But what I kept coming back to was one group of people I had never laid eyes on: the strangers who had donated blood that kept me from dying on the surgeon’s table.
In order for me to receive those 78 units of blood, as well as 25 bags of plasma and platelets, more than 180 people had to donate theirs. What I began processing was how amazing it was that I now had a little bit of all those different people inside me.
I had no way of knowing how many men, how many women…how old they were, what race or religion they were, what their sexualities were, whether they were rich or poor, whether they had donated blood a hundred times before or this was their first time. I began picturing this group of people and what I saw in my mind was beautiful.
I saw a world united.
I saw black, white, and brown, of all different ages and backgrounds. In my mind, I saw an amazing group of diverse people all conspiring to help a fellow human whom they’d never know, for no reason other than to save a stranger’s life.
We all bleed red. It was a statement that encapsulated this journey. As someone who had grown up being a bit afraid of anyone different from me, it now felt like a giant hug from God to realize that I had at the very least 180 people’s blood flowing through my veins, pumping through my heart.
How could the world be against me when 180 people did this for me?
That day was a major turning point in my psyche. I would continue to have plenty of bad days in terms of my physical health and pain levels, but that phone call and all the thoughts it set off chipped away significantly at my depression, which had felt like a boulder on my chest until then.
I repeated it to myself over and over: The world is not out to get me. There is so much love here. I saw it in my neighbors, who continued to show up and help whenever we needed anything. I saw it in my family and friends. I saw it in my landlord, who offered to put our rent on hold until we could pay it back. (It was such a generous offer. We eventually paid it back in full.) I told myself to pay attention! There were good people everywhere.
Gratitude swelled in my heart. How would I ever say thank you to all of these people? I could, and did, say it in person to the heroes I knew about, but there were so many more I would not even recognize if we were standing next to each other. Strangers who had pulled together to save another stranger, just because.
And that’s when I started feeling the exact opposite of cursed: I felt blessed.
I didn’t know yet what God wanted me to do or learn from my trauma, but I knew my survival had not been an accident. He had put so many wonderful people in my path not only to keep me alive, but to keep me living.
I had a husband who had slept by my side every single night, whether I was conscious or not, whether he had to sleep in a seated position or in a cot surrounded by strangers. A man who was now in charge of cleaning my wounds and helping me with every little task and yet never once looked at me with anything other than complete love. Little by little, my unfounded fears had fallen away. This was not a man who would ever abandon me; he never seemed to tire of his caregiver role, and showed no resentment at all for the ways our physical romance had to be put on hold indefinitely.
Just before the trauma we had been planning on having a baby and doing triathlons; now we were staving off infections and watching my body make poop. I had to let go of my shame about it all, and to trust that whatever was meant to be was going to be.
Like before, that Jody Williams quote felt so useful: “Emotion without action is irrelevant.”
My feelings of gratitude needed to morph into action.
I continued working to plan the cycling tour, and Tara from Gaylord regularly came to my house to help organize it. Our first order of business had been to identify safe and secure routes, and then we needed to get permission from each of the towns we were cycling through. We opted to cycle the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, formerly a canal and then a railroad path until floods damaged the line in the 1980s and it was reimagined into an eighty-four-mile recreational trail.
Once we had that set, I started working with the public relations department to secure sponsorships for T-shirts, arrange for police presence, figure out food and drink, get insurance for the riders and the organization, and, of course, start selling tickets. A lot of preparation goes into an event of this size, and it was good to have something positive to focus on.
Around the same time, I had to go back to Yale to prepare for the first of my new round of surgeries. This operation was for the removal of a six-inch bone that had broken off and calcified by the right part of my labia. It meant more anesthesia and some potential side effects, but it also probably meant that it would be more comfortable for me to move around without a jagged corn-cob-textured bone poking my innards.
As Sean and I left my appointment, we passed a room with a sign on the door that said RED CROSS BLOOD DRIVE. I opened the door and saw Yale employees in scrubs lying there having their blood drawn—everyone from nurses to doctors and secretaries. I stepped into the room with my walker and I just crumpled in tears.
Someone asked, “Are you okay? Can I help you?”
“These are the people who saved my life,” I said.
I started rambling about who I was and what had happened. Someone who was helping to run the blood drive called out, “Was your trauma October eighth?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I never met you, but I remember running blood to the hospital that day. I was at the Farmington headquarters and I got a call saying there was an extreme need for blood at Yale because of a severe trauma.”
There were so many people I had imagined in my mind as saving my life that day, but one person I had never pictured was the driver who was transporting blood. I hadn’t imagined the people who process and filter blood donations, either. There were even more people on my team than I had realized.
“I was working that day, too,” another worker said.
“Me too,” someone else added.
I made a mental note of it all: donors, phlebotomists, volunteers, coordinators, the people who package the blood and transport it to headquarters, people who process the blood, people who take the blood where it is needed…there was an amazing collaboration of workers and volunteers to allow this life force to be supplied to someone like me who would have died without it. All these wonderful people rolling up their sleeves selflessly anchored me back to my love of the Red Cross and what it does to save lives.
