The Terrifying Power of Nature

On May 21 and 22 storms hit the Twin Cities area hard. Two days in a row the sirens went off in my city. Sunday evening we were watching a movie when the Big B told me to mute the TV. We turned to the local news as soon as we heard the wailing up-and-down notes of the warning sirens, and immediately we see a menacing red box drawn right around our neighborhood with reports of rotation, funnel clouds and tornado touchdowns.

I love big storms and he's just as curious as I am so we couldn't resist running outside to take a look. It was raining and the clouds were swirling all around just above the tops of the trees. Pea-sized hail started to come down and I decided to head in. We had already tossed the cats into the basement so I went and checked out the TV again. The sirens were still wailing. I called my mom (she lives just a few blocks away) and asked her if they were in the basement. "We are and you'd better be too!" she admonished me.

Suddenly B bursts in from the garage and his skittishness infects me too.

"Do we need to head downstairs?"

"I don't know, but I saw the neighbor guy booking it indoors so I figured I'd better get inside too!" He says this with a mixture of anxiety, wonderment and excitement. We open the door to head downstairs and our calico feline, Alabama, darts out like a multicolored bullet and runs away. Cursing her I give chase and grab her as she heads up to the second floor.


That darn cat will sit and whine at the door to the basement on any other day, but when she needs to be down there, she wants nothing to do with it. Typical cat!


The basement is actually our roommate's apartment but he's away at his job for months yet so it's just the four of us--me, the Big B and our furry feline children. To say our rommate's a minimalist is an extreme understatement, so we had no TV to watch downstairs to keep up with what was happening. The view out the windows was poor because of the rain spatter and it was maddening to be stuck downstairs with no information. I told B to keep his mom on the phone for updates, but soon enough it was over and we were able to head back upstairs.

The aftermath was significant. Large parts of North Minneapolis were hit, not very far from our house. My bus route to work was detoured because Lyndale avenue had blocks of downed trees obstructing the road.


I managed to snap some photos from the bus ride home later that week after the road had been cleared. I apologize for the horrible picture quality but that's the best you're gonna get with a cell phone camera taken from inside a moving vehicle.

The pic doesn't do justice to how big this downed tree was.

It took up the entire backyard of this home.

Clean up crews busy working

Later that week the Big B picked me up from work and I made him take Lyndale rather than the freeway so I could snap a few more photos from the car. Slightly better pics--you can really see how powerful this storm was and how much damage these trees did when they came down. A lot of the downed trees were boulevard ones with growth that was constrained by the sidewalks and infrastructure of a major city.

The fallen tree had been removed from this house

already but you can see the damage it left behind.

Hundreds of homes were damaged, some much more

severely than this one.

After all these crappy cell phone shots of the damage I was itching to get my actual camera out and take closer pics so I drove myself and B out to a park thirty or so blocks away from our house.

He snuck in this shot

It's so random how nature takes some trees while

one right next to them is spared.

The Big B provides some perspective

for the scale of the root system

The picture above and the next three below are all of the same tree.

If I had jumped down into the bottom of the hole

left by the roots, I'd have been half as tall in this picture.

These kids were playing and were eager to show us

the debris they'd found.

I wish that pictures would do more justice to how incredibly LARGE all these trees were. I would back up to where I thought I could get the sheer scale and size framed in the picture, and then would have to back up some more, and some more, before I felt I had gotten it okay. Eventually I gave up and used the us to provide some scale in a few shots (willingly and unwittingly, depending!).

As much as I love storms and would like to see a tornado up close & personal (as safely as possible), I don't like seeing how much damage they can do and how much injury they cause people.

The N. Mpls community was reeling from this. It's one of the poorer areas in Minnesota and it's just another strike of Murphy's Law that this was the area hit so heavily with damage. The people really pulled together and now less than two weeks after the storms hit, the clean up is well on it's way to being completed. It's gratifying to see how even a "bad" neighborhood can pull together and help each other out when times are rough. People are reaching out to one another and offering aid while clean up efforts continue and homes are repaired enough so that the owners can return.

I'm grateful we were spared this type of damage in our area and that I could safely see the aftermath of one of nature's temper tantrums.

It puts you in your place to see a 5-story tree knocked over like a matchstick.

Just Call Me Florence...

...as in Nightingale.

Things are starting to get back to mostly normal here at home. It will be six weeks to the day this coming Monday since the Big B had his back sliced open and metal screws and plates grafted onto his spine.

He's fairly self-sufficient now, unless whatever he needs is below his knees. Doc's orders--no bending, twisting, or lifting more than five pounds, but I've caught him lifting one of our cats, and I'm pretty sure our humongous laptop weighs well over his restriction.

