Tag: injuries

Chasing the Pain

On By Shani JanelIn Aviation Accident, Helicopter Accident2 Comments

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“Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again … we are survivors. If you are here today… you are a survivor. But those of us who have made it through hell and are still standing? We bare a different name: warriors.” — Lori Goodwin

There is an expiration date on struggle after trauma. I am sure ours passed months ago. How long are we allowed to be affected by something of this magnitude? I do not have the answer to that question, but if I did, I suppose I would say, as long as you need to be. It has been hard to accept the cards we have been dealt and so many times, I have wanted to scream into the wind. I feel like I should not be allowed to complain though. He is still with us. So many others have not been so lucky. Our lives have changed so dramatically thought and it is hard to always be positive. We had so many plans. We knew where we were going. Now our plans are tentative, and our future uncertain. But, he is here. That really is what matters. The rest. Just details.

Late in the morning some family finally arrived. His mother. I have children, and I cannot imagine seeing one of them in that much pain. Their bodies that broken. We waited as they prepared to move Chris from the ER to the Observation Room in the Neurological Unit. How did we find ourselves here, I wanted to ask her. I didn’t. It wasn’t the right time.

We waited in the small waiting room across the hall from the OR, as they once again attached him to the machines. The machines that would tell us how his body was handling the immense stress it was under. It was struggling. It must have been attempting to figure out what had happened and how to best react. How to heal. It must have been as confused as we were. The nurses worked to create as much comfort for him as possible. Pain management was of utmost importance. They did not want his pain level to get away from them. “Chasing the pain.” This was something they did not want to do. They had to keep ahead of it. I did not know pain management was such an art. A new catchphrase had been added to my vocabulary.

The Observation Room is a special room. I do not know how many rooms there are like this in the hospital. Perhaps this is the only one. Maybe it is the Neurological Unit’s ICU? It felt like that. A temperature controlled room; a room that is set to a specific temperature for certain injuries. In the room, there are beds for only four patients. For these four patients, there are always two nurses on duty. Twenty four hours a day. There is one nurse in the room at all times. This is precious space. These are precious beds. Another indicator of how serious his injuries were.

In the late afternoon, the hard plastic neck collar that had been torturing him, was finally replaced with a softer one, giving me some relief. The hiccups still plagued him. He was still thirsty. I stood beside his bed, as they switched collars. I held his head in my hands. “Keep your head still. Do not move. Focus on me. Focus on me.” We did not want to cause anymore injuries. It was a tense moment. It scared me. Throughout the rest of the day, as we waited for his surgery, the nurses looked after his needs. I could tell they were remarkable nurses. They took such good care of him. They took such good care of every patient in that room. They monitored him. They watched over him. They made me feel he was safe in their capable hands. Morphine kept some of the pain at bay. I was thankful to be in that room. It was a sad room though. It was a room full of pain and uncertainty.

The patient beside Chris had a head injury. A very bad one. I knew, but for the grace of God, it could have been Chris. This other patient was somebody’s person. I could see from the pictures beside him, he was a father. He had been there for a while. You can feel the familiarity from the nurses. They used his name often. Beside him, lay a young man who jumped off a dock into a too shallow lake, while celebrating his sister’s upcoming nuptials. His neck was broken. The last bed, a very friendly, but confused older man who had judge had brain surgery. My heart went out to all of them. It still does. They were my husband’s roommates. Trauma had brought them there together.

In the afternoon, some visitors arrived. His boss came. I had met him the night before in the ER. He had stood beside me and offered support. He had let me know that I would be taken care of. A hotel room had been booked close by. It helped. I did not know him, but it made me feel a little bit less alone. Some of the guys he had been working with arrived as well. It gave me strength to see their concern. They held their bodies in the way that people do when they are worried. When they have been touched by trauma. While it was the same accident, they were dealing with something different than me. My husband was one of their crew. They had almost lost one of their own. Mortality had shown them its face.

