When the Worst Happens

Not a lot of blog entries lately. Life was very busy, then it compressed to a single focus. In the waning hours of Friday August 15th, our 17 year old niece and her boyfriend were "T-boned" at a gravel intersection in IA. The driver of the 1-ton pickup that hit their little car, is also 17, apparently had been drinking, and ran a stop sign. Her boyfriend was dead at the scene and she was choppered to a trauma center.

We got the call about 3AM Saturday, packed up the family and headed the 5 hours to the hospital. The initial reports were especially grim--not much chance, bleeding from her ear, probably massive brain injury. The next reports were very hopeful, bleeding due to broken jaw, CAT scans looked OK, maybe just a concussion. Shortly after we got there, there was bad news again--her brain had "twisted" and there was damage, but the damage could not be diagnosed. We had to just watch and pray.

A long day at the hospital that Saturday. Lots of emotions-sadness, prayer, hope, despair and even laughter of memories at times. She seemed stable, it looked like a "long haul", we packed up our two boys and headed home, they had work, band camp and other things to do. We recovered some Sunday, worked Monday, and then headed back so that we could cover for her folks at the hospital as they went home for her boyfriends funeral. When we got there, she had been stable and low cranial pressure all day.

Modern life is often about finding out about things you had no idea about. "Cranial pressure" is one of those things. We tend to run about "6" normally, but by bearing down to lift something heavy, we can hit 50-60 for short periods. With a brain injury, "20" is the threshold where treatment is needed. Specific drugs will lower the pressure, but like all drugs, they have trade-offs. They are a short term fix. She went up to 36 Monday night, but the nurse was able to bring her back down under 20. The folks stayed back at home that night and were able to be at her boyfriends funeral Tuesday.

She had surgery on her jaw Tuesday, which went very well. The brain surgeon came in and said that he was optimistic since her pressure was down below 10 and it had always dropped quickly when it went up. He felt that the medical team was "chasing their tail" because of the probe reading the pressures and wanted it taken out. He felt that she was going to "wake up soon". We were elated.

The parents came back in the late afternoon, we conveyed the good news, and they felt her squeeze both of their hands that evening. We were beyond elated, we were ECSTATIC! The storm had been weathered, she was coming back to us. We got together for beers and snacks in the hotel bar that night and didn't want to leave each other. We clung, we laughed, we were relieved. I hope I learned something significant that I can carry on for the rest of my life that night.

You see, in the back of my mind, I ALWAYS doubt (you may pick that up from this blog). If things seem "better", I always wonder. Did they REALLY feel a squeeze? The "dark side" of doubt is never far away from me. It is VERY hard for me to enjoy things that are "still in doubt"--and if we are honest at all, when are most of the earthly important things NOT in doubt? I'm too prone to live my whole life watching, planning, analyzing, studying, intellectualizing and comparing and miss my life while I'm at it. Of course, I've analyzed that too a long time ago--so I try to take that tendency into a account and compensate as well. Like wearing glasses and watching our diet, we can make some level of improvement, but our natural tendencies are never very far away.

I'm so thankful that we had Tuesday night. The stress had been great enough to that point, and the desire for hope was so great that even doubting me gave in and believed. I need that lesson as I look at the abyss-- I so much want to believe, I pray to believe, but like Thomas in the bible I would REALLY like to "touch the saviors wound". Faith in the unseen is always hard for humans--on the other hand, it is what we all have for the next second and the next breath, it is just that we usually don't think about that, so it is the easy form of faith, sometimes called ignorance--and bliss.

We got up early Wednesday to head back home. We stopped up to check on her and her pressure was back up around 30, but they didn't seem panicked about it and since the brain surgeon had indicated that she may just run high, we still felt optimistic and still took off. Three hours later we got that sort of call that makes your guts turn to fiery lead. The pressure had continued to rise. The brain surgeon had been in there and said that this many days post accident it was a very bad sign. They were trying more heroic measures to get it back down, pushing her blood pressure up to try to keep blood going into the brain at even the high cranial pressures. It looked very bad, we turned around and had the longest three hour drive of our lives back to the hospital thinking the "she is gone" call would come at any second.

It was a quiet and sad day. The odds hadn't dropped to zero, but they were under 30% of a decent recovery and falling. Our niece had been a friendly, happy and chubby little girl that had blossomed into a stunning blond cheerleader, superstar on her dance squad, national honor society, and most outgoing and loving "down to earth" girl you could ever meet. Her megawatt smile lit the world around her. We all knew the realities of brain injuries--along with the very real odds of losing her completely were the also high odds of her not having anything for a life. We slipped into saying "was" associated with her name--caught ourselves and were embarrassed, but sadly knew why we were doing it.

The day wore on. She stabilized some, but before we headed to the hotel around midnight, her pressure was up to 80. We knew that was very bad, but at the levels of sleep deprivation we were all at, we still turned in for some sleep and mostly got a little. The call came at 3 and we rushed back over. Her brain stem had ruptured into the spinal column. She was gone, although still on life support for potential organ donation. They had ran her oxygen levels high, shut off the ventilator and waited 10 min to see if there was enough lower level brain function for her to take a breath. There wasn't.