My man is extremely stubborn (only way he'd survive me!) and I've been both fascinated and horrified with the way I've turned into a mother hen since he was released back home from the hospital.

That first week after he returned home was insane. I had taken that entire week off and the following Monday & Tuesday with the caution that I may either be back sooner or need more time, depending on how things went.

It went both as I expected and not as I expected.

The surgery was Monday 2/28. The Big B got the all-clear to go home on Wednesday. While I was out of work for the time being, I still had classes to attend so I zipped over to the hospital after my lunchtime class and prepared to get him home.

The car ride just about killed him. If you don't have the pleasure of living in a climate that has a fairly drastic change in seasons, you may not understand imtimately how your driving experience is affected by potholes. Here in lovely Minnesota, springtime driving is hazardous to you, your car, and your pocketbook, if you are unfortunate enough to hit a nasty pothole that bites back.

The hospital where he had been staying for the past 3 days is in South Minneapolis, not the greatest of neighborhoods, and I swear, the roads over there are just one big crater. I tried to drive ever-so-carefully, knowing that every bump, twist, and turn was skewering him with pain.

Thankfully, the entrance to the (relatively) smoother freeway wasn't that far away, and we don't live too far outside Minneaplis proper so we were home in 15 short minutes. I did my best--I'm sure I've never shifted gears so smoothly in my entire life before. Nevertheless, by the time we got home he was pale and definitely hurting. It took us 20 minutes just to get him out of the car and into the house. I felt helpless--I couldn't really do much besides watch him struggle to move the tiniest bit.

The hospital staff told him the more he could move on his own, the less painful it would be. My role over the next few days became that of a mobile, walking, talking handrail support. Instead of me trying to lift him, I simply provided an arm or two that he could grab and use as leverage to move himself the smallest fractions left or right.

Great workout though. I could really feel it in my thighs and forearms, everytime I helped lower him to a sitting position or to stand up. We had some trial and error until we got a really good system worked out on how to get him around with minimum of pain on his part.

I was determined to be the best wife nursemaid in the history of wifey nursemaids. That first day home, after he was settled in the spare bedroom downstairs (no way was he making it up the stairs to our 2nd floor bedroom), cradled on every conceivable side with pillows, it was about 4:30pm. We had people coming over to play D&D (our bi-weekly group who plays pre-built modules). B had said D&D could go on despite his return, so I didn't cancel. He had fallen asleep and I started cooking, running in to check on him every 10 min or so in case he needed me since I can't hear anything from the rest of the house if I'm in the kitchen.

About 6:30 I realized I had already gotten off to a bad start as Most-Excellent-Nursemaid-Ever. The hospital had warned us to stay ahead of the pain with his medication. He was supposed to have gotten two pills at 5:00, but in my misguided helpfulness I thought he would need the sleep after his ordeal.

Wrong!

That was a bad night for the Big B. Eventually we got on a schedule (helped along by keeping a record of when each type of pill was taken and when). We didn't let the pain get ahead of the meds so severely again.

The next few days were a whirlwind. Every 2-3 hours we were awake, making sure he took his pills, did his breather exercise to ensure pneumonia hadn't set in, took his temp to check for signs of infection, and took a look at his incisions to make sure they weren't swelling or looking nastier than they should. A girlfriend of mine came over Friday after she got off work and I was still feeling very disheveled and whacked out. My friend K who came over that Friday laughed after visiting our bathroom and says, "Do you know that you have a box of Glad Press N Seal next to your bathroom sink?"

She laughed for several seconds straight when I told her it was for showering the Big B.

"When you said you had to put press and seal on him before he showered, I didn't realize you actually meant it!" she cries between tears of mirth.

Don't knock it--the doctor said cling wrap but I know that stuff doesn't work one bit. I love my Press N Seal and now you all know that if you need to keep a wound dry, that's the first place you should turn to.

This is pretty gross but it was a lot worse earlier.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) I didn't think to get a picture of what it looked like right after he got home. Take my word for it, they were gross. You can't tell from here, but his back has a huge bump right where the incisions are.

They seem so little for so much pain, and so much potential healing. Big things in small packages!

I tried very hard to remember what he could & couldn't do, so that I could make things as easy as possible for us both. One night however, I forgot to leave the toilet seat up for him. I had finally gone to bed upstairs and he told me later he felt so bad and knew how tired I was from not getting any solid sleep, that rather than call me to come down and lift the seat for him, he hunted around downstairs for the proper "seat-lifting implements". Finally he spotted a roll of Christmas wrapping paper and got very creative with it and was able to get the lids up so he could pee.

