Archive for October, 2010
Medical Records – Poof! They Are Gone
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Image via Wikipedia
“I just want to warn you not to be hopeful,” Terry in the Business Office of a medical practice said when I asked her about finding my medical records from the 1960s. That said, she said they would manually look through the ‘old books’ of records from the 1980s backwards to see if they could find mine. I saw Dr. Sullivan from the time I was a kid through college in the 1980s and despite the warning, am hopeful my medical records from the critical 1965-66 years still exist especially since I’ve hit so many dead ends. My original plastics surgeons are dead; their records destroyed. The hospital only had my records from the 1980s (and ironically, the woman assisting me in the medical records department was named “Bernie”). Dr. Hoops became my plastic surgeon in 1967, well after the original accident (and I do have all his records of me now). But my curiosity rests in the original records. Cross your fingers. Dousman Clinic may still come through.
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Many People Write About Burns
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Cover of The Burn Journals
If you poke around, you’ll see (as I have) that many people write about burns. Recently I finished Burned: A Memoir (www.louisenayer.com), and was fascinated by this book because it describes the effect of a mother’s burn on her daughter. I contacted Louise to ask her some questions about why she wrote the book and we’ve developed a communication of sorts. Other books I need to explore include Burned But Not Broken (www.michaeljnolte.com), Nothing Left to Burn (www.jayvarner.com) and The Burn Journals (www.burnjournals.com).
I’m not sure if the world needs another burn memoir but I still want to publish mine and I realize even from this handful of books that my story is completely different than these. Every burn it seems is unique.
Minimize, Maximize or Somewhere In Between
2I was talking to my friend Merry about writing this blog and putting together a book about the burned leg. She has heard bits and pieces of the story over the years, and I was explaining how this is the compilation of those various storyline shreds. “It must be very emotional for you doing this,” she said. “Not so much,” I replied. “Have you thought of getting counseling to work through the issues this has brought up?” she sincerely asked. “Well, not really. The most profound affect so far has been my understanding how this has affected others, like my parents rather than me.” I continued. “I guess if I hadn’t been able to live as full a life as I have, I might have been bitter or felt I had more issues, but that hasn’t been my story.” She sighed. “You are minimizing this,” she replied. Her comment has lingered with me for a couple weeks. Minimized? I wonder if that is because I’ve never maximized it. I wonder if things can happen to you and you are be generally okay with them, find meaning in them, even inspiration sometimes. What I am writing isn’t pure Pollyanna at all but what I want people to take away is that there is resolution to everything so long as you open the door to seeing beyond your narrow self. Still, I wonder if part of the effect of any injury is to either bawl your head off or to pretend it isn’t so bad. Or, can you live with a comme ci, comme ca middle-of-the-road feeling?
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Should I Wear Shorts at this Resort?
0I’ve worked with this particular company for about five years and this weekend was invited to a retreat with them at a lovely Miami resort, The Doral. After the work this morning, the company sponsored golf, tennis and swimming and I was flumoxxed. I really wanted to join the tennis tournament. But tennis would require shorts and for as many relationships as I’ve built, I wasn’t ready to show the burned leg. Swimming? Not so much. Too many explanations required. And that is the paradox of it all for me. It takes a lot of energy to explain the burns. If I don’t explain them, people stare and politely don’t ask. Which in many ways is worse. Trust me, I’ve dealt with it my whole life. I wonder a lot whether it makes the other people more uncomfortable or me more uncomfortable. I always feel that I am responsible to lead the discussion and put people at ease, which is in so many ways is exhausting for me. In any event, I always see it as a choice to make — do I share or don’t I? Does it put me too much in the spotlight instead of taking the time to focus on everyone else, which is largely easier? So, I opted for the facial. Private room, spa setting. No one is the wiser. It makes me feel disingenuous in a way — shouldn’t I just lay everything on the table and wear a swimsuit or pair of shorts? Just be confident and throw others’ opinions to the wind! But that would bring unwanted attention and possibly sympathy to me, sympathy that simply makes me uncomfortable. I have worked my entire life to NOT be defined by my burns. In the final analysis, I wasn’t ready to do it today. I wonder if other people here at Doral hide something of interest? I feel paranoid. I shouldn’t have to overthink like this. What lays below the surface. Has anyone ever felt the same?
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Serendipity or Just Life
1Heading to Miami for work this evening, I couldn’t help but think of my father, who absolutely loved Florida. He died in 1993 and I’ve been thinking about him a lot as I work on writing the story of my burns and how they were healed (physically and metaphorically). 
