, and I was looking forward to several days of reading a good book I'd held in reserve. (I have a very busy job and look forward to any time that I can just sit back in a chair and relax.)

Our one planned excursion on Tuesday involved a drive to Elephant Mountain outside of Greenville (along long dirt roads) to see the crash site of a B-52 from 1963. We were expecting some photos, a few memorials....but not what we found! The historical society (or some such group) has returned all of the wreakage to it's original resting place, and the effect is very sobering...

The description of the hike says that the wreak is a half a mile hike in....

The wreakage greets the hiker at the edge of the trail the moment one steps into the woods. Torn bits of metal, some thrust through trees, litter the trail. At the half mile mark is the lion's share of the debris, all up and down the mountain. The fuselege, most of the metal torn off, sits with a stone marker to those lost and the two survivors.

We go all the way into Greenville and pick up a few supplies, then go back to our camp, sobered by the sight of this piece of history. (Here's the full story, should you be curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Elephant_Mountain_B-52_crash)

On Wednesday, it;s "tour the lake day", and I return with some nice color in my cheeks and some great photos in my camera. It's a truly great vacation so far!

On Thursday, we take off for some touring of the woods, looking for critters, but no luck, so we return to camp for dinner and a nice rum and coke. Mine makes me feel slightly ill (not an uncommon event), so I leave half of mine in the glass. We joke about "abusing alcohol" by not drinking it, but doze off with smiles....

Until an hour or so later, when my husband awakes with me doing an imitation of a horizontal earthquake next to him....

At about the time that the dog begins to bark, he realizes I have no clue that I'm having a seizure, so he does his best to help, holding me so I don't bash my head on the ground and making sure I'm still breathing. When my body goes limp, he dresses himself and me in the dark, with me just "helpful" enough to make him think strongly of our grandchildren...

Putting the dog into the back of the pickup because he's trying to protect me, hubby then drags me to the truck, adds the dog to my lap, and gets in for the mad dash to the nearest hospital....in Millinocket! Driving up the rough road out as fast as he dares, with one hand on the steering wheel while the other hand is on my pulse, making sure I'm still alive. Some 10 or so miles into the ride, I start opening my eyes, but I can't respond to his anxious questions, and I'm in and out of consciousness. I realize we're driving somewhere, but I can make no sense of what's happening even as my husband makes the first turn toward civilization.

Several miles further on, I come back to myself to see a moose running down the road ahead of us and my husband's voice saying "Come on, moose, I have no time for you tonight." I know that we're driving down the road and that my dog is on my lap because I can feel him licking me, but I have no idea why we'd be doing such a thing when we're supposed to be in bed. I can't make my voice work to ask him....

As we reach the final turn toward town, my voice finally comes to me, so I ask him where we're going and why. He tells me I had a seizure and we're going to the hospital, and I sit in shock, cuddling the dog whose behavior also tells me something unusual happened. When we get to the hospital and I try to slide out to walk in, my whole body feels like I've been tied to the rack. My husband tells the night staff what happened, they take me in for an emergency cat scan after a quick once-over. They can tell there's something not right, but don't have a neurosurgeon on staff, so they have to transfer me to Portland. My husband goes back to break down camp while I'm kept under watchful eyes and the transfer is arranged.

Because of a law that says that my husband can't transport me, he goes home to unload, then meets me at Maine Med in Portland. An MRI is done in the middle of the night, and in the morning, we're given the news: there is something showing that doesn't belong there. Because my husband and I are total goofs, we're saying that line from Kindergarten Cop: "It's not a tumor."

The jokes stop briefly when the neurosurgeon we see this morning shows us a different view from the MRI that shows the true size of the couple of dots and a little swelling (a shaded area) in the left lobe....and says in the same Arnold voice after hearing us do it "It IS a tumor/"

Hmmm.....

The surgery is to be scheduled within a week. My husband's ankles have been put off...again....and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but everyone seems to be praying....

No matter what happens next, I have a MASSIVE safety net of people who I can depend on....

As I run my fingers over the tiger on my shoulder, representing my strength, my spirit animal, my fierce spirit, I'm scared, but ready to fight....

I've got this!

(And for those who want to see this, the MRI with the part the doc is worried about circled.

Obviously, I wasn't supposed to light up like that when they put in the contrast.....)

ADDENDUM: The surgery takes place on July 5th, when they'll be taking away part of what you wee in the photo above. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it, but there you have it. I need to have the bad parts removed before they make more.

Angels in my Inbox

I had heard in the past that I am "courageous", but it took everything I had to write a letter - via snail mail - to someone whose name matched that of someone I met in college when I found an address via Google. In a paraphrase of a famous line from Highlander, there was only one...

