Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

Well, if you've been wondering what I've been up to lately, I've got three words for you: pumpkin decorating contest.

This year was the third annual pumpkin decorating contest and fundraiser for United Way. Deb helped with the contest last year, so she set up a meeting for anyone who wanted to work on it this year. Don't worry, I was the first one in the room. Although there weren't very many of us, we came up with a few clever ideas. We didn't have too many restrictions; the only real rule was that you could not have more than 3 pumpkins in your display.

After coming up with a few crazy ideas (such as a pumpkin giving birth-- and I'm not kidding), we decided to go with the theme of "The Three Little Pigs." We were going to use a couple of our competitors as the stick and straw houses and construct our company's house out of brick. We didn't make very much progress in the beginning (3 days before the contest), but we all chipped in and came up with an *awesome* display to show off on Thursday.

Most of you know that I *love* crafts just for fun. But throw in a little competitive spirit and a co-worker telling me we didn't have a chance of winning (Alan!), and you've got one crazy crafter on your hands. I stayed late Monday and Tuesday nights to paint the pumpkins bright pink. The first coat barely made a dent- the porous pumpkin sucked the craft paint right up. But by Wednesday morning, we had two very pink pumpkins. Gena picked up some key ingredients to give the project a 3-D effect- the wolf, straw, pig masks, and more. Glenda brought in tree branches, and Jo e and Jolene bought stones, fake leaves, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes. My contributions: 1. Time 2. Effort 3. Sponges (I'll explain later).

On Wednesday morning, Joe, Deb, and I went outside to pick up sticks to build the second house. There is a small wooded area along one of the paths in front of the main entrance, which was very convenient. However, we definitely got a few looks from people who thought we were crazy, especially since it had just stopped raining. I also grabbed some acorns, and Joe wanted to get a bunch of wet leaves. We brought enough sticks and leaves inside to build a small forest. Joe and I (you will see a theme here- he helped with a lot of the manual labor) spread everything out to dry in my area. I'm in a section with 8 cubicles- 6 of which are unoccupied. My student is in another cube, but he was out of the office for a career fair that day.

We covered cardboard boxes with brown craft paper and went to town. Glue was *everywhere*! We put together the first house and were surprised with the results... this could turn out much better than we originally thought. Wednesday afternoon, the whole group got together for some last minute prep- Gena, Glenda, Alan, Tammy, Joe, Jolene, Deb and myself, along with the help of Bill and Jeanne, finished our Three Little Pigs pumpkin scene. But, I wasn't quite satisfied...

I wanted to make our display stand out, so we used as many 3-D pieces as we could. The straw and stick houses looked great, but the house of brick just wasn't cutting it. It was a box wrapped in a picture of a store, which looked nice, but definitely did not have the same jaw-dropping effect as the other two. Without delay, I called my mom (Who else?! She is brilliant!) for some suggestions on how to make a cardboard box look like it was made of brick. Her suggestion: sponges.

So after Zumba I Wednesday night, I went to Dollar Tree to pick up supplies. (I don't know if you have this store were you live, but it had been some time since I had been in one. They have everything! There are actually some decent deals there- I found a large bottle of craft paint for, wait for it...., only a dollar!) I spent the next several hours painting sponges red and black- 50 of them to be exact- and gluing them to a cardboard box. I'm glad a laid down a plastic drop cloth (also at the Dollar Tree) because it was a giant mess! Take a look at this...

This has a scary resemblance to my desk at work

The fruit of my labor

So, without further ado, I present, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" by the Pharmacy Ops team.

A piggie with the brick house... we added some embellishments that made it look even more realistic.

A piggie with the stick house- Joe and I used almost 20 glue sticks to make this!