It reminded me of how important my work with that organization had been. People pay a small amount of money to get certified in CPR, first aid, or other important training, and they walk out with the ability to save someone. They get a new superpower. Little had I known that one day I would need CPR myself. I had also been a longtime blood donor, never expecting that in the future both my husband and I would be on the other end of the equation.
I ended up staying in that room for an hour and a half, hugging people and taking pictures with them. It was soul-affirming. Once again, I recognized these people for who they were.
I am the product of heroes, I said to myself, and it was real. This was what it meant to be part of the human family—to take some discomfort and give your time and a piece of yourself without ever knowing who would get it on the other side. Whether they’d look like you or nothing like you. Whether their beliefs would match yours or be diametrically different.
Afterward I got a call from the Farmington Red Cross headquarters, asking me if I’d be willing to be more involved with their public relations. Would I? Of course! I promised to find ways to speak about blood donations and the Red Cross whenever possible, and to participate in efforts to improve numbers at local blood drives.
To that end, I began making that a qualifier whenever people in the media asked for interviews: They had to agree to mention the need for blood donations. I was very lucky that so many local people cared enough to want to see updates on my story, which meant that news teams from all the networks wanted to interview Se
an and me every couple of months. NBC, ABC, FOX, WFSB. I realized I could use this for a greater purpose by making sure they allowed me to speak about causes that were important to me. Finally, I began to see the usefulness of a platform like this. I might not feel glamorous going on television with my stringy hair and colostomy bag, but I could do some good by getting airtime for the Red Cross.
In March, my cousin’s wife gave me a flattering new chin-length haircut—I didn’t know it was possible to salvage something fashionable with so little to work with!—and I started seeing the difference in my weight. I had gained back twenty pounds since October, and along with looking better, I also started feeling a little better.
“Want to do another Green Up Day cleanup this year?” Sean asked me.
“Of course!” I said with a laugh. “I can use my reach-it stick to pick up trash.”
“You’re a pro with that thing now. It’ll probably be very efficient.”
You know what? It wasn’t. But still, I was out there with my walker and my dog and my husband and my neighbors and my grabby stick and it was fun.
“Hey, what do you think about doing the Branford Road Race this year?” I asked Sean. It was a race we had run together the previous June.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, obviously I’m not going to run it. But they do allow walkers.”
“It’s five miles. I just don’t want to see you overdo it before you’re ready.”
“I won’t. Well, I probably won’t. But if I’m feeling up to it, don’t you think it’s a great idea? It would get so much press and I can wear a Red Cross shirt and turn it into a blood drive event.”
“I’ve learned never to doubt you.”
It was with that blind optimism that I decided to register both of us for the event. As I expected, it drew a lot of attention. The race would be just eight months after my trauma, and looking back now, it was kind of insane to sign up for something like that when I was still dependent on my walker to make it to the end of my block. But it gave me something to strive for.
By the end of the month, I wondered if I’d made a mistake.
I had to go back for another major surgery to reattach my sphincter and close some tunnels that weren’t closing up on their own. Basically, doctors were re-creating my butt. I had to have it done if I ever wanted to have my colostomy reversed…which I 100 percent did because seriously now.
For two months ahead of the sphincter surgery, I had intense physical therapy to prepare for it. Once the surgery was done in April, I would not be allowed to bend or lift anything for up to eight weeks—which was also the amount of time before the Branford race. Until then, I would have to shuffle-walk without lifting my legs more than a couple of inches, or I’d risk breaking open my stitches and compromising what the surgeon had done. The strangest part was preparing me for how to get in and out of bed. Imagine trying to get in and out of bed without bending at the waist or lifting your legs up.
The physical therapist, Matt, put rails on the sides of my bed and then taught me to go through a series of movements involving my arm muscles: plank down the wall, plank down onto the bedrail, then plank onto the bed, and from there, Sean would lift my legs up and pivot me onto the mattress. The same sort of rules would apply to getting me in and out of the car—I couldn’t sit down, so the car seat had to be adjusted all the way into a near-flat position and I had to plank my way in and out using only my arms. I didn’t suspect I was going to do a lot of riding around in a car, but there would be surgical follow-ups, and you just never know. At least my arm muscles were stronger than they’d ever been by the end of our sessions.
“Now…what if you fall?” he asked me.
“I have no idea?”
“Okay, get down on the ground with me and let’s figure this out.”
He taught me how to crawl up the wall to get myself standing again without bending or curling my body. It was humiliating, but I knew it was useful. He also made it clear to me that I was going to need twenty-four-hour help for those eight weeks because there was little I could do for myself. All I was really allowed to do was shuffle gingerly from place to place.
Although I was never casual about surgeries, I figured I’d been through the worst of it already and this would be more of a speed bump. The day before the surgery, I went to a PeaceJam conference and spoke to a packed room about what I’d gone through, thanking the students and mentors for all they’d done to encourage and support me.