The worst had happened, she was gone.

Numbness, sobbing, disbelief, anger, extreme sadness, clinging to those around us. Death is the giant fact of human life that will always be beyond our physical selves to grasp. Is there more? Will my loved ones and I have our next breath? Nobody in the physical realm really knows anything in the sense that we at least "believe that we know" that repeatable scientific things will "always" be repeatable. Of course, if we are honest about that, we know that the "error of induction" is always a potential. What we think are "stable local conditions" may be some quantum or other dimensional "bubble" that could pop like soap suds in the next second and all our logic, equations and "knowledge" will be as imaginary as the most wispy fairy tale of youth.

We love to think we are "wise, spiritual, well adjusted, stable, rational, scientific, etc", but death tells us that we lack control at the ultimate level at an extreme and very personal way. We, and all those we love will surely die. We have no answers at the level of 2+2=4 and Labor Day is on the first Monday in September to the most significant--and potentially only meaningful question of our lives. Is this all there is? Is there hope for more, and if so, what is the best way to achievement of that hope?

So, 99% of the time we do what humans have done for at least thousands of years. We deny what we don't like to think about. We "change the channel". Some of us choose to believe that there is a heaven that is better than this earthly realm, and we will see our loved ones again. For me personally, that belief is comforting, but way different than "2+2=4"--there is a sense of "rightness" to it that is like seeing a young fawn with it's mother, geese flying south in the fall, the moon traversing the sky or watching waves roll into a rocky seashore. "There is something more" is at some level of feeling that is very hard to put into words, indeed, I strongly suspect that words are an impediment.

Nothing near as potentially sensible as the previous paragraphs really went through my mind for days beyond the death. We needed to get back home to share the grieving process with our sons, so we left around 8 in the morning for the long drive home. We spent the night here in our now completed new bedroom. We had been sleeping there for one week the night of the accident, so the fact that even our own bedroom didn't seem like our own bedroom made the loss of days and location more significant. If we needed one more solid reminder that material possessions and station in life means very little in the face of the truly important things, this certainly provided it.

The next evening, Friday, we went back down to Iowa to be with the parents and friends and to pick up pictures and video for the visitation and tribute. We headed back home Saturday evening and worked until after 3AM on the slide show and video. Back up at 7AM Sunday and on the road to the visitation and funeral. Those that don't believe in their being a human spirit that is beyond the physical may not have seen a beautiful dead 17 year old. The mortician did fine, but without that brimming streaming spirit radiating from those eyes and smile, it just wasn't her.

Her organs helped 11 people, including saving the life of a baby that got half her liver--had she died at the scene or not lasted those 5 days in the hospital, that would not have been possible. Our "unanswered" prayers were someone else's miracle. I believe that a major part of the wattage of that smile was an inner faith that didn't need any more "work" at 17, where mine could use a lot of patches at 51. I don't claim to have a clue of the plans of an infinitely powerful God who is beyond our material world. One of the theories of quantum computing is called the "many worlds" or "multiverse" theory, developed by a guy named Hugh Everett. Under that theory, the "quantum strangeness" isn't strange at all (or it is very strange). Every "decision" at even very small levels "forks" a completely different copy of the entire universe -- our consciousness just happens to be in one of them.

So on the path that everyone reading this blog is on, she didn't make it through the accident. On another she did, on yet another the accident never happened -- and on and on to what would seem to us to be infinity. Strange? Sure, but only about the same level of strangeness of some of the other theories of why quantum effects work as they do. I believe that strange attempted explanation is far less strange than what God is really up to, and my niece is with God laughing about the simplicity and ultimate rightness of it all at some level that is so beyond our imagining that the totality of all our earthly existences will seem of less significance than a raindrop in the ocean when we see the truth.

The memorial service at the high school on Sunday night was precious. Over a thousand people, some good music, some good words, comfort, togetherness, celebration of a life that was very well lived, but oh so short. The funeral at the very conservative church that our nieces family attended was difficult for those of us not used to that approach from youth. I was struck that in a church with no words or ornamentation, the only words visible at the front the church were on two speakers -- "Bose". No love, no hope, no truth, no peace, no faith, no joy, not even the cross or Christ. Only "Bose".

I know they mean well, and their traditions are hugely important to them, but the tone of that service was so much not my niece. Her life SHOUTED **JOY** in gigantic pink letters and she positively radiated love to people in her daily life. It was easy to see the fruits of the spirit in her. Their minister may not be able to provide assurance that our niece is with Jesus, but 10 minutes of time with her when she was alive was more than enough for a Christian not captive to the tradition, form, practice and regulations of a very unusual sect to have assurance of all the words NOT present at the front of that church.

So, now we go on. I had been saving vacation for end of the summer, and I decided that I really needed the time off, so I took it. I didn't "do" much -- read, thought, slept, caught up on the mundane things around home that had slid while we were away. Tomorrow I return to work and "normal life", although I suspect with some priority change. Will it be permanent? I have no idea -- I know way too well how strong our tendency to "return to the mean" of our lives is. In some ways, that is good -- in others, we need to change to improve. I pray that I can do that.