Chris was happy to see them. I could see it meant the world to him they were there. He seemed surprised they had come. He seemed more lucid when they were visiting. Like he was able to focus on them and why they were there. His heart rate was already high, due to the amount of stress his body was under. His nurse watched with a protective eye. When the alarms would start to go off, she would shoot them a look and shoo them out of the room. They did not mean to stress him out, it was just that he had been through so much, and their visit brought the reality of the accident home.

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Sucker Punch

On By Shani JanelIn Uncategorized1 Comment
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“Owning our stories and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” — Brene Brown

My name is Shani, and I am the wife of a helicopter pilot, and the mother of two young children. In the early days of July 2013, my husband Chris was in a catastrophic helicopter accident that almost took his life. Only by some miracle is he still here with us.

When the accident happened our daughter had just celebrated her first birthday, our son his third. To say that the accident took us by surprise would be an understatement. It was akin to being sucker punched, and life since the accident has often been difficult to navigate.

The trauma of almost losing Chris made us take a long, hard look at our lives. and the path we were on prior to that day. It has made us take stock, look at the path we are on and to think about where we want to go from here. I do not know, as we move forward, if this accident will define us or not. I do know it has fundamentally changed us. Both as individuals and as a family unit. I have decided to share our story, in the hope that no one will feel as alone as we did as we struggled through the aftermath of major trauma.

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“He is ok, but there has been an accident.”

Words I had prayed I would never hear spoke to me through the phone. In the back of my mind, I always knew his job could be dangerous, but I also know Chris. He is a good pilot. He is cautious. He is capable. He knows how much the three of us need him.

It was a beautiful summer day, the sun was shining and the kids and I had just arrived at Kits beach. At the time of the accident we were staying in my uncle’s basement, hoping to find a place of our own in Vancouver. That morning, I had dropped off the deposit money for my son’s first preschool, having recently paid the deposit for a rental home nearby. As I drove to the beach, my phone buzzed repeatedly, receiving text after text. Though I thought it a bit odd, I wasn’t too worried, until I parked and read his sister’s message, “call my mom now.” I quickly suspected something was very wrong, and while I was preparing myself to reply, I got the call. The dreaded phone call every pilot wife prays she will never get.

His boss’ voice was calm as he relayed to me what had happened. He sounded optimistic, giving me hope that Chris’ injuries were superficial. Hanging up, I struggled to process the information, as I bundled my children back into the truck, and headed for my sister’s house, knowing I had to get to Chris. As I drove, one of his coworkers called me to reassure me that Chris was going to be just fine, and that they were in the process of finding me a flight. I could hear it in his voice though, and in the urgency in which they booked my flight so I could fly to be by his side, they were uncertain of his actual condition. They were just trying not to scare me.

The accident was an hours flight away, so I entrusted our two children to my sister and my mother, as I hastily packed my sister’s suitcase and clothes. It was a Friday afternoon, and going to our place would have taken too long due to Vancouver’s infamous commute traffic. It was the first time I had left my kids with someone else, and though it was not an easy choice to make, I knew in my gut in that moment their father needed me more. Our family would not be complete without him, and I needed to do everything I could possibly do to make sure he came home to us. It was all extremely surreal. “Am I acting normal?” I wanted to ask. It kept running through my mind, but I kept it to myself, needing to believe I could handle it. That I was strong enough to live through the days in front of us.

I hugged my babies good-bye and headed to the airport, still struggling to process what was happening. I was definitely in shock, making decisions from a place I could not really understand. I was already in survival mode knowing it was up to me to keep it all together. As I sat with my sister, waiting for my flight, I knew the world we lived in when we woke up that morning was gone. Everything had shifted, and we would all have to shift with it. Our lives would now be lived in the before and in the after. My sister and I did not talk as we sat waiting for my flight. We did not know what to say. It was not a time for small talk, and we had no real idea of how Chris was doing. What does one say in a time like that, anyway? Most words feel empty, and devoid of any real meaning. So we sat in silence, contemplating. I did not know what I would find when I got to the hospital. I did not know if Chris was just fine, or not fine at all. The time it was taking to get to him was paralyzing.

On the airplane, I masked my face, and acted as though it was a routine flight, praying the entire time his injuries were superficial, but the possibilities of internal injuries kept running through my mind. I knew people die from injuries that cannot be seen.