That Day

Black Friday, 2021

We had a standing joke in our marriage, that when Todd goes out somewhere on our 12-acre property to do something potentially dangerous, like fell a tree, he alerts me and comments, “If you don’t see me for awhile, come looking for me, because I’ll be laying on the ground injured.” I always found this comment annoying and would reply, “Well, don’t do anything dumb.” 

Sometimes, he would not make that announcement, but neither would he answer my call when I screamed his name outdoors, which is where he spent 99% of his waking hours. I’d project my voice in different directions across our 12 acres, and wait for a reply. If he went to mow a far pasture, he always told me where I could find him. Every now and then, however, he’d wander over to a neighbor’s home, out of earshot and not tell me. During those frantic minutes, I would grow increasingly more upset, and when I finally found him, I was angry and worried unnecessarily. But of course no man as independent as Todd wants to report his every move to his wife.

The day it finally happens is Black Friday 2021. I am out gathering wild watercress for a salad for our Native American Thanksgiving tipi dinner party, a tradition we look forward to the Saturday after the holiday, more so than the actual holiday, as it is nearer to our hearts. Our friend Dave Broomhall helped us put up the heavy, canvas, 14-foot wide tipi that morning. Muscling the 16 foot lodgepole pines into place and unrolling the canvas around the framework necessitates a few extra hands. After we raised the tipi, Dave and I try to get Todd to join us for a walk to a nearby watershed where the cress grows, but friends are coming from far away and Todd wanted to be at home to greet them should they arrive early.

I am gone for hours. Besides the hike to the watercress spot, I stop for an ice cream and am headed to the post office when I run into first responders out on the highway, directing people away from the scene of an accident. I want to get home and not be delayed for I am already running late, so I disobey orders to keep going and instead turn into the Dollar Store to turn around and head back the way I came, towards home. The traffic director yells at me and then I see why. In the parking lot is a car flipped on its roof and dozens of large white rocks are scattered all over the ground. The accident is right here. I quickly drive back to the highway and head towards my home. 

When I return home, Todd is nowhere to be found. After combing the house, I go outdoors and begin to yell. Then I hear a low moaning. Could it be him? I follow the sound over to the blacksmith shop and there he is lying on the ground, face smashed into the leaves and ivy, feet twisted on top of each other and the aluminum ladder lying next to him on the ground. I kneel down to his face and ask, “What happened?”

“I’m done,” he cries. “I’m fuckin’ done. I fell off the roof. I’m paralyzed. I’m fuckin’ done.” 

I put my face down to his and feel it, kiss his nose and his cheek and see that he is still very warm. Even his fingers are very warm. It must have just happened. Thank goodness, I turned around at the Dollar Store when I did. A  cold wind is blowing and temps are below freezing. Half an hour later, he would have been dead from hypothermia and shock. Little did I know, every minute was crucial. Gratitude.

I stand up and begin breathing heavily in short spurts like I am sprinting or hyperventilating, but I am not moving yet, pausing a second to make a plan and then spring into action. I run into the house to grab blankets and a down comforter, while dialing 911 on my phone. The thought runs through my mind, “Life is over as we know it.” 

“THAT DAY”

Right in the middle of our life, on an ordinary day, the unthinkable happened. Everything went from ordinary to chaotic and there I stood, in the mess of it all, knowing there will now forever be a before and an after. That day. 

My life- our lives, up to this point, has been nothing short of extraordinary. We put decades into creating a very big life for us and our children. Everything we have accomplished up to this point involved moving athletically through the natural world- backpacking, paddling and cycling long distances. I wrote and illustrated nine published books about our long journeys, outdoor adventures and building a handmade log home, as well as over 1,000 magazine articles. I’ve been to 65 countries and our children twenty before they even went to college. Travel and wilderness journeys were my occupation. Todd was a blacksmith artist, fine furniture maker and a very successful chainsaw carving artist.  This was our amazingly vital life. We didn’t sit still. We didn’t “chill out.” We never even owned a television. Todd and I know how to do hard but this rich, vibrant life we created for ourselves, is collapsing on itself. What lies ahead is devastating and unimaginable.  

“There’s been an accident!” I cry on the phone and they begin asking questions. I race back to the slope by the blacksmith shop where Todd is lying and cover him up. I put the phone on the ground close to his mouth so the dispatcher can ask him questions to see if he is lucid. They say they are sending an ambulance. But, there had been another accident nearby and everyone is out on that call and we will have to wait awhile. The Dollar Store accident!

I recheck Todd’s face and fingers and they are still very warm. I ask if he can move anything and he wiggles his left hand. Just a few fingers bend. “Don’t move me!” He groans. “My neck is broken.” I touch him in different places on his paralyzed side and he can feel me and that gives me great hope. He says he is not in any pain. Todd can’t breathe real well the way his nostrils are smashed into the ground so I move the fabric of his hood away so he can get more air. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he moans. “Our lives are ruined. I wish I would have died.”

“Everything is gonna be fine, honey. We’ll figure it out. Stay calm because I can’t help you if you go into shock.”

