I thought, I can’t believe this is happening. I really can’t believe this is happening. Random thoughts raced through my head. Did I, in indulging in those warped fantasies of being single again, somehow create this? And if this was the end, had I been a good husband? Or would I forever feel guilty for all the unkind, unloving, petty, argumentative, impatient things I’d said and done? I also couldn’t help thinking that maybe I could have prevented it somehow. After all, it was supposed to be me driving that morning. Maybe I could have avoided the accident. But then, if not, and we were the ones who were smashed, I don’t think either Alyce or I would have survived the impact in my Prius versus Susan’s BMW. And, if that were the case, I don’t know if Susan would have been able to get over that loss. In God’s plan, if there was any plan, was this the lesser of the two evils?
I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. All I knew was that I couldn’t bear the thought of her dying. But what was I supposed to do about it?
When I was ten, we had the cutest little puppy. His name was Wazoo and like a fluffy cartoon dog come to life. One day when I got home from school, my mother told me that Wazoo had run across the street and had been hit by a truck and killed. The truck driver felt terrible about it and had carried him to our side yard, where I could still find him if I wanted to say goodbye. I went outside and approached his still body. He was lying on his side and looked like he was just sleeping, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open. There was no blood, and because he looked as cute as always, I even put my hand on his chest to check to see if he was really dead, to see if I could feel his heart beat or his stomach rise with a breath. There was neither, so I tried something else. I tried to will him back to life, crying, “Please, Wazoo, don’t be dead. Please.” And when that didn’t work, I tried one other thing. I prayed. “Please, God, let Wazoo be okay.”
Needless to say, it didn’t work for Wazoo, and eight years later, it didn’t work with my dad’s cancer. Twenty years after that, it didn’t work when my brother contracted HIV. So here in the hospital, though I could hope and wish for Susan to be okay, I didn’t turn to God for help. I was resigned to the fact that it was going to be what it was going to be.
Instead, I reluctantly called her mother back, relaying the turn of events. Again, she asked if she should get on a plane. I didn’t want her to have any of her own regrets, so heartachingly, in my own acceptance of the critical nature of the situation, I told her yes.
Next, I called my mother, sister, and brother, leaving all three the same awful voicemail message, “Hey, it’s me. Susan and Alyce were in a car accident. Alyce is okay, but Susan is not. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
I then went into the ER waiting room and saw the few friends who had already arrived: our neighbor Suzanne, her husband, Sasha, and our former neighbors, Tracy and Mike, who had called while I was at the accident scene. I told them all the same thing. If the doctors couldn’t control Susan’s bleeding, she wasn’t going to make it.
They asked what they could do to help. I told them that the doctors were giving Alyce a little more observation time, but I expected them to release her pretty soon. Understandably, she wanted to get out of the hospital as soon as possible, so maybe someone could take her home, give her a bath to get the glass off, and get her changed? Suzanne and Sasha immediately volunteered. Then they asked about Michael.
“I haven’t called him yet,” I said. “Until now, it was just a couple of broken bones and I didn’t think I needed to disrupt his day for that.”
But now, suddenly, things were very different. I turned to Mike and Tracy. Do you think you could pick him up from school and bring him here?”
The weight of the question hung in the room. I wasn’t just asking them to bring Michael to the hospital. I was asking if they could get him so that he could say goodbye to his mother.
“Of course,” they said.
I moved to the other end of the room for privacy and called Michael’s school. I explained to one of the administrators that his mom had been in a very bad car accident, and I needed him to call me right away. Friends were on their way to the school to pick him up.
“Could you please get him from wherever he is?” I asked the administrator. “But don’t tell him what happened. Just have him call me, please.”
“Of course,” she responded and then added, “I hope she’ll be okay.”
Later, Michael told me how confused he had been about being pulled out of class. As they walked to the office, his heart was pounding, but the administrator was acting super friendly and sweet, so he didn’t think he was in trouble. But if it wasn’t that, then what, he wondered.
I remember having that same feeling when I was in college and got a message from my roommate that my father had called and asked that I call him back. But when my roommate handed me the slip of paper with the phone number on it, it was a number I didn’t recognize. When I reached my dad, he told me he was back in the hospital and that his cancer had returned. Three months later, he was gone.
I knew what those phone calls felt like.
A few minutes later my phone rang. It was Michael.
“Hey, babe, listen. Mom was in a car accident.” I paused, collecting myself. “They’re working on her…but I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”
He knew immediately what I meant by that, and I could hear him starting to cry.
“I’m sending Mike and Tracy to pick you up and bring you here, okay?”
He managed a weak, “Okay.”
“I love you.”
There was nothing else to say.
Through tears, he responded, “I love you, too.”
We hung up and I returned to Alyce’s room. She was sitting up on the gurney. “Can I go home now, Daddy?”
“In a few minutes, yeah. Sasha and Suzanne are going to take you to their house, okay?”
She nodded.