I have an odd sense of humor, and it comes out at times like this, as I "introduced" myself in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner...

And in my email inbox a few days later, a letter from him stating how he and his wife got a chuckle from my letter. Nice! We're back in touch with a college friend! It will be fun to reminisce about "the good old days"!

I go into my Facebook, and there is post after post about the Stanford Rape Case. The combination of the two sends me back 36 years ago, when I met both the man whom I just reconnected with as well as my husband. Not only was it at the end of my teen years, but it was, in many ways, the end of my innocence.

My father was dying of lymphoma as I was beginning my college education, which was the semester I met my husband (who was, at that time, seeing another woman). (I was going to classes and staying in the dorms during the week and going home to help weekends with a dying family member, trying to pretend nothing untoward was going on. It was one of those times I was called courageous.)

The second semester of college, paid for with Social Security Survivor benefits, my dad had passed and I was, to be blunt, mentally unstable at best. That was when I met this other friend...whose love of Bloody Marys became a part of the character in my first book, Kyle Benton. The second semester was also when I met a group that called themselves "Section 8"  as well as several other good people.

I consider them my angels, because without them coming to invite me out, I would have been sitting in my room, feeling sorry for myself, remembering the stress of that first semester. In addition to the stress of watching my father die, the first semester had also introduced me to someone like the Stanford Rapist - a man who feels his own needs more important than anything involving anyone else in the world. My Stanford Rapist was a little different, however, as he wanted us to marry and I didn't - so he drugged me and raped me for weeks, trying to force the marriage by getting me pregnant...

And as I said, that second semester (and onward for several years), I consider myself to have been mentally unstable. The fact that these wonderful friends helped me survive will always be appreciated.

As to the rapist, I have one thought that goes back to the one whom I only survived with the help of yet another angel, who thought more of helping me than what his crazy roomie might be able to do to him....

I would love to see one sentence for all proven rapists, as this Stanford kid was literally caught in the act and would fall into the "proven" category. Nail their balls to a stump and push them over backward, then they can go home. Consider it a punishment, a preventive measure, and the end of that line in the gene pool all at one simple move.

Yes, I know. Barbaric, isn't it. But think about it....

You get caught like this kid was. Instead of wasting all that time, money and tribulation, not to mention prolonging a poor victims mental anquish by making her wait from January to June to find out this jerk is just getting a slap on the hand, you take him out, pin his balls to the stump, push, and take him to the infirmary.

I pray the young woman has angels like I was granted to get her through....

Addendum 6/12/16: A friend posted this on Facebook, and I know each day that, with these friends, I am truly blessed:

I Can See Clearly Now - And Is THAT What I Look Like?

I know this is one of those things that women aren't supposed to like revealing, but I just celebrated my 55th birthday. I've mentioned things in prior blog posts about "the joys of growing old", and, because I also just had to renew my driver's license - and because, after a certain age, Maine tests your eyesight EVERY time they renew - I had to do something I've come to dread over the 35 years since I left my hometown....

I had to go to the eye doctor....

*gasp*

Okay, so maybe for most of you, that's not such a *gasp* as it is for me, but let me just lay it all on the line as bluntly as I can....

I was born with a bum right eye, some kind of family gene type thing, as all my siblings have the same problem to a varying degree. The vision in that eye always was somewhere between 20/50 and 20/75 in my case. From the age of 5 or 6 (I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I remember holding an adult hand walking the streets of Bangor feeling like I was in a fun house with the first pair of glasses I had to wear all the time) to the age of 16, when I had a really intense eye doctor visit to determine if he was going to make me wear my glasses to drive or if I was going to be allowed to just wear them to read, as he had decided I could do when I was 14.

The decision was that, although he was concerned about my depth perception, he granted me the right to drive without my glasses, as the left eye overcompensates for the right one, so although my vision with both eyes is 20/40, it met the criteria for me to be allowed to drive without glasses.

The same has been true since that time, but when I left home after college to move in with my college boyfriend (who has been my husband for almost 33 years now), I left behind that doctor who had been seeing me on a regular basis (sometimes too regular, as I was a little hard on my glasses), and since then, it's been a crap shoot when it comes to finding someone who will listen to what I have to say about my eyes.

Most run me through their test procedures, listen to what I tell them - and then, in 99% of the cases, they've told me that I have astigmatism ("Astigmatism is an imperfection in the curvature of your cornea — the clear, round dome covering the eye's iris and pupil — or in the shape of the eye's lens." per the American Academy of Ophthamology), which means that, in order to try to make that eye see at 20/20, they put a certain type lens in that side of the glasses.....