A piggie with the straw house... Gena and Tammy used 20 more glue sticks to keep the straw from falling off

We used a fan with blue ribbon attached to show the wind from the wolf blowing the houses down

From left to right: Deb, Joe, Alan, and Me

In case you're curious, here's how we made the pigs. I used 4 coats of pink craft paint to make the pumpkins pink. We cut toilet paper rolls into thirds and painted them pink and black to look like hooves. The hooves were stuck onto the pig using hot glue. The tails were made of 3 pipe cleaners braided together, then wrapped around two of my fingers for the curled look. The masks came from Rhode Island Novelty .(Gena is also very crafty and told me about this place. I haven't been there yet, but I can't wait to see kinds of deals they have waiting for me!) I love the googly eyes- so much better than painting them on the pumpkin.

We set up our display Thursday morning, and I was so proud of it! Even if we didn't win, I thought it turned out really well. Naturally, I couldn't be there during the voting and pumpkin contest- I had to do a flu clinic then work at a store. However, I was in a room signing up for Be the Match to be a bone marrow donor. When I was filling out some of the paperwork, another worker from the organization came into the room and said, "Nicole, you have got to go down there! There are some awesome displays- there's even the three little pigs!" That's all the confirmation I needed to know that we did a good job. However, a couple of VIP's from our team sent out e-mails congratulating the pumpkin decorators for what an "outstanding job" we did. (I just hope I don't get dubbed as the "piggie pumpkin girl.")

We haven't heard the official results, but I'm still proud of my pink piggies. In honor of them, I think I'm going to treat myself to a manicure and pedicure (with pink polish, of course) before I come home next weekend.

Happy Halloween!

We Survived the M.B.T.A.: a Weekend with My Mom

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post! Last week I was busy with what I call "maintaining the facade." My mom was on her way to visit for the weekend, so I was "staging my apartment" and making it as clean as possible!

My mom flew into Providence on Thursday afternoon. We went back to my apartment to relax for a bit, and then went to North Providence for dinner. For my birthday, Lisa gave me gift certificates to restaurants in Providence and Boston (a fabulous gift, by the way!). We used one of the gift certificates at an Italian restaurant, Pizzico. The atmosphere was warm and inviting, and the food was delicious. I had barbecue chicken pizza, and my mom had risotto with mushrooms.

I took a vacation day on Friday, but we did go into work so that Mom could meet the people I spend the most time with at work. She got to meet Deb, Troy, Mike, and Alma; I also showed her a few of the things I've been working on, including my research project and some clinical reviews for our merchandising team.

After our tour, we headed down to Newport. The drive from my house to the southern part of Rhode Island was gorgeous. All of the trees are at their peak for changing colors... every shade of yellow, orange, red, and purple you can imagine. (Too hard to take a picture while you're in the car, though. It doesn't quite have the same effect.) It was a little on the cool side when we got there, but we are more of a cold weather family, so my mom and I didn't mind wearing a sweater (much better than being hot and sweaty!). We ate lunch at the Clam Jumper and walked around downtown Newport. My mom got me the cutest pair of cat eye sunglasses! (See below) I think I am going to wear them with a black dress to work on Friday in celebration of Halloween.

Aren't these adorable?

Cute idea: the Clam Jumper had Christmas lights in traps used to catch seafood

We also visited Aardvark Antiques, a unique salvage shop at the bottom of the ramp that you take to get to downtown Newport. I've always wanted to visit but never actually stopped. It is similar to White River Salvage in Indy, but they have a much larger selection of outdoor ornaments. They had every kind of statue you could imagine... animals (dolphins, bears, an alligator, birds to name a few), people (small children playing, jockeys, Roman goddesses), and ornament urns, columns, and vases.

They have all shapes and sizes of metal gates- I would love to use these in my house (well, I don't have a house yet, but when I do)

If I could have chosen one thing, this fountain would have definitely been it- I'm obsessed with lions

Here's Mom standing by a horse statue- it was beautiful and larger than life (literally)

There was a family of elephants (Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and baby bears)- I'm standing next to the Mama elephant

In the late afternoon, we went to tour the Breakers, one of the mansions on Newport. The Breakers was owned by the Vanderbilt family and used as a summer home up until the 1970's; it was sold to the Historical Preservation Society. The house is 138,000 square feet, has 70 rooms and 20 bathrooms, and the most beautiful sculptures, chandeliers, and marble tiling I have ever seen. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the house, but again, I'm not sure my photography would do it justice. A couple of my favorite parts of the house included the monogrammed navy and gold china, the marble walls in the game room, and the giant staircase. My mom liked Mrs. Vanderbilt's room and the chandeliers in the dining room. Another very unique feature was the open air living room on the second floor that overlooks the ocean- it was used for entertaining.

