WEEKLY WTF
09-16-24 Edition
Desert Damage
Day number 15 at Enloe Hospital.
I wanted to post a a recent pic of our girl Maisie to do an update but she’s not too keen on photos of herself in a hospital bed, tangled in a nest of tubes and wires and the usual ICU detritus. I think she looks radiantly beautiful in every photo I take. Like a stoic but wrathful little goddess, but Maisie is very much the boss of herself
So… you’re stuck with this pic of my ugly desert mugshot.
A shot I took maybe 5 or 6 hours before our Maisie Mae broke her spine.
Kristen & I were camped deep in the sun blasted desolation of SE Nevada, the Tikaboo valley to be precise, a mere 15 miles from the back gate of Area 51.
Maisie was at her 1st week of college, Chico State, having fun with her new friends and doing as college kids do.
We had that in common, I suppose, that day. Enjoyment… but also ignorance. All of us were ignorant as to just how fast life can change.
Perhaps we’ll circle back to that but infinitely more important is how our girl is doing. We spoke to the neurosurgeon today and asked him how he thought she was doing. He said that she’s doing much better than he expected considering the extent of her injuries.
Maisie is slowly regaining feeling in almost all of her body except for an area on her hips. Some of it’s just tingles but we’ll take it! She is still unable to use her fingers or move her legs but I can’t help but extrapolate her incredible progress these last 14 days. My prayer for Maisie is simply picturing her whole, happy, walking, and I have this funny sort of memory of a future moment in which she’s talking to someone about “that time I broke my fucking spine” and telling anecdotes of that incredibly difficult and strange time in her life. My prayer is a perpetual broadcast, a persistent demand, an unyielding insistence of her happiness and wholeness in my mind until reality gets off its ass and catches up.
Maisie Mae has been having a lot of issues with heart rate and blood pressure due to the spinal cord damage. They installed a permanent pacemaker and a couple days ago they cranked it up from a minimum of 60 beats per minute to 80 in order to try to get her off of the blood pressure medication drip. It seems to have worked as she has been off of it 24hrs now, which is huge.
Her nausea has been terrible for her but she made the hard choice to decrease her painkiller dosage to mitigate that, choosing a bit more pain for much less nausea. She has, in fact, been making all of the hard decisions in ways that impress the shit out of all of us. She’s not taking the easy way out because the easy way now- becomes hard later and the hard thing now- makes it easier down the line and she seems to intuit that. Maisie Mae is a fucking bad ass.
Moods, for all of us, are up and down because of course they are. But the waves of this stormy emotional sea have settled from a typhoon down to a Nor’Eastern for now. But our hatches are battened for whatever weather next comes our way.
Last night marked 14 straight days in the ICU. Around 9pm they transferred Maisie and her entourage (Me, a few stuffed animals and a forest of flowers) To the Cardiovascular unit which is a huge step. Wifey poo stayed in the hotel last night, we take turns sleeping at the hotel vs with Miss Maisie because 2 adults in an ICU room is like trying to shove 10 pounds of shit into a 5 pound sack. Anywho, Maisie is now nearly eligible for a rehab center but her massively stapled Frankenstein incision which runs from the base of her skull down her upper back is having a hard time healing because she is always laying on it. We are hoping it doesn’t become infected or they’ll have to open her back up again.
Kristen and I have been dealing with insurance VS rehab centers for the last week or so. I have to say, the system is fucked but as broken and complex a hellscape as it is, I find there are angels there, in that hell, standing as unlikely sentinels who are sympathetic to Maisie’s plight and have stretched their own rules in order to help her. It’s too long to go into but let’s just say we jumped through some very tight hoops and pulled out some very stubborn stops and made calls and cajoled and pleaded and demanded and did all the fucking things to advocate to get our girl into the best place possible- the (out of network) Santa Clara valley medical center spinal rehab.
Ultimately there is only so much you can do in trying to reverse the flow of the massive river of insurance bureaucracy, all you can do is splash around and yet, we fucking did it, it actually happened. Not just because of our efforts but because we found those Angels hiding in hell and elicited them to our aims. It is something of a miracle that we got her in there. I can’t help but think of our friends and family behind the curtain pulling levers and pressing buttons and also the thousands of people well wishing and praying for her. Through a truly massive surge of conscious intent it seems as though the laws of existence are being re-written, her body is slowly knitting and the pieces that we need to fall into place actually are, so thank you all.