His favorite book was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and right next to that was his dog-eared copy of Tom Peters‘ In Search of Excellence. By some small miracle, I was at O’Hare an hour before my flight and I ducked in to Barbara’s Bookstore in United’s Terminal B. Browsing along the small aisles, I hit the bookshelf with my bag and down fell How to Win Friends and Influence People, the special Anniversary edition celebrating the book’s over 70 years in print. Of course I bought it. Reading it on the plane explained a lot about my dad, who followed the Carnegie tenets to a “t”. I mean this was his bible. Now, I’d say I ran into some cosmic serendipity tonight. My friend and audio engineer Todd Hoyer would say, “Bah humbug, that’s just life, don’t make anything out of this.” So, I wonder dear readers — how do you distinguish when the universe is calling from when it’s just stuff that happens? Please tell me your experiences.
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Liz. The name is Liz. Just Liz.
0I had the good fortune yesterday to meet with Liz Strauss (www.successful-blog.com), blogging expert extraordinaire. My friend Louise who knows of my efforts to blog and write a book on my burned leg experiences, called saying just this: “Google the word “Liz”. Just Liz.” Hurumphing all the way, I did. And bang, up came Liz’s blog information. Impressive and mighty well optimized, I might say. So I looked forward to lunch. I took notes. Lots of notes. Liz told me that one of the most searched terms, if not the most searched term in this cybersphere, is “Starting Over” — that people are hungry for ways to reinvent, remake, reconfigure themselves. Liz thought my project has potential in that regard. I’ll take potential. One of the things I’m realizing (and this adds to the comment Kris Plendl made on this blog yesterday) is that getting in motion sets things in motion.
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Time-and-Space Leg-Look-Lag, or How About Some Denial?
4Well, I finally did it. I actually opened and read the medical records I’d ordered about 18 months ago. I know this sounds strange. When they arrived in separate, non-descript manilla envelopes last March 2009, I quickly ripped opened one packet. Doing a quick flip through, I saw the unthinkable: My leg. I was 7 years old and the plastic surgeon took a full leg picture from various angles. While it was thankfully taken in black and white, the sight was such a shock to me that I put the package back in its envelope. Unbelieveable as it was, I had never seen a photo of my own leg. Truth be told, it looked awful and made me feel that way too. Good god that must have hurt, I thought realizing at the same time that I was starting to detach me from myself. That’s a long way of saying, I wanted to forget about the picture for a while. And so I did. It’s one of the many ways that this “project” of mine continues to surprise even me. More on what was in the two packages later.
Talking with Relatives
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Image via Wikipedia
One of the most fascinating aspects of looking back in time is talking to my mother and father’s relatives. Memory is an interesting thing. So, apparently were the 1960s. Intuitively I think I knew that things were different for families in the 60s but mom’s cousin Verna told me today that ‘we dealt with the monkey rather than going to the organ grinder.” There was a hesitancy to most everything back then — whether it was the idea of calling someone long distance or doing things against the grain. I was trying to figure out how, after the accident, I actually got to the hospital. My sister told me that mom called dad and had him drive home from the office to take me. Cousin Verna confirmed this possibility, “If it were me, I would have called [my husband] to come home from work. Remember, we dealt with the monkey so we would have hesitated to call the hospital and there probably wasn’t 911 back then.”
Another Strike-Out
0When I emerged from my initial burn hospitalization after 3 months and countless surgeries, I headed to a place called the Curative Workshop (www.newcurative.org) for rehabilitation. I remember putting on a bathing suit and going into a round metal tub filled with warm water (maybe this was precurser to the modern-day hot tub but a whole lot less fun and definitely without the jets). Today I called the Curative Workshop and records from the 60s are long since destroyed. John, the medical records historian, has only been working there for 17 years which unfortunately didn’t help me. He also didn’t remember a worker there named Audrey. Another person I remember as the woman who helped me in that metal tub so many times over so many months. So, another strike-out today on the information front.
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Finding People
1Finding people after 40 years is something of a daunting task. Yes, there are some alive and well, and even willing to talk about what they remember of my accident. But then there are the ones I think of and only remember a first name — Maggie, my nurse in the hospital, or Audrey, the physical therapist. I talked to my friend Sue who works at the hospital where I was treated so many years ago and she confirmed that in our modern world, our modern human resources rules mean people can’t share much. So will I ever find these people I remember? And if I did, would they remember? Maggie the nurse would. When I was 18, I went to visit a friend at the hospital, St. Vincent’s. When I walked out of the elevator she ran toward me and hugged me. I had no idea who she was until she told me, tears in her eyes. How she remembered me then, 15 years after she had last seen me, still startles me.