We left the roll in the bathroom, just in case.


One thing I worried about was how this would affect us, as a couple.

Would we break under the stress? or would we pull together and come out strong on the other side?

Turns out, we're pretty solid. Perhaps it was because we were both hyper-aware of what the other was going through. Me, knowing how painful this was for him and ready to make allowances for any crabbiness he showed. He, knowing how m uch I would have to do while he was laid up, making tremendous efforts not to snap and take the pain out on me.

Whatever the reason, I ended up having some of the best times of our marriage so far during that 2-week period I stayed home to care for my healing hubby.
 I know have at least some idea of what to expect once we have littles, but at least in that case there will be the two of us working together.

This is about 4 weeks after the surgery. Looking good!

Things are almost completely normalized now. His follow up appointment is just before tax day, and the pax Doll-house has ended and we're back to our usual bickering and heated discussions about whether he said it first or I did. I can leave the lid on the toilet down now, and he can shower himself except for his lower legs, at which point he calls me in and I go to work soaping his barely-there calves (his chicken legs are something I tease him often about, since my own calves are muscular and round-ish).

I'm going to miss playing Florence Nightingale to his wounded soldier. We tested our mettle and did not find our relationship wanting.

My confidence that we can survive anything, even kidlets, is now boundless.

He's Always Grumpy When He Wakes Up

Forgive my absence...playing nursemaid was a much more involved job than I realized!

Waiting is hard.

The last day of February was the big day. Surgery Day. SPINAL surgery day.

The Big B was nervous. I think that morning was the first time I've ever seen him get up the first time the alarm went off. Neither of us are morning people but when that alarm went off he was out of bed quicker than you can say "Skittles".

We are people that are habitually late--whether it's a family event, a party, appointment or something we just want to do. I can't remember the last time we made it to a movie early enough to catch the previews.

Not this day however. B's anxiety had him way too keyed up to allow for any lateness.

"I don't want to add being rushed and late to my anxiety today," he explains to me as I'm frantically readying myself in the morning. Perfectly understandable, but it was funny how at the same time he was ready to let little things delay us a bit before heading out. The catbox hadn't been done; he offered to do it right before we left but I told him it was fine that I do it when I got home. I think that although he didn't want to be late and rushing on this day of all days, he wasn't that unhappy at the prospect of having some more time before the surgery would lay him low.

Surprisingly, I felt pretty good about the surgery all day. We parked; we got his back brace fitting, we checked in at the surgery desk and waited. His parents arrived and joined us in the waiting room. They called him back to get ready for the surgery (I followed until a nurse chastened me and told me I could see him later on after they called me).

Waiting. Waiting for the surgeon and his team to be ready, waiting for B to be stripped, IV'd, and hospital-gowned.

Waiting for the surgery to be over; waiting for the surgeon to consult and tell us how it went, waiting to see Brandon after he leaves the recovery room.

Waiting to see whether the surgery fixed his leg pain, his back pain, and whether he'll get full mobility back.

Waiting to see if it worked. Waiting for him to wake up. Waiting for the nurse to come with more meds.
Waiting for the day he could go back home. Waiting for him to move himself in that slow and careful way people have when they are in great pain.

Now some of the waiting is over. The surgery went well, the leg pain at least is gone and the Big B is stylin' in his new back brace. He's goofy as hell from all the pain medication. I've gotten numerous impromptu serenades from him in the days since he returned home from the hospital.

We must endure more waiting, no matter how sick we may be of it. Waiting for the next time he can take his pain pills, waiting for the next exercise time, waiting for his post-op follow up appointment to find out when he can return to work (and whether we'll be eating Ramen for the next month or not), waiting for the full and complete recovery so he can go back to all the things he's been missing--like discgolf and Texas Hold 'Em poker, and things he hasn't been missing like mowing the lawn, doing the dishes and cleaning the catbox.

I'd be willing to wait a long time if it would mean he would be fully recovered with complete elimination of his back pain.

I'd even be willing to wait without a book.

Scary Times Ahead

There are some scary times ahead in the Doll-House (this name is a play on my new last name and how I affectionately refer to my residence).

My hubby jokes that I married a broken man. He & his father are both accident-prone and have a tendency to be clumsy. My father-in-law has fallen off of a ladder, twice, and broken ribs and during the subsequent hospital stays ended up with pneumonia. He also narrowly avoided death by e.coli when consuming some bad Dole lettuce a few years back (but boy, was he excited about the Dateline spot he got after an investigation was done). My hubby regularly has scrapes and dings from adventures at work or disc golfing and has broken several bones in his childhood. He's had two hernia surgeries before he was 25 and had a cyst develop on his tailbone (which were caused by his unfailing work ethic & desire to do things at 110%).

