Serious Matters

After my mopey Friday Fun and a variety of leading Facebook and Twitter posts, I've had a lot of friends express concern for what is going on. It's nice to feel a community around, but it is strange at the same time. I am not typically a public person with my feelings and tend to be somewhat secretive about life in general. And yet, now I want to run out and scream at the world.

Last weekend, I was cleaning a keg during our usual Sunday brewing session. I had gotten out of the city the two nights before to clear my head after some pretty torrential life changes at home. I was still distracted, but I was following the mantra of keeping busy to keep my mind from exploding all over the place. The keg in question is an old style that is sealed with a wooden bung pounded in a hole in the side. To remove the bung, you screw a wood screw in and pop it out with a hammer.

After cleaning the keg and pushing sanitizer out through the tubing, I moved it into position to rack the beer from the fermenter. After pushing the liquid out, you need to release the CO2 pressure in the keg. I was distracted. I forgot to bleed the pressure. When I pulled the bung, it blew out at me with the force — and sound — of a gunshot. More than a week later, I can still feel the spot on my sternum where the bung hit. What's worse is my head.

Every part of the explosion forced me to re-experience the shooting. I melted down, stumbling into the yard behind the brewing garage, sobbing. Thankfully, a friend was there who happens to be a counselor at the VA. He stood with me for a while, until I was calm enough to join my partners again.

Everybody was very quiet after that. Except for a friend of a friend who said I should just meditate and readjust my attitude about the trauma from the shooting. I don't remember his exact words, but that was the gist. I snapped at him that it wasn't that easy, and he didn't understand.

In truth, I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to scream, DON'T YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND? NO. BECAUSE NO ONE FUCKING UNDERSTANDS. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And I would have repeated it over and over until I couldn't scream any more.

That's when I realized I had never really faced down and dealt with the trauma from the shooting. I had covered it over with a therapist who never really tackled it head-on, and I had covered over it a year and a half ago when I decided I would just let it go. Except I hadn't. It was far from gone, and small things triggered my fight-or-flight responses — small things I never tied to the experience. All I knew was that I was just under pressure and stress and snapping at the people around me.

Thanks to the friend who stood with me that morning, I began to realize what I hadn't recognized for the past four years. I jump at small noises. Big noises are impossible. I snap far too easily when the kid does something she shouldn't. I get jittery if I'm cornered or trapped. Crowds make me very, very uncomfortable. Sharing a space too closely is very difficult for me. And more. Sometimes I would react to things; sometimes I would just swallow the feeling.

In the end, then, I became that keg. I never released the pressure. I might bleed a bit as I was talking to my therapist and others, but what was really happening was the pressure was building up and building up. When I did release it, I still didn't recognized what was going on, so the pressure just began to build up again.

And in the end, I'm left wanting to scream at a random acquaintance: NO ONE UNDERSTANDS.

I hate the fact that I am re-living this trauma — and will need to go back into a different kind of therapy to tackle it. I hate the fact that writing this has left me trembling. I hate the fact that I see that keg and that gun as the same thing. I hate the fact that a popping balloon nearly left me in a puddle yesterday. I hate the fact that I am even jumpier around people than I was before.

But I'm grateful for it, too. It's like waking up from a long, boozy, bad dream. I've been shown an important lesson. The hard part will be learning it, but maybe just maybe I'll remember it. And maybe I will be able to make other people understand better, because I will understand it myself.

a sad day

Today's ruling by the Supreme Court should not surprise me. The court has been pushed so far to the right, so far in the direction of "strict constructionism" that the results are likely to stay with us for generations. Still, even though it shouldn't surprise me, the pain in my shoulder reminds me every day of the effects of readily available guns on our society. I survived not because I had a gun to protect myself, but because I was lucky; others with guns to protect themselves have not been so lucky. The self-defense argument means nothing.

thoughts on being a hero

The other night I was walking Reilly and a large man wearing only jeans and with a bloodied face stumbled and weaved past us near my house. He was carrying seat cushions stolen from a porch down the street. After he'd made it down the block, I dialed 911 and gave them a description.

Twelve minutes later, when we came around the block heading towards the alley, I saw him on the street again. I called 911 again, then called again after he pulled something out of a garage and continued his weaving way. On this third call in fifteen minutes, I was advised a unit was on its way. I waited in the alley another couple of minutes as he cleared down to the next street before I went inside. By that point, I'd resigned myself to the fact that the cops were not going to get there in time to stop him.