A light post outside the Breakers

A view of the back of the mansion

This is the view from the mansion looking out to the sea

Friday night we rented the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Neither of us had been able to watch it when it first came out, and I am so glad that we picked that movie. The story was amazing- really makes you realize how lucky you are. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it tonight! I'm also thinking about getting the soundtrack, but I'll listen to song clips on iTunes before I buy it.

On Saturday we drove to Boston to shop at our one of our favorite stores- Paper Source! I had written down some addresses and information on which subway lines to take. However, I didn't write down directions on how exactly to get to our number one destination. I was planning on using my phone to get last minute directions but that is a little hard if you leave your phone at home! I was happily surprised when we made it with little trouble. (Don't be fooled, though- I did get us turned around more than once when we were walking around the city- oops! Sorry Mom!)

Even though we had never been an actual store, we have been shopping online at Paper Source's website for more than a year. They have absolutely adorable gifts, craft kits, and the one of the best selections in color and size of paper for making your own invitations. (Right now my mom is making invitations for Tammy's son's wedding, which will be next August. My mom is so creative and talented! I think she should start her own business, but we can save that for another post.) We had so much fun looking at everything in the store- we spent almost 2 hours there! I got a couple sets of cards and invitations to personalize, along with these "expression notes" I've been eyeing for some time now.

After lunch we went to another stationary store in Boston, Rugg Road, and looked at their speciality papers and invitations for ideas. We got on the subway to head north, but right after the doors closed, the signs changed to "Out of Service." We ended up having to get off at the next stop and wait for another train, which we only took one stop further. It didn't seem like it was worth it, but I'm sure we went farther than what it felt like. After the subway experience, we went into the North End for a cannoli at Mike's Pastries.

Their cannolis are amazing!

We also visited Kitchen Arts on Newbury Street and found unique cookie cutters and small fondue dipping stations (I'm not sure what the correct term is, but I know this isn't right. It is almost like a birdbath on top and a tea light goes underneath to keep the fondue warm. I am so excited to use it!)

On Saturday night I made dinner for my Mom at home- Greek salads, red pepper hummus with toasted Wheat Thins, and fruit salad with dates. Nothing to write home about, but I think we were still full from the cannolis! We also looked through a book we got in Boston- Paperie for Inspired Living. The author makes absolutely gorgeous invitations, but the best feature of the book is all of the practical tips she gives.

On Sunday morning, we slept in (worn out from our day in Boston!), and then I made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. We did a little bit of shopping in Nordstrom's at Providence Place Mall. If you are ever looking for nicer hair clips, barrettes, or headbands, they have a great selection. Although they cost just a bit more, the quality and designs make it worth the cost. After a late lunch, I took my Mom to the airport.

I am very thankful that I have such a great relationship with my Mom. It was so nice to spend time together, just the two of us, to catch up in person. We talk several times a week on the phone but that isn't the same as face-to-face. It did make me feel like more of an adult- it was my Mom's first overnight stay at one of her adult children's apartments/houses.

Thanks for a great weekend, Mom!

Running in the Rain

I woke up at approximately 5:00 am this morning to get ready to leave for my mini marathon in Newport. I had heard the weather wasn't supposed to be great this weekend, but I was crossing my fingers that it would hold out until tomorrow. Wrong. The weather in Newport: 40 degrees, "gusting winds" (I am not making that up), and rain. I don't know about you, but somehow driving over two hours (both ways) to run 13 miles in cold, rainy, and windy weather just doesn't make sense. Instead, I had a bowl of cereal and started catching up on some projects for work.