Soon the EMTs arrive, but they have to wait for another vehicle and more men to get Todd onto a stretcher. They radio for a life flight medi-vac helicopter and decide on Hawk Shadow Horse Farm’s field a half mile down the road. “What trauma hospital do you want us to take him to, Lehigh Valley or Reading?” they ask. “Reading, as that is where my family is.”  I know this is going to be a marathon recovery and I am going to need all the support I can get.  The EMT’s cover Todd’s head while they wait for more hands on deck as it is very cold.  Right after, Doug Ryan, Todd’s chainsaw carving friend arrives from Altoona, for the tipi party. He sees Todd lying on the ground completely covered up and he suddenly becomes very frightened because he thinks that he is dead.

Once the team arrives, they cut his clothing open and run an IV line. A man at Todd’s head voices instructions so the rest can very carefully log roll Todd onto a rigid board. They put a brace on his neck and load him into the ambulance van, take him down to the horse farm, a 1/4 mile away. Doug drives me in his truck and promises to stay with me every step of the way. 

At the horse pasture, our local New Ringgold fire department is waiting to direct the helicopter into the site. It came with a paramedic, a nurse and the pilot. Altogether, a dozen men work on zipping Todd into a silver heat blanket and getting him into the helicopter. I bend down to kiss him goodbye, tell him that I love him and that I’ll meet him at the hospital. The helicopter has less than a 15 minute flight to the trauma center at the hospital in Reading, the town that I grew up in. It will land on the roof and take Todd directly into the ER. Doug and I will take 50 minutes to get there. 

Who thinks that a spinal cord injury could happen to them? Nobody. Many people associate SCI with extreme sports or violent acts. However, common activities like falls are a leading cause. Even folks who engage in extreme sports do not perceive themselves to be at risk for a debilitating injury. It’s a cognitive bias called optimistic bias or unrealistic optimism. But there will be approximately 17,000 new cases a year in America. Todd has just joined the club. He is one of approximately 282,000 SCIs living in the US.

And me? I just joined the club of full time caregivers. There are an estimated 63 million unpaid family caregivers and 5 million paid caregivers in the US, for a total of approximately 68 million caregivers. This number represents about one in four US adults who provide care for an adult or child with a complex medical condition or disability. Yet most of us are thrown into this very important role of caregiver with no prior experience. Learning on the job as we go.

Todd spent twenty-five years as a part-time house painter and much of the outside work was done on ladders. He often worked 2-3 stories high and sometimes used a 40 foot ladder. He even painted church steeples. It was not scary to him. He utilized safety precautions. He believes ladders are safe if you set them up right.

When working on our handmade log home, he sometimes stood on top of a round log up to 9 feet off the ground and cut with his big, heavy chainsaw. The log was too heavy to bring down so we built scaffolding around the walls of the building and he remained up there to cut. He had to really focus on the running chainsaw. He planted his feet and did not move. We always operated “safety first” and in all those years, on all those ladders, he never got hurt. This time, he took one step on a metal roof with wet leaves and the unthinkable happened. Only six feet to the ground, onto a bed of soft ivy and dried leaves, he landed. He could have jumped off that roof all day long and landed safely flat on his feet. But not this time. Going down, his feet caught the ladder and held them there, shooting his head down to the ground first, landing on his neck. 

Was cleaning the leaves off this roof a regular task? No. In the thirty-five years that we lived here, he only cleaned the leaves off that roof one other time, and of course, nothing had happened. Did the leaves need to be cleaned off the roof? No. He was just looking for something to do outdoors while he waited for our friends to arrive and was keeping busy.

Later I looked back at the photos Doug took on my phone during the rescue. Todd’s face already had that grey/yellowish waxy look to it, announcing that death was at the door. The condition is called “pallor mortis,” a medical term describing the skin tone of someone who is dying, as blood is not circulating properly and it is settling in dependent areas. Our friend, Todd Bauman, a certified wilderness first responder, said that if they came upon their victim in the wilds and he already had this happening in their body and face, they would not be obligated to resuscitate, as he was as good as gone. Thank God I did not see this until after I examined the photos weeks later when my husband had long returned to the land of the living. 

We are all just one diagnosis, one accident, one phone call away from a completely different life… Samuel Decker Thompson

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What you just read is a section from my upcoming book, “The Making of a Caregiver,” about Todd’s long road to recovery. It has been four years since That Day and we are slowly crawling back to some sort of life containing some level of joy. I have been working hard on the manuscript with colder weather here, while Todd has been busy carving, both happy things for us to do when we can’t be out riding our bikes or gardening.

I am looking for folks who love to read and can write some and feel they might be able to help with content editing of my book. I am also looking for leads for publishers and agents as I need three solid spectacular chapters plus a very detailed outline before I can begin my search. I expect to be there by the spring. If you know anyone in the publishing world or a friend of a friend, let me know please.

I’d also like to take this time to suggest gift giving a book to a loved one this holiday season. We all could use some inspiration and we all have so much stuff, that a book and supporting an author is a good choice. Check out my BOOK page on my website and message me if you’d like me to autograph one and mail it. Whether its for a young couple who are just starting this lives, “The Log Cabin Years- Building a Marriage While Building a Home,” would be good; or a family with children, “The World is Our Classroom- How One Family Used Nature & Travel to Shape an Extraordinary Education;” or if know someone who is struggling with depression/sadness and could use some inspiration on using nature to heal, “Walking Toward Peace- Veterans Healing on America’s Trails,” or have nature lovers on your list, folks who love the woods and love to hike, “Scraping Heaven- A Family’s Journey Along the Continental Divide,” or “Journey on the Crest- 2700 Miles from Canada to Mexico” is a good choice. There’s a book for everyone on your list.

Books