And, when I put on the glasses and try to use them to read, the screwed up "dancing letters" that my right eye shows me when I try to read with that eye alone take over the landscape. Instead of a fixed bit of information on a page, I'm watching The Rockettes doing a dance routine.....

The migraines follow soon after, as my overworked brain tries to make the dancing stop so that I can read something - anything - on the page.

So, forced to either go to the eye doctor and have my eyes checked or give up my right to drive, I went to a new eye doctor who was listed as the only one in the area who took my husband's insurance and who was willing to take on a new patient. It seemed like the same old same old when going through the exam with the exception of a couple of new tests. (One, involving a very bright light, resulted in my turning at one point at work after the exam and seeing my manager wearing a halo. Knowing that he's not THAT angelic, I took it for what it was: a clear warning that a migraine was trying to take root. I left work early that evening.) When bifocals came into the discussion, as she doesn't call what's up with the right eye "astigmatism", but notes that I have both that issue and am starting to show signs of becoming far sighted (an older person thing, when suddenly your arms can't hold the page out far enough for you to see it clearly), I firmly tell her "No".

"Even the pair of progressives that a prior doctor amended to not have the astigmatism correction caused massive migraines." I tell her. Then I tell her about the last pair of glasses a doctor gave me, insisting that I needed "trifocals" because I worked on a computer. (They were almost pure glass at the top, "distance viewers" in the middle for driving, and readers at the bottom, so I would always have to look down to read.) "They caused more migraines than anything else I've ever tried."

"Okay, this is what I suggest we do." she tells me.

I need a very strong reading prescription, and since I do most of my reading on the job, she wants me to have one pair of straight up "readers" that I can put on and take off when needed. Since she would like me to have the "distance viewers" for the times when I'm having a rough day focusing (I also have allergies, so sinus congestion plays a big role in how well I see on certain days), she would like me to get a second pair, even if they just stay in the car....

So, when I picked out frames, I got a purple metal frame for the "distance viewers" and a gold metal frame for the "readers". (The person in their eye wear area asked me about plastic frames, as I avoided them rather bluntly. I related the fact that, from past experience, metal bends and can be re-formed long enough to get a new pair of glasses made. Plastic simply breaks, so there's that old "tape in the hair" trick for the duration of waiting for the new pair if the pair is even vaguely repairable.) When both pairs I chose had the "expandable bow" feature (so that, if something bonks you on the head, the bow has some "give" before the glasses fall off your face), I saw in her eyes that she realized the truth: I'm a klutz and have gone through a TON of frames!

Then came the "special features": just the basic on the pair that is likely to only be used in the car, but scratch and impact resistance added to the readers. (A good idea, it seems, as I dropped my brand-new readers four times at work - more than once on the cement floor in my back room - and they didn't collect a single tiny scratch.)

I picked them up yesterday morning, and when I put on the readers and held up a "test sheet" to see if they worked well, I was floored. "Oh my God!" came out before I could control the words. "I can clearly read even the 6 point font." (I was holding the page at a very comfortable reading distance, with my elbows just barely bent. I haven't been able to clearly read that small a font without straining for a couple of decades.)

With the distance lenses, I could look out the window and clearly read the signs in the parking lot, but they were almost the strength of my former readers. I could clearly read the 12 point font, but not the 10, as the smaller letters looked like they were doing the watusi. Once both pairs were adjusted so that they fit properly, I wished them a good day - and put on the distance viewers for a "test drive" before I left the parking lot.

A half an hour later, when I got back home, I went onto the eye doctor's web site and gave them a rave review. Not only had I worn the distance lenses for the drive without the tiniest inkling of a migraine trying to pay a visit, but I had stopped at a store and picked up a couple of things, changing my glasses to read a small price tag. No letters on any of the street signs or in the store appeared to be trying to take dance lessons. There were no halos, no slight twinges in the area around my right eye, no shooting lights (another of those "warning signs" of a migraine).

With the exceptions of deciding that I need one of those little "ropes" that the librarians always seemed to use to keep their readers right there around their necks (and preventing Yours Truly from seeing if "impact proof" means my glasses can be dropped from the top of a six foot ladder) and that I can't keep the readers on my face to walk, since all is out of focus within an arm's length of my face, the new readers also didn't cause any migraine warnings in the eight hour shift I worked. They blew my co-worker's minds, however, as they've become used to seeing me with glasses on from just after I sign in until just before I sign out for the day. Seeing me buzz around with the bow of my glasses tucked into the open collar of the uniform shirt kept causing double takes.

So, for those of you who live in Maine and would like to visit this miracle worker who has me wearing the first pair of prescription lenses I've been able to successfully tolerate since 1981, the company is Brighton Eye Care in Falmouth, Maine. The doctor I saw was Dr. Kimberley Goss. 