Was he a real public menace? Probably not. He was more likely drunk on bad booze, but ever since the shooting I still want to draw the line. The incident explains one other fact, however: why I stood up and yelled at a man holding a gun that night.

The first thought when he began grabbing at Lindee and pointing the gun at her was that I needed to call 911. Then I realized that there was no way the police would get there before she was shot or harmed in some other way. I had to do something to distract them. That's what I decided in that split second before I began yelling at him to leave my neighbor alone. Then he shot me.

The police would never have arrived in time. Period. Last night was further proof of that. By the time the operator was done asking questions, the incident would have been (and was) played out.

GSW victim

Just some further thoughts on the topic of getting shot...

1. I was extraordinarily lucky. Every time I look in the mirror and see the scar at the crux of my neck and shoulder, I realize how lucky I was. Any minor deviation in the act of shooting the gun or in the trajectory through the railing and I would be dead--or at the very least, badly maimed. In so many ways, I shouldn't be here now, but I am.

2. There may be nothing stranger in my 36 years so far than saying the words "When I was shot." Every time any variation of this comes out of my mouth, I stop for a brief moment. There is nothing right about saying it. And nothing I can do but marvel at the strangeness of the words.

3. I prevented a robbery from taking place. Perhaps something much worse. I don't know why I have to remind myself of this, but it's not the easiest thing to process.

4. It still hurts. Physically and mentally.

5. On my earlier post, I was vague about how much deeper the bullet was than expected. My attending surgeon expected it to be close to the surface--not more than a quarter of an inch. Instead, it was more than an inch under the skin and had cosseted itself just on the edge of the deltoid, kindly avoiding the ribs, clavicle, lung and other vitals. I was lucky.

So ends this moment of navel-gazing. Thanks for tuning in.

"This could easily have been fatal."

That's what my attending physician said today after he took the sutures out. Apparently, the bullet was deeper than expected, and closer to "real" damage than shown on the scans. He was also kind to add the comment that it was a big bullet, and that it was mostly intact.

Again, I must say: I got lucky.

removal

In nine hours, I will be at the hospital. They will be prepping me for the removal of the "foreign object." I will not get to keep the "foreign object." It will be taken for forensic purposes. If they convict Tyrone Singleton or someone else for the crime, I may get it then. Who knows...

The whole "foreign object" thing is really amusing to me. Why do we have to be so euphemistic with language? (And I don't just mean in this instance.) Why not just describe what the object is? Does it remove the reality so that the physician does not have to consider the circumstances as s/he performs the procedure? So that it is all just a procedure?

I ponder this partly because the process has been so fascinating. At no point in this process, from the shooting to the doctors' follow-ups, have I had any control. I have been told when my appointments will be--even if they don't jive with my life--and when my appointments will not be. I understand that the trauma circuit is a difficult gig, but that doesn't really seem like an excuse for treating patients like commodities with no restrictions of their own, as though we do not have to worry about our own schedules. It's patently absurd. I have to compromise my work timelines with my clients' schedules. Why should physicians be able to to insist that everyone work around their schedules?

Then again, I have only met my attending physician once--the night I was shot. I've seen other doctors and residents since, but not met the man who is supposedly responsible for me since that night. It's as if I am no more a person than the alias I was given for my stay in the hospital--Mr. Plum is a phantasm, not a real person with real worries, and therefore can be manipulated like a marionette.

Not quite... At least I got them to move the surgery reporting time from 5:30 to 8:45.

My shoulder hurts

This isn't too surprising, I know. There's a bullet in there, and a hole that's still healing up. Even so, it's rainy here this morning and I feel like I should be saying something like, "Eh, there's rain in the air. I can feel it in me bullet." Ah well... The pain and discomfort change as time goes by. The medication the doctor gave me--Neurontin--has helped with some of the worst discomfort. That doesn't change the fact that it's downright weird to feel that the lump on my back has gotten more pronounced as the bullet works its way out.

All together now: "Ewwwwwww."

today's news

From the NYT today:

KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 29 (AP) — A shooting at a shopping center here on Sunday afternoon left three people dead, including the gunman, the police said.

