two years ago

Two years ago tonight, my friend Phil and I were sitting on my second-floor, back porch having a few beers and talking about work and music when two young men walked off the alley to rob my neighbor. One of them pointed a large chrome-plated revolver at her. When I yelled at them to leave her alone, he turned and fired two shots. One bullet lodged in the kitchen wall, and one bullet went through a two-by-four before hitting me in the shoulder. I blacked out when it happened and didn't know I'd been hit when I got up from the porch floor. My shoulder hurt, but I thought it was from the fall. It wasn't until I felt the blood coming out of the hole in my shoulder that I realized I'd been hit.

The next events follow a blurry trajectory of firemen from the station behind my house, police officers and detectives, and paramedics. There were neighbors and Phil. There was the ambulance and the oxygen and the heart monitors and the IV lines. Banana was upstairs asleep while all of this was going on and didn't wake up until much later. By then, my father had arrived to spend the night and get her to school in the morning. She still remembers being scared when she woke up and I wasn't there. And given my father's occasional mentions of that night and how much worse it could have been, I can only imagine what he must have been feeling.



The bullet lodged in the muscles between my shoulder blade and spine. It damaged muscles and nerves, but narrowly missed doing far greater — and possibly mortal — harm. It caused a hairline fracture in one vertebrae and set me on a course of physical and mental recovery that continues today.

As time goes by, I expected the impact to lessen, but it hasn't. This is in part because I can never forget that someone tried to kill me. That I am known as the neighbor/friend/guy who got shot keeps it alive in other people's minds as well. I've begun to accept that this certain grace or fortune that kept me lucky enough to be here is also something that will always be with me.

And while I can't wish the event away, I do wish for one thing: an arrest, a conviction, closure.

382

That's how many days I've been in one sort of pain or another. Not that anybody's counting. And not that it's getting old or anything...

Don't get shot, okay?

Trauma, a year later

There will be a quick recounting of the New York trip later on.

One year ago, I was sitting in a room at MCV under the alias Trauma Case Plum. My wound dressing and IV were being changed while nurses and med students were brought through to see the patient who had been shot while interrupting a robbery, the hero. The news had already hit the newspaper and television news. My father had come to the hospital to see me, and I was wheeled alternately into X-Ray rooms where they took pictures of my esophagus and into CT rooms where they determined that the bullet was large but hadn't damaged anything vital. I had what the CT tech called "The MIllion Dollar Wound." I hadn't even begun to process what had happened yet.

A year later, I am still struggling to process what happened. I am still trying to put my head and body back together. Though the simple act that brought this about seems small and far away now, the scars and ache and muddle I often feel in my head are constant reminders of how much worse it all could have been. They are also reminders of my work over the past year to make my life a better, kinder, more responsible place—despite occasional recidivism.

At the time, I joked that it was Colonel Mustard in the alley with the revolver, and that I got lucky. A year later, I realize none of this is a joke.

/navel gazing

brief thoughts on PTSD

One of my physical therapists has concluded that some of the issues with my back and shoulder are related to my mental recovery. After this week in therapy, I'm convinced that she is right. With more pain and more rough work to break through some of the locked up parts of my back, my head has gone into a more precarious place. Certainly there is a lot going on generally in my life, but the muddle in my head seems to come along with more pain and release in my back. What really brought this home was thinking back to last August when the trauma and anxiety decidedly returned, and the realization that their return seemed to coincide with more physical activity—and more physical pain.

With the anniversary of the shooting approaching, I look forward to some sort of breakthrough in all of this. I hope.

I Want My Life To Make More Sense To Me, pt. 2

As part of my physical and psychological therapy, I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about what it means to deal with this trauma. A post by my friend Amy over at Incertus reminded me that there are other layers to the recovery, layers that go back to John Locke's murder at Arkansas in 2000 and follow the trajectory of the various ups and downs of my life since then. The conclusion I've come to as part of this whole reflection and growth process is that fully dealing with the trauma of the shooting almost a year ago also involves facing and confronting other unpleasant experiences.

The paradox of dealing with the trauma(s) is that you have to move on from something that will always haunt you. By this, I mean that you need to recognize and let go of triggers that set off anxiety attacks or flashbacks; at the same time, you can't push the feelings under the metaphorical rug. Holding on to the feelings ensures that you will never move on. Ignoring the impact of the trauma ensures that it will come back to haunt you later—in spades. Finding the proper balance here does not guarantee that you won't be haunted by random flashbacks and other traumatic pentimentos. Nevertheless, finding the balance gives the possibility of retaking your life.

What I have discovered lately is that there are basic steps that I have to take to get through the pain and anxiety. Taking on some personal design projects has helped. Making sure my kitchen is clean every night when I go to bed has helped. Making sure that my coffee table is empty has helped. Getting back into routines has been essential. Though small, each of these things has been part of the overall task of controlling my life, rather than letting random circumstance be the rule of the day—because random circumstance can be a cruel mistress.

dry needling

So, the details of dry needling are:

• The physical therapist identifies the points in my muscles that are causing the greatest tension and pain.
  
• She takes a needle very similar to an acupuncture needle and puts it into my muscle at the trigger point.
  
• I squeeze the pain ball and try not to move.
  
• She works out tension on related muscles while I discover the exact meaning of referred pain.
  
• Repeat seven or eight times depending on the treatment, then ice the affected areas.

There is a certain amount of masochism involved here. After the treatments, my muscles ache and my left hip—the spot that seems to have taken the most problems after the shoulder—is stiff and painful. Still, I have more motion, and it's easy to see how these treatments may actually break through the final stages of my pain. As a collateral benefit, it's also easy to see how I may end up in better shape than I was before the shooting, or at least in the position to get into better shape.

For the moment, however, I am apparently going to have to go through pain to get rid of pain. If only I didn't hate pain meds...

dry needle trigger point therapy

Let's just say I'm achy. More details to come later.

the wound

I visited the pain specialists yesterday. Their suspicion is that the chronic pain I'm experiencing is from nerve damage. Fun stuff. This means lidocaine patches on the back for a little while, Lyrica, and an EMG on my arm to determine how much sensation I may have lost. It also means dealing with the hairline fracture in my T1.

Fun stuff.

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...