A House, Two Paws + a Car

“That’s it!,” my Uber driver exclaimed, his twinkling eyes shining straight into mine with a delighted intensity via the rearview mirror, “That’s THREE! Now you are done!  All good things from here!”

He explained that it is an Armenian belief that bad things happen in three’s so the fact that my car broke down halfway between Carpinteria and Los Angeles, requiring a major repair, was my third and final payment due before a life free of tragedy.

This angel Uber driver picked me up from my pre-op appointment with the surgeon who will be putting this Humpty Dumpty back together again in eleven days.  I explained I would have been driving myself had the car not temporarily perished. I was crying in gratitude for his kindness, gently getting my scooter-contraption into the back of his Prius, and easing my giant splinted foot into his car.

I am dependent on the kindness of strangers and friends right now. 

There are too many to mention.

My friend John rushed me to the ER in North Carolina the moment the accident happened, and stayed with me the entire long and arduous day, gave me his arm to fiercely clench as they smooshed the bag of bones my foot was into a splint with no anesthesia.  He packed up my entire hotel room single-handedly, and carried me to the next set of friends, Brice, Diana and Jan who shepherded me through a night of pain shivers due to said shoving-bones-around-without-anesthesia.

Then Generals Jan and Joanie (with captains Gary and Eva) schlepped me across the country, watching me fall no fewer than five times on my bum due to the North Carolina splint being as heavy as a refrigerator and throwing off my balance.  (NOTE: I am not currently unhappy about my extra weight because I have pretty much bounced every time I have fallen (let’s just say it’s been a lot since that fateful fall!) due to said bountiful bum.)

Bringing me across this country was no small feat.  Each airport was a fiasco made much better by American Airlines wheelchair service.  But I was a bit out of my mind with pain, so I was far less than smart.  J&J took me straight to the ER for morphine. Then we had a slumber party at Lisa’s (yes, she welcomed my two friends with open arms too!) and then back to Kaiser to thankfully be admitted by the Chief of Ortho Surgery.

Then my beloved Liz only in LA for a short time from her home in Australia shepherded me from surgery to another recovery night at Lisa’s before dropping me with Joanie for schlep back to Santa Barbara.

The first surgery increased the swelling which decreased the piercing pain, but once that started to decrease four days later, the pain game was back on.  So, Gary and Joanie welcomed me for several days, which was super comforting because I needed to get used to waking up with pain and not panicking.  They waited on me generously. As has Lisa every time I stayed with her. 

Being brought coffee is a thing of bliss when in this situation because all the usual tasks in the day of a life are so complicated with one good foot.

Here’s what you have to do to get a cup of coffee with one foot:

1.      Wheelchair (yes I have scooter dealios but wheelchair affords you a lap) to sink. 

2.      Carefully raise up on one foot so as to not disturb hurt foot.

3.      Brace self at sink’s edge so as not to topple.

4.      Clean the French press, trying even harder not to topple.

5.      Get back in wheelchair with French press in lap.

6.      Move several feet to put down French press and pick up electric kettle.

7.      Go back to sink and do the above shenanigans to fill the water kettle…

You get the gist.  Everything takes 140 steps that used to take 7.  I am thrilled to be able to do it for myself though now, and grateful to be back home.

I went down to LA for the pre-op appointment with the surgeon and left Stella with the dogsitter.  My car broke down halfway there but all kinds of magical timing, etc. happened and now I know that I need to get a new car.  Had this not happened, I wouldn’t have known. 

So, I’m not supposed to have anything the same apparently.

New house.

New car.  (Well, a new-to-me used car!)

New clothes.

I am actually thinking about giving away most of the bits of clothing I took with me when I evacuated.  I’m not going to do it quite yet. I’m waiting to see if I change my mind, but this question

Who is Post-Fire Bridget?

is still being decided.  Her tastes too. I have bought beige appliances, white and beige clothes.  This is so not Pre-Fire Bridget.