Speaking of Angels my sister Kristi, who I call “Sister Fister” (because it’s so wrong that its funny) has been like an Angel who gets shit done like a demon in her determination to help us with all things behind the scenes allowing us to focus on Maisie. When you’re dealing with hell, you want a demon on your side, believe me. And by demon I really mean she is a fucking force who is willing to do anything for family and for love. There’s so much shit that orbits a situation like this and Sister Fister fists the shit out of it and idk what we’d do without her. Have you watched the tv series “Yellowstone”? I describe my sister Kristi as basically Beth from that show- whip smart and takes no shit, just not quite so violent but still, don’t fuck with Sister Fister. Seriously, don’t… or she might just fist you too
Everyone has been extraordinary, from my dear co-workers/ friends and SF (Sister Fister) setting up the incredible gofundme for Maisie and all the people that have been donating and sharing, to people helping us with research and then there is the absolutely endless flood of love and encouragement, advice & inspiration from thousands. My view of humanity has been up-ended, in a good way for once. I have to say, humans are amazing in their capacity to care. Humans, at their best like this, are indeed worthy substrates for consciousness. I could never thank everyone enough, never, but I’ll try.
Also Maisie, who hitherto didn’t want anything to do with my social media stuff (because she’s clearly smarter than I am) has been really feeling the love and support. I asked her if I could send a few supportive people her way on Instagram and she likes the idea so there ya go. @maisie_boland on insta, you can now follow our girl. Big changes indeed.
So to circle back… I did write some shit that last day in the desert. That last day of our old life. I wrote of bats swooping us every evening while the sun melted into the horizon and bled luminous orange blood towards the heavens where it was consumed by the indifferent blackness of the cold mouth of infinite cosmos.
I wrote of a Timelapse video in which I caught something that actually might be a UFO or UAP or whatever the fuck they get re-branded as next.
I wrote of a harrowing tale of driving the unmarked dirt road to the back gate of Area 51, pushing past the “warning we will arrest your dumb ass if you trespass” signs. A tale of white dust and mysterious white trucks and a finale in which we reached the actual gate.
I wrote of an enormous white Owl that swooped us a couple days before my Daughters life, and ours, would be changed forever. An Owl that swooped low directly over our desert campfire and banked hard to the South. An, at the time, un- recognized harbinger of great change. And by great I mean massive and terrible and shattering change. But although we are in the thick of it now, I know that the bigger and more devastating the change the greater the growth down the line.
What was to be one of our most eventful and interesting trips now seems like it was a million years ago and happened to someone else, and in a way it did.
It seems almost ridiculous to me as I write this, that I can write anything at all. Because when I learned of Maisie’s accident and injuries everything extraneous in me seemed to instantly evaporate. I know it’s normal for folks in this and similar situations to sort of mourn their own futures but strangely I don’t. I willingly and gladly give of my own future- offered in the currency of the present moment, to make for Maisie the best future for her possible. In fact I am fucking honored that I am able to do this for her. Wtf else could I possibly do in life that is more important than this anyway? Nothing.
The oppressive unfairness of this whole thing for our girl is very slowly making way for something that dwells beneath it. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet but it feels strangely contrived. Like being adrift far out to sea you cannot quite discern the fact that there is movement. Not until you spy land and can get a bearing do you realize there is a current, inexorably moving you, towards some unknown horizon.
Maisie is our solitary island upon this strange sea of whom all of our bearings are taken.
A warriors is honed for battle. A leaders greatest purpose is to benevolently rule. A Doctor or nurses greatest joy is to ease suffering. A Fathers highest calling is to give of himself for his kids. As fucked up as this whole thing is, I feel like my life right now makes more sense than ever before because by helping my girl as best I can I am fulfilling the deepest urging of my DNA and activating the hidden purpose carried into this meat tractor by my very soul. We humbly ask that you keep Miracle Maisie Mae in thought and prayer, happy & whole, a commandment written in the book of collective consciousness. Toodles for now.
Tragedy
When “they” become “you”
Dedicated to Miracle Maisie Mae
Toodaloo