And what made all the difference, in my humble opinion, between this office and every other one I've walked into in the past?

It's something very simple and an art that I find is dying in our modern world: Everyone, from the receptionist who had to struggle to get me an appointment on a very restrictive work schedule to the beautiful young lady who adjusted the two sets of glasses so that they look "marvelous" yesterday, LISTENED TO ME. Dr. Goss is the first one in forever to tell me that, although there is a definite birth defect that makes my right eye weaker, she doesn't think it should be called "astigmatism", as that's a "very broad term that can cover all kinds of other defects to the eye". She's the first one since the man who saw me for my young life who understands that, no matter how much she would like to give me 20/20 vision in both eyes, that's very detrimental to my health and well being - and, when I'm trying to drive and the car coming toward me is doing the samba because I'm trying to wear lenses that allow the birth defect to rule the world, it can be very harmful to other people as well.

I don't know about any of my Constant Readers, but even with a pending "jail term" looming in which I will be home trying to assist my husband with recovery from a surgery, I'm starting to feel like 2016 is going to be my year....

I have a loyal "fan" base for my work who are becoming more and more vocal about getting people to buy my books, which showed in the increase in sales over 2015.

I'm starting to get Northern Bard Publications products into local bookstores (which will hopefully spread to other states in the near future).

I have glasses I can actually wear that are going to make my life better and make my "side job" easier to do as it will reduce the eye strain I've been suffering.

And, each time I check my "traffic report" for this blog, I'm honored to see more and more countries represented...

Once again, thank you to all who come and read these little episodes that I think of as sort of a mental cleansing, similar to a colon cleansing as it gets a lot of the random pap that would normally be floating around in the cobwebby recesses of my brain pan, gumming up the works. I know most of what I speak of may not be universal problems, but by being able to clear my head, I allow space for the characters who need me to tell their stories to step up and be counted....

Now, back to our regularly scheduled "program", which today involves trying to figure out how to fit the 9 feet of product onto the 8 feet of shelving space that someone in our corporate office set up for me to try to set last night. "Perhaps," whispers a small voice in the newly cleared out space that the above was taking up, "there is a way to put those products on a slight diagonal, so that they're visible, but not quite square to the edge of the shelf....."

*picturing this set up as I publish this post*

I Love the Smell of "Whatthehellisthat" in the Morning

For any who have never been to Maine, we like to say that we have our own way of life here. We're a little behind the times in a lot of ways, and we like it that way. Progress smogress, we like things the way they always have been.

Like our homes.

Those who can't afford a piece of land to put a trailer on while you build your own house usually live in something that has stood the test of time. Sure, there's new buildings going up all the time, but most of those are being sold to the people that come here "from away"...and that means that, unless your birth certificate states that you popped out of your mumma right here in a hospital within the borders of this state, you're "from away".

Because I left for 18 months and lived in Florida long enough to give birth to my eldest child, I'm still a Mainer, but he's "from away". Same with my daughter, who was born in New Hampshire because it was a faster drive to that hospital than to the one in Bridgton. We were living in Maine at the time, but she's "from away".

My friends "from away" think the crazy little farmhouse I live in is "quaint" when they come to visit. It's basically a little ranch house that had sheds and a barn attached at some point in it's history. The barn was gone well before we bought the place, but the sheds had been "added in" to the downstairs rooms by someone who randomly knocked out walls. This same person, who seemed to like odd spaces, added on to the side of the building a couple of times as well. The place we boughr has odd corners, strange accoustics, and lots of weird places where rodents can hide....

and, much to my dismay at times, to expire while hiding, making me want to award the little beasty the trophy for "hide and seek champion", but first I need to dispose of the body and get rid of that smell that was permeating my kitchen and made me begin the gruesome game in the first place...

Heaven help me if they ever do a search of my search history. This little 'guess what died in your house this time" game doesn't happen all the time, but I'm getting older and don't remember from one time to the next what worked best. I have to do that search again for "removing the smell of a body" and jog my memory with the options. And then, because OCD should be included somewhere in my name, I tear the whole room apart, cleaning into every corner, making the whole room sanitary....

And then we'll go a month or so....

And then, because it's Maine and life goes on here the way that it has for centuries, the little beasties will ignore the baits and the traps and work their way into some odd crevice, either to get stuck or to hide because we have foxes outside our house that sometimes damage a mouse internally, but lose it before the kill. Some morning, I'll step down into the kitchen and mutter what my husband swears is now a single word....

Whatthehellisthat?

And the search will begin again, and I will find the "hide and seek champion" in some odd place, dispose of the body and search the internet for the tip that seemed to work best last time, get rid of that horrible smell, and life will go on...

Because it's Maine and it's The Way Life Should Be.