Stella is deciding who she is as well.  She is far more aggressive on leash.  The dogsitter said she looked it up and said the fire trauma could be causing this. We were supposed to have started a several week Reactive Dog training last weekend.  We will resume that plan in the fall.

In the meantime, she hurt her paw the day of my paw surgery, and the vet who saw her the day after my surgery said it was just a bite.  I returned from LA this trip and found her badly limping again, so we’ve been soaking her paw almost constantly.  Something is in there so a vet appointment is in our future.  Hopefully she won’t have to have her own paw surgery. She has been sweetly lying next to me – her paw soaking, my paw elevated – since I got home Friday night.  She is an angel.

My paw will be in pain until surgery in 11 days.  Then it will move from feeling like a bag of broken glass at the end of my leg to a post-op Humpty Dumpty repair pain which will be far better and will have its own beginning, middle and end. 

Currently every time I move – some little fragment moves or a displaced nerve erupts in pain. The CT scan reports multiple acute fractures, bone fragments all over, and every unbroken bone, ligament, nerve, muscle, tendon out of place. I’ll be 8 weeks in a cast and then roughly 8 weeks in a boot after that.  Full recovery in no less than a year.

When I heard of this new much longer timeline (a far more drawn-out beginning, middle and end than originally explained by the ER doctor and first surgeon) from the Lisfranc expert surgeon who yelled a couple times when he walked into the room – “This is not just a broken foot!  This is not just a broken foot!  This is very serious!” -- I gave myself two hours for a pity party.  I am embarrassed to say it extended into 24 hours, but now it’s in the rearview mirror.

Everything I’m dealing with has a beginning, middle and an end. 

Some people are not so fortunate.   

I am profoundly lucky. Profoundly.

And I am starting to see some of the lessons I could only have learned with this special recipe of events.  As much as I received post-fire help from friends and strangers, I refused so much, and it pained me each time I had to receive.  Now, receiving is a necessity.  I am being forced to get over this hump in my beliefs. And I’ll be on the forefront of encouraging others to do the same from this moment forward.

Physical support is priceless.

My friend Annaly schlepped me all over LA for fire and foot errands, and helped me manage the details of a baby shower that I have been so excited to give on 6/22, only two days after I leave the hospital. All. Over. She. Schlepped. With. JOY!

Lisa Melbye offered to pump my gas the other day after she drove me to pick up my car. At first I said “no” and then I remembered how many hops it requires to get up and out of my car, pump gas and get back in. Glorious friends!

When friends Lisa O’Neill and Jan offered to wait while I am in the five hour second surgery I burst into tears. I didn’t even know I needed that. It’s my first big surgery and the surgeon scared the bejeezus out of me so having them out there will be oh-my-god beyond priceless.

The other big lesson I needed to learn is about control.  I have had a life-long struggle with the concepts of control and surrender and I’m in the heat of that spiritual wrestling match now.

It’s finally dawning on me that I can’t control anything.

I can’t control wildfires.

I can’t control my accidents.

I can’t control Stella’s accidents.

I can’t control my car’s ailments (this was something that could have never happened to the car and wouldn’t have been caught in normal maintenance which I do religiously.)

And as horrific as it may look (I am fully aware that my current situation is like a horrible car accident on the side of the road that no one can stop staring at), none of this is actually horrific.

If all goes well, I’ll have an even better house, a better car, Stella will be better than ever, and I will have spent a good long time in a healing alpaca paradise with an ocean view.

It’s all teaching me invaluable lessons.  Every day there are so many lessons that honestly I don’t know I would have received had the pedal not been pushed to the metal in this exact series of events.

All that is to say “I’m good.”

All that to say my current Rule of Three’s that I am keeping my eye on is that every lesson life throws me can be divided up like a juicy orange into three slices:

1.      Beginning

2.      Middle

3.      End

And when it gets a little unwieldy I can give each step its own Beginning, Middle and End.

I am also throwing myself into trusting that something far bigger than me is really in control and surrendering to that far greater source of all-things-love is a genuinely magnificent result of this series of seemingly unfortunate events.