Mike and Tracy were now on their way back to the hospital with Michael. They had discussed that they weren’t going to say anything about Susan’s condition, just try their best to put on a positive face. As they drove, facing forward with forced smiles, they carried on some general chitchat as silent, unseen tears flowed down their cheeks, delivering this young man they’d known since he was a baby to face the unimaginable tragedy of losing his mother.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, another doctor arrived and pulled me outside. I stood there anxiously as he told me that, thankfully, they had managed to get Susan’s bleeding under control and were now going to set her pelvis before bringing her to X-ray to determine the amount of bleeding in her brain.
Though hugely relieved to hear about controlling the bleeding in her pelvis, I was also confused. Doesn’t a bleeding brain trump a broken pelvis? His response brought more relief. Their feeling was that hopefully the amount of blood in her brain was minimal, and they really needed to deal with her pelvis, which was the life-threatening injury at the moment. Who was I to argue?
All of this was good. The immediate threat to her life was past. I breathed a little easier, and I could see that the doctor was more relaxed as well. It was like the “Your wife is very sick” doctor had pulled the short straw and gave me the bad news, and this one had pulled the long straw to give me the good news.
I was told that I could wait for Susan at an adjunct building devoted exclusively for intensive care patients. So after Alyce was finally released and went home with Suzanne and Sasha, I relocated to the fifth floor of that building.
I don’t remember how long it was before I got a text from Mike and Tracy that they had arrived with Michael, but building security wouldn’t let him upstairs. (No one under eighteen is allowed anywhere in that building except for the lobby.) Before I had a chance to respond that I would meet them downstairs, the elevator door dinged and out they came. Apparently Tracy had “persuaded” the person at the desk to let Michael up by declaring, “This boy’s mother is dying and this could be his last chance to see her and say
goodbye.” There wasn’t much arguing from the volunteer at the front desk after that.
I could see that Michael had been holding it together, but upon seeing me, he immediately let go. I took him into my arms and he cried against my shoulder, no longer a little boy in height but still a child who relied on the strength of his father and feared growing up without his mother. As he wiped his tears, I told him the promising news the doctors had given me and that I was hopeful she was going to be okay.
He nodded and asked if I had seen her yet. I told him I hadn’t; the doctors were still working on her. I apologized for scaring him and bringing him here, but at the time I had called, things weren’t looking very good. He understood, but also didn’t really want to hang around the hospital, if that was okay. I nodded and asked Mike and Tracy if they could bring him home, which they were happy to do.
For the next few hours, I waited without knowing the full extent of Susan’s injuries. I knew some were worse than others, but I also never imagined that the injury to her pelvis, which I considered a mere “break,” could be as life threatening as it was. So, in truth, I really knew nothing.
Nothing…except that everything could change at any moment.
day 2: the end of the day
Susan had a very stable night last night as well as day. She was responsive today (as heavily sedated as she is), was able to squeeze my hand, opened her eyes, all good things.
The stability is obviously a good thing, as it will allow her team to perform surgery tomorrow morning. However, and without going into the details just yet, it’s a very delicate surgery.
Please send some good energy for this one, and I will update again afterward with hopefully the best of news.
xxoo, d
the rest of the enchilada
I knew that these first updates led to more questions rather than provided answers, and that there was a great deal of discomfort and anxiety in not knowing the whole picture. But in many ways, that’s how I was experiencing the event; I didn’t have all the information, or the information was constantly changing. In today’s world, if there’s something we don’t know, we just Google it or text a friend for the answer. Immediate gratification. That’s what we’re used to, and not getting it and being forced to live in a state of information limbo can cause such intense apprehension. We’re disconnected, and that disconnect can be frustrating.
This was pretty much my state of being.
I had to wait for the surgeons and neurosurgeons to give their assessments. I had to wait to hear the results from X-rays and tests. I had to wait to hear about what Susan’s chances of survival were, what the next plan would be, what injury would be addressed first. There was so much information I didn’t know, and some of what I did know I wasn’t ready to share, despite the ongoing inquiries.
One of the big question marks at this point was how much damage there was from the brain injury. That first day, I had been waiting for hours when the neurologist and her team finally arrived to give me the news from Susan’s brain scan. Though they previously had determined that she didn’t need surgery to reduce swelling in the brain, I still didn’t know how bad the bleeding was or what we could expect in terms of loss of cognitive function.
Four members of the neurological team came to find me, and together we went into a private doctor’s room where they could give me the news. I brought a friend to take notes so that I could just listen and ask what I needed to ask. I was beyond anxious for the report of the scan’s findings when one of the members of the neurologist’s team casually began the conversation. “Hi, Mr. Segal. How’s your daughter?”
As thankful as I was about Alyce’s condition, I didn’t want to talk about her at the moment. Still, I politely answered, “She seems to be okay, thank you.”
“That’s a miracle, isn’t it? Is she with friends now?”
That was the end of my tolerance level for small talk. “I’m sorry. Can we just cut to the chase? What’s going on with my wife?”
The main neurologist now chimed in, appreciating my apprehension. The chitchat could wait for later. “Your wife has bleeding in three areas of her brain. The good news is the spots are small and don’t seem to be growing. We’ve been monitoring them and will continue to, but at this time, they appear to be stable.”
