Take off your hat, I want to stand up.

Chapter 39: Life in an Iron-Lung.

Chapter 39: Life in an Iron-Lung.

Life in an iron lung.

Janie directed me through this step by step tale of woe be me tragic events. I listened, eyes closed against the sum of reality. It could not get worse with each line of discussion and yet it did get worse. The situation went from oh no, to what the hell, to I cannot believe this is happening to our mom.

Ev drowned, came back as a broken neck victim, a paralyzed person who needed to be in an iron lung just to breath, she was terrified, cried and cried and cried. We all cried for her. Our thoughts and prayers reached out across the ocean to help support her in this time of need.

Bill her alcoholic friend said he could not stay in Hawaii much longer.  He had a job to get back. Fine, we sent our brother Donnie to Ohau. It may sound like he was a fair weather friend and you may be right, but no judgment. However, there are times a person needs to step up to the plate and perform an unselfish act. This is what it was and now everyone needed to learn how to cope. Out first effort was to save Ev.

It would be three  weeks living facedown in a huge metal cylinder that pushed air into your body and squeezed it out, sixteen times a minute, every minute of every day. We take the simple act of breathing as a natural gift. When we cannot breath we are hooped.  Ev thanked the team of dedicated doctors and nurses who saved her life.

We all needed to breath for her.

Ev had time to think. What happened? What went wrong? What could she have done differently? Everything; she summed up, was the set of circumstances that caused her accident. If there were blame to be assigned, it was her own fault. She tried to own it.

She was swimming in unknown waters. In unknown conditions. She was not an ocean aware person. Rather, she was a clear water beach person. She was a Regina Beach girl. She should not have been on an air mattress. Likely, she harkened back to the day when she gave me the self- same advice. Do not allow air mattresses in the beach water. They are dangerous, people drown when they slide off of these devices. It was her own fault. If fault and blame were colours she decided to wear them. She had to learn to live with her new reality, somehow.

The doctors told her she had severed the fourth vertebrae in her neck as the wave pushed her over onto herself. The resultant wave action and CPR roughed up enough of her nerve tissue to be all severed. They consulted the nerve damage was permanent. She was and would remain a quadriplegic. She would never walk. She would be paralyzed to the point where she would not be aware of any feeling or sensation below her neck.

Ev being the person she was; thanked the Lord for her good fortune. She felt she could have been carried out to the open ocean and eaten by sharks. She felt lucky. She wanted to thank the person who saved her life. We never knew who it was the hero who that jumped into to rescue her. Years have passed and we probably never will. To you, we say, thank you, kind hearted stranger. You allowed our mom to live. You brought our mother back to us. She lived to see new grand children she would have never known had she died that day.

What is it like to be held in suspended animation. There is no up. There is no down. There can't be a left. No right. There exists a desperation, a plea, a cry, a gurgle for help. Ev turned with all her might to seek out her Christian faith. Her father's faith. Her bible reading faith. Her deep seated faith of dutiful, divine intervention. She bargained with her demons. Her situation grew more grave. In time she was born into a new life, a wheel chair became her home.

There were many thought chapters in the evolution of Ev's circumstance. She needed to call upon strength she did not know she possessed. A deep well of momentum from that day onward kept her going. She just wanted to return home, to her own bed. To see her family. We missed her.