But despite all this, I sometimes forget just how broken my man is.

It's not all my fault! I swear. Yes, I'm forgetful and scatterbrained, but some of the blame can be laid at the foot of my husband's tolerance for pain. He has a high pain tolerance. I'm pretty sure I have a low one, but other than a small tattoo and some teeth pain once, I haven't had much opportunity to test my limits.

His tolerance for pain is directly linked to his addiction for things he likes. If he likes something, he's going to do it, pain schmain. So it's easy for me to forget just how much pain he lives with on a daily basis.

About five years ago, he was managing an auto parts store and they were increasing their inventory by a large margin. My hubby is not one to sit back & let the underlings do things while he sits cozy in an office, so of course he was helping to unload all of this freight. Much of which was heavy pallets of oil, batteries, brake cores, and various other things that require heavy lifting.

Around that time his lower back started to hurt. At first he brushed it off, thinking it would go away on its own. When it didn't, he saw various doctors. All of whom told him, "Pfffaw. You're too young to have back pain. Do some exercises." He diligently attended physical therapy, but his enthusiasm waned when nothing got better. Chiropractic visits either had him feeling nothing or he felt better for a minute, and then later on was worse off.

Fast forward to last August, when we went on our fateful annual camping trip to the Barrens (it's in Wisconsin. Enough said.). We aren't cool enough (old enough? No, rich enough!) to own a camper yet, so we do the tent-thing. I had a humongous 3-room tent that we stuffed with a queen-size air mattress and ourselves. The first night after sleeping on the air mattress, B was in serious pain. After the second night, I think he was ready to kill me and steal the car and go back home.

Shortly after our camping trip, the back pain became severe enough where complaints from him became more frequent. I'm not saying he never complained before, but the frequency definitely went up after we got back. Then his leg started going numb and alternating with shooting pains.

Mulishly stubborn Russian/Irish/German mutt that he is, it took a little bit before he went to see a doctor about it. This time, however, the doctors believed him. We figured that in previous visits, he didn't act like he was in pain at all. So it was probably hard for the docs to take him seriously. Now the pain was definitely showing. He was walking like an old man and stumbling on his numb leg like a drunken pirate. After an x-ray showed that something was up with his L5-S1 disc in his spine, the doc finally referred him for an MRI.

The results? My hubby's been living with a ruptured/herniated/degenerative disc for the past several years. The leg pain comes from the nerves in his spine being pinched between the L5 and S1 vertabrae.

This picture of fusion surgery doesn't show a fusion of the same bones the Big B

will need fused but does point out his vertabrae so you can see where it hurts.

After several months of trying this (both injected & oral cortizone treatments) or telling the doctors that he had already tried that, he finally got recommended for spinal surgery. Specifically, fusion of his L5-S1 vertabrae. My dad's lived with similar back pain all of his life, from issues in the same spot. He had the cutting surgery, where instead of fusing the bones they went in and cut out the scar tissue from the ruptured disc. He still has the back pain, but the shooting pains in his legs and numbness from the nerve pinching did go away.

But in my poor broken husband's case, fusion is the best chance at eliminating the pain or reducing to an amount that he can live with. We finally got the ok from our medical provider and in less than 2 weeks he will be going under the knife and hopefully making a big change for the better.

He's nervous; I'm nervous. He's stressed; I'm stressed. This has led to the bickering level to rise a bit around the Doll-House lately (see my previous post here about our "discussions"). We're both trying to be better about it--he to be less grouchy no matter how cranky his pain is making him, and me to remember that he is dealing with constant pain that never goes away so I should cut him some slack in the crabbiness department.

Of course, me being the eternally hopeful optimist that I am, I can see the silver lining in all this. His degenerative disc is a good spot for fusion--he shouldn't lose much mobility (and hopefully will lose no distance off of his disc golf drives!)

Here's what it'll look like after the surgery.



Also, B will be off work for several weeks at a minimum while his healing happens (it won't be fully fused for 6 months). While we're both a little apprehensive at what this means for our financial budget, there is a bright side:

We both get extended periods of time off of work!

Granted, he'll be mostly physically incapacitated the entire time and I'll still have school to attend, homework to complete, and all of the household chores. But still! More than a week off from work for me is a treat, no matter what's going on. And we get to spend it together.

My hopes are that we'll gain a newfound appreciation for each other during this time. I'll realize just how much stuff he does around the house that I don't give him credit for, and he'll see that I'm practically Florence Nightingale in the flesh.

Or we'll end up killing each other. My money's on moi, not just because it's me, but because how fast can a man in a back brace run, really?