An elderly woman found dead earlier in the day may also have been killed by the gunman, the police said.

The authorities said they went to a home early Sunday afternoon to check on the woman, whom relatives had not seen for days. She was found dead and her car was missing, said a police spokesman, Tony Sanders.

The car was spotted later in the day by a police officer, who pulled the driver over and was shot in the arm, the police said. The officer, whose wound was not life-threatening, returned fire and shattered a car window.

The car left the scene and was later spotted at the mall, the Ward Parkway Center in southern Kansas City. The police said the man shot four people in the parking lot, two fatally, then went inside.

The gunman was shot to death by the police inside the mall.

The police did not say how the elderly woman died or whether the gunman was a suspect in her death. But they did say they believed that the events were connected.

That quiet sound you hear is me shaking my head. How many more of these do we need before something changes? How many more?

more thoughts on the gun question (while I hear helicopters overhead)

Adam Gopnik has a great piece leading off The Talk of the Town in this week's New Yorker. He delves into some of the questions we should be asking in the aftermath of the Tech shootings, particularly the insistence by officials and others (I'll leave it to you to sort the others, for now) that questions about gun control would unnecessarily politicize the incident. For instance:

If the facts weren’t so horrible, there might be something touching in the Governor’s deeply American belief that “healing” can take place magically, without the intervening practice called “treating.” The logic is unusual but striking: the aftermath of a terrorist attack is the wrong time to talk about security, the aftermath of a death from lung cancer is the wrong time to talk about smoking and the tobacco industry, and the aftermath of a car crash is the wrong time to talk about seat belts.

The point is dead-on. How often does a tragedy strike, and we're told not to talk about the causes--as though that would somehow dishonor the dead. Or in my case, more than a few people wondered whether I wanted to get a gun for protection. And when I argued that the answer was fewer guns, their answers were often that tighter gun laws wouldn't have kept the kid from getting his hand on that .44.

Then again, wouldn't having fewer handguns anywhere reduce the likelihood of something like this happening? Gopnik goes on to reference the tragedy ten years ago in Dunblane, Scotland, after which the British government tightened their already-restrictive handgun ownership laws. It is now illegal for a private citizen to own the sort of weapons used at Tech, the gun used to shoot John Locke, the gun used to shoot me, and so on and so forth. After all, a handgun exists for no other purpose than to shoot people; such things have no place in a civilized, democratic society. As Gopnik writes:

It’s true that in renewing the expired ban on assault weapons we can’t guarantee that someone won’t shoot people with a semi-automatic pistol, and that by controlling semi-automatic pistols we can’t reduce the chances of someone killing people with a rifle. But the point of lawmaking is not to act as precisely as possible, in order to punish the latest crime; it is to act as comprehensively as possible, in order to prevent the next one. Semi-automatic Glocks and Walthers, Cho’s weapons, are for killing people.

I understand the essentially libertarian arguments against government intervention in our private affairs--and our rights to private ownership and private choice. What I do not understand is the insistence on these "rights" in the face of obvious evidence that such "rights" continue to damage the civility and sanity of our society. It's like the arguments defending smoking in restaurants, bars, and other public places--that it's an individual's "right" to do as he pleases. The problem is these "rights" and behaviors cause harm to people who do not choose to partake in them. After all, shouldn't it be our collective goal to make our society a safer, better place in every way possible? Doesn't the common good outweigh the privileges of the individual?

Gopnik ends with this:

Rural America is hunting country, and hunters need rifles and shotguns—with proper licensing, we’ll live with the risk. There is no reason that any private citizen in a democracy should own a handgun. At some point, that simple truth will register.

He's right.

I've stayed away from commenting directly on these things for too long. Unfortunately, I have now been too close to the harm handguns can do too many times. I have been witness to a man dying. I was lucky enough to be hit and survive. People I know knew victims at Tech. The shooter in Arkansas--just like the shooter at Tech--bought his ammunition at Wal-Mart. Just like that, walked into a store that claims to be family-friendly and purchased hundreds of units of death and destruction.

The other shooting I witnessed

Brian wrote about it here. He really gets it here:

Mine involved only one professor and a seriously disturbed student, but I can't stop thinking about it right now. So maybe writing this post is therapy for me or something--I can't be certain--but it's something I feel I need to write today.