“Do you know if there’s been any damage?”
That was going to be hard to assess until she was conscious, but the doctor reaffirmed that the injury didn’t require surgery and told me that whatever blood was there would eventually be absorbed back into the brain. So for the moment, another piece of good news.
I thanked the doctor and apologized to the associate for being curt. She smiled and said that she was sorry for not realizing how anxious I must have been to hear about my wife’s condition. From there, I went back into the waiting room, updated friends, and we continued to wait. That was just one of the two injuries Susan had sustained that I was reluctant to publicly disclose yet.
The other one I had just learned about was that she also had a broken neck.
It’s one of those injuries that makes you cringe just hearing it. And not like there’s a “good” version of a broken neck, but hers was bad. She had what is called a “hangman’s break,” named after just that: When you’re hung, you don’t usually die from strangulation but rather from the broken neck. Miraculously, it hadn’t killed her instantly, and from what I saw of her in the car and in the ER, she wasn’t paralyzed…yet.
Her neurosurgeon arrived to give me the overview of her injury. I again took a friend with me to take notes. While trying to decipher the confusing X-rays, he took me through the specifics of the injury—where the break was, where it was in proximity to critical blood vessels, the damage to the tissue surrounding the spinal cord, and so on. He used a lot of technical jargon, and I have to confess, I followed very little of it. The only thing I could tell for sure was that this one was as severe as they come.
She had broken her C2 vertebra; it was the same injury that left Christopher Reeve paralyzed and eventually led to his death. The doctor explained how he was going to attempt to repair it—go in posteriorly (through the back) and attach a plate with screws connecting the C1 vertebra to the C3 or C4 vertebra. He admitted that it was a tricky operation, not just because it involved the spinal cord, but also because it was so close to the brain stem and those blood vessels. However, he added, it’s one he’s done before, and he appeared to be confident that it would go well. Like everything in life, I suppose, especially for neurosurgeons, appearance is key. How was he really feeling about it? That’s something I will never know.
We had gotten our legal matters in order years earlier, so I had durable power of attorney to make all of Susan’s health care decisions. I gave her doctor permission to do the surgery, which he wouldn’t perform immediately but rather wait a day to make sure she was stable enough for the procedure. And so, once again, we would be holding our collective breath, anticipating the outcome of this delicate surgery, the one I was most terrified of.
The following morning, he advised me that nurses would keep me regularly updated with status calls about how it was going. He also told me to not be concerned if I didn’t hear anything for a good period of time, as this was more than likely going to be a long and involved operation. “Try not to worry, Mr. Segal. We’re going to take care of her.”
I nodded my appreciation, slightly comforted by his confidence. But at the same time, I found myself managing my expectations. In high school, after taking a test, I’d tell myself I didn’t do very well on it so that I wouldn’t be too disappointed with the result, and if I did do well, then I’d be pleasantly surprised. But with something like this, I was stuck. I wanted to remain optimistic and send positive energy, yet I also needed to prepare myself for a bad outcome. In the end, hope and optimism won out, because, truly, in dark times, what else is there to hold on to?
But when my phone rang just forty-five minutes into the surgery, and it was the doc
tor on the other end, I couldn’t help but imagine the worst.
day 3
Dear friends,
I know many of you are anxiously awaiting news on Susan’s surgery that was scheduled for this morning. I just spoke to her surgeon and, unfortunately, Susan was just not stable enough for them to perform the procedure. I also know that there have been a lot of questions regarding the nature of her injuries. I’m sorry I haven’t shared more with you all, but we were just trying to assess the situation more clearly, and I didn’t want to provide misinformation, as the extent of her injuries is quite large.
So where to begin? I guess with what is the worst of them…which is a broken neck. I know your immediate thought is the question/concern of paralysis. The positive news is that throughout, Susan has been able to move her arms and legs and is responsive to touch, so to the best of our knowledge, other than the fracture (which is obviously no minor thing), she doesn’t appear to have any other spinal injury. Again, hard to tell, but that’s my optimistic belief.
As for her other injuries, the list is not small. Among them, she has upward of twelve broken ribs and some punctures in her lungs. One of her lungs is also partially collapsed. Because of this, when her surgeon attempted to roll her onto her stomach in order to perform the surgery on her neck, her oxygen levels dropped to an unstable place. So now, in lieu of the surgery, they are placing her in a “halo” to stabilize her neck and prevent any further injury.
It’s an ironic choice of names for this device—halo—so angelic in what it evokes, but in actuality, it couldn’t be more the opposite. What it is is a circular metal ring that is screwed directly into her skull, two screws that go into her forehead and two into the back of her skull. This piece of iron is then supported by a series of metal posts that attach to a stiff plastic vest she wears on her upper body. The result is that her head is fixed in place with zero lateral or vertical movement. And so this halo, until it’s removed, will serve as a personal portable prison cell. But, I have to remember, the intent of it is not one of comfort, but to prevent the catastrophe of paralysis or worse.
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