Northern Ireland’s Nobel Peace laureate Betty Williams gave me a hug and told me, “The bells of Ireland sounded while you were critical, and the local churches prayed for your recovery.”
All the way in Ireland, prayers were being lifted in my name. What a heartwarming thought.
Because of my cryoglobulinemia, the surgical team had to take extra steps during surgery prep to warm up all the fluids and equipment and make sure warm air was blowing on me at all times so that my blood wouldn’t clump up with proteins. Then it was time for me to gather up my courage to say goodbye to my husband and tell him I’d see him as soon as I awoke.
A friend had sent me a silver stone with the word Faith on it that I brought to the OR with me, and I tried to visualize what it was going to be like to be in the recovery room afterward, drowsy and sucking on ice chips. What a relief it would be.
Except that it wasn’t a relief at all. The next few days were the worst of my entire recovery. During the surgery, I had been strapped into an upside-down V position on the adjustable OR table, butt up. So my butt was the high point, and my head and legs were down below during the entire lengthy surgery. Heavy straps kept my legs and chest in place, and medical tape pried my butt cheeks open while the surgeon worked. The goal was to re-create all my sphincter muscles and anchor them to my sacrum. The pain was the worst out of all of my surgeries. Positively horrid.
When I woke up, I had a lot of trouble staying mentally okay. Not only did the area of the surgery hurt like crazy, but I also had bruising all over my chest and legs from the straps. I didn’t even fight the idea of painkillers this time—I was on a morphine pump that delivered medicine to me every six minutes. I had a coccyx wound drain tube sticking out of my backside like a tail, and I was kind of wishing for that coma again.
This time, I couldn’t see visitors except for Sean. I didn’t even want to talk to anyone. It was an awful pain in the ass—literally. And I was back in the land of IVs and catheters and antibiotics and nausea all over again. To top it off, we wouldn’t know whether the surgery was a “success” for some time. The goal was continence: The only way I could ever get rid of my colostomy was if I was able to use the bathroom normally again (or at least semi-normally). The doctors couldn’t just pull the colostomy out to check, so they were going to have to do a series of tests over the next few months to see if my nerves were reawakening.
So at least for the short term, there was no real payoff to this surgery. It just meant more pain, more bleeding, more dependence on everyone around me to take care of me like a child again, with the hope that I’d be thankful later, when I might get to do another surgery to close up my stoma—the piece of my intestine that stuck out of my body to deliver waste into the bag. Or not. There was a significant chance I was going to need a colostomy for the rest of my life. Just as I’d finally hit a pretty stable patch in my recovery, this blew it to bits. I had almost forgotten how miserable I could feel.
Luckily, as soon as I was released, the same group of girlfriends showed up for me this time as well.
My friend Maire greeted me at my door one day carrying a butt-shaped cake that she’d brought all the way from a bakery in DC. I’m pretty certain it’s the first time the baker had an order to create a butt cake with a Band-Aid over it and this sentiment written in icing:
I hope your recovery is a blast
Now enjoy your piece of ass
An online friend posted a beautiful photo of a rock she was holding against the backdrop of a mo
untain, with a Navajo prayer for my healing that she’d inscribed into it. It was very serious and beautiful…until you realized the rock was also butt-shaped.
Really, what would I do without friends?
As the days went by, I thought more and more about the day of my trauma and what had happened to my physical belongings. My cycling shoes had broken away and been ripped from my feet, which was a very positive thing, because if they had not, they could have caught on the wheels and dragged me farther. I wrote to the shoe company to thank them for creating shoes that had worked this way. My beloved bike was obviously a mangled mess, and the seat pole had impaled me, but I just wanted to see her again. The police had it as evidence for the impending court case against the driver’s company, but I wondered if they could just send me a photograph—so I asked.
What I received gave me goose bumps. They sent a photo of my bike with an evidence tag hanging from the warped spokes, among dozens of boxes of case files on industrial shelves, like a broken old friend. The hood, fork, wheels, and seat would all need to be changed, but the frame was still usable. I was going to rebuild her someday. Just like we were rebuilding me.
The police chief also returned my pannier, which at the time had contained fifteen thank-you cards addressed to the fifteen people who had housed us on my Cycling for Peace tour. All those cards frozen in time. I assumed my hosts would understand why they’d never reached their destination.
A few weeks later, the shoe company, Specialized, sent me a pair of top-of-the-line cycling shoes that cost more than anything I had ever put on my feet, to replace the ones that had ripped off. Along with the shoes came a note encouraging me to ride again. It could not have been more special when Cinderella got her glass slippers. These were mine. Sean even slipped them on my feet for me to check the fit, and it was perfect. They were gorgeous and luxurious, and although I was nowhere near healthy enough to get on a bike yet, they just made me want to all the more. Like a little jolt of energy to get you going on your path. I continued holding out hope that I’d be ready to ride in time for the bike fundraiser in October. People were already signing up for it as soon as we advertised it on Active.com, but I had no idea if I’d actually ride or just cheer people on from the sidelines.
Gratitude in Motion Page 14