It was the first day of the fall term, 2000. I was in my second year as an MFA student at the University of Arkansas, and I was about to teach my first class of the semester. I was in my office on the 2nd floor of Kimpel Hall, with my friend Paul, shooting the breeze, when we heard two loud slaps, like a metal shelf hitting a tile floor. A voice called "help" twice, then another slap. A voice down the hall yelled something about a gun.

I recall that moment. It was Pat Slattery, our mentor in teaching composition, who was in the hallway, yelling at students to get out, amidst the stench of burnt gunpowder. We waited at different ends of the hallway until the campus bicycle police showed up.

The sense memories of that morning--it was early--were fresh after I was shot four weeks ago. The gunpowder smelled the same. The shots sounded the same, though the ones aimed at me were a bigger caliber. I do remember every moment of that morning, though I cannot recall the second shot that went into the kitchen wall rather than me.

I have cried a lot in the last month. Many things brought the tears the night I was in the hospital, just as every memory of that warm morning in September 2000 crowded back during the growing news of the Tech shootings last week. And I slumped into my chair and cried again.

shitty news

Apparently someone claiming to be the suspect's cousin knocked on my neighbor's door yesterday. He asked about her. Then he asked about me. They told him I was in New York.

Suffice it to say that whatever peace of mind I'd found so far has been very, very shaken.

VT, street crime, and gun control

The gun control debates are already beginning, as well they should. The "people kill people; guns don't kill people" doesn't hold water, hasn't for a long time. As for the second amendment, our need for a well-regulated citizens militia is long past in most parts of the country. There is also no reasonable argument for why any citizen needs automatic arms of any caliber or a gun as big as the one Tyrone Singleton used to shoot me. Ultimately, though, the problem isn't that we need more laws; the problem is that we need fewer guns. Otherwise, chaos will continue, always, to be at our collective doorstep.

pain

One week after I tried to go off the Ibuprofen, I need it more than ever. The vicodin even seems tempting at moments.

trauma symptoms

I've been juggling little symptoms of the trauma backlash lately.

1. During the climactic scenes in Beauty and the Beast, flash spots fire all over the set. This left me practically paralyzed for a few minutes, even after I shielded my eyes.

2. This morning, the wind storm blowing through the area blew the trees in back so hard they were banging on the roof of the back porch. Hellish.

3. This morning, the news from VA Tech... reading the initial accounts of the shootings. I'm shaking...

life or death

I posted this at MySpace, but it can't hurt to post here too. I will add as things change...


I am now a certified hero, at least that's what everybody from neighbors to coworkers to the news to hospital workers are saying. I guess that's true, considering what could have happened.

For now, these are the facts: On Sunday night, two men followed my neighbor as she drove in off the alley. My friend Phil and I were on the porch, watching her park her car. When the men started demanding her bag and pulled a gun, I started yelling at them to leave her alone. The man holding the gun turned and fired two shots. One hit the side of the house and one went through a two-by-four and hit me. The bullet penetrated my shoulder, narrowly missing my arteries, throat, esophagus and lungs. It stopped in the muscles under my clavicle and will remain there until the doctors feel it is extractable. Anna did not wake up, though her bedroom is a matter of feet away. She didn't even wake up as the firemen arrived from the fire station around the corner, and the paramedics and police began swarming the entry to our house. I was taken to the trauma unit under full lights and sirens because the EMTs feared where the bullet might travel and whether the shock my body had gone into would cause cardiac arrest. After I was stabilized and the wound was determined not to be life-threatening, I was admitted to the hospital.

For the next day and a half, more tests were done and X-Rays and CT scans taken. On Tuesday, I was released, and for the last two days, Anna and I have laid low with another family to avoid the media attention and recoup a bit. I also wanted to wait until at least one of the suspects was in police custody--news I received this morning. We are back home now, and I am confronting major questions about what we do next--whether we stay in this house any longer--and how much I need to rely on the kindness of friends and family to manage the big and little tasks of life--you never realize how tiring things like dishes and laundry can be until small repetitive tasks cause pain.

As for the hero question, I will leave it alone for now. My neighbor Lindee is alive and safe. I am injured but extraordinarily lucky for what could have happened. My daughter remains the light of my life. One foot in front of the other...