I am a little disappointed that didn't go today but not heartbroken about it. (I hope not everyone thinks I am lame for not going...) I think I am most proud of the fact that I kept up with my training for over 2 1/2 months. I've definitely learned a lesson in planning, though. Next time I'll sign up for a mini marathon that's in late spring/early summer.

Until then, I think I need a new gym routine. I don't want to get bored doing the same thing all the time. (Come to think of it, I never really loved running.) I've saved a bunch of workouts from magazines over the years, so I'm going to look through those and see what might work for me. As for today, I think I'll run at least a few miles on the treadmill in honor of the mini. And yes, it is still raining...

Weekend Recap

Wow- I can't believe it's already Thursday. Not only was it a four-day week, I had two different flu clinics and will be working in a store tomorrow, so I've been a busy bee. I have so many things to write about here on the blog, but I'll start with my last trip to Indy.


After much ado about nothing on Friday night, I spent Saturday with my mom in Carmel. We ran some errands and then went to Clay Terrace to have lunch at Kona Grill. Their salad is delicious- chopped lettuce, ramen noodles, scallions, almonds, and a vinegar-based sauce. After lunch, we went to Oliver Twist, a new stationary store just a couple of doors down. They have *absolutely* wonderful stationary, cards, journals, and invitations.


Over the past year or so, my mom has been making invitations for weddings and showers for family friends. She definitely has the eye of a designer and is creative to boot. I'm definitely not as talented as she is, but I try to help out whenever I can. Right now my mom is designing invitations for a friend's son's wedding next August. I know these are hard to see, but here are a couple of the invitations we saw that we liked.







Saturday evening, Nick and I stopped by the Rathskeller, the only bar in Indy that has Nick's favorite beer on tap, Weihenstephaner. His Uncle Bob is in a band called "Polka Motion," and they were playing outside on the street in celebration of a German festival.




Uncle Bob is the one playing the accordian. I tried to get Nick to polka dance with me, but he's not ready for that yet.



Random picture of a church downtown- this reminds of a picture I took when we were in Prague

After dinner at Barcelona, one of my favorite restaurants in Indy, we spent some time with David, Nick's roommate, just hanging out at their apartment. Later that night, one of my very favorite people, June, stopped by to visit! I hadn't seen her in several months, so we were excited to catch up. Of course, I forgot to take pictures (that's less than ideal

Ok, I am falling asleep at the computer. To be continued tomorrow...

Can't Help Falling in Love

I hope everyone had a great weekend. I was lucky enough to have today off in celebration of Columbus Day (we celebrate everything at corporate), and I went home to Indy for a three-day weekend. I thought I would try to fly out of Boston to save time, since there are no direct flights to Indianapolis from Providence. This might have worked in theory, but on Friday, my flight was delayed for 3 hours- I didn't get into Indy until almost 2:00 AM!

Today's flight was a little smoother (only 30 minutes delayed, and it helps that I'm beginning to get more familiar with the airport. I took a train in from Providence to save money on parking, but by the time I bought two train tickets (the first train broke down on the tracks, so I had to buy a different ticket, which was twice as much as the first one), a bus pass, and parking in Providence, I'm not sure it was worth all of the hassle and the $10 I might have saved.

After I got off the plane, I had to take the Silver Line bus to get to South Station. I had turned on my phone and noticed I had a new e-mail from Nick. Nick reads the news multiple times a day, so he sends me a link every once in a while to a story he thinks I'll like. Due to my curiosity, I couldn't wait to read what the article was about, so I opened the link and began reading it on my Blackberry. Before I knew it, I was crying in the middle of a crowded bus in Boston (shocker). I would have felt sorry for the guy sitting next to me, but I think he would have cried, too, if he had heard this story. If you read it, you'll see what I mean.

For your convenience, I'll post the story below, but here's the actual link if you're interested:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3313452/The-man-who-keeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html


The Man Who Keeps Falling in Love With His Wife

Clive had no idea that Tuesday, March 26, 1985 would be his last day of conscious thought. We weren't ready. Did he feel his brain disappearing that night? Why didn't he wake me? By morning he could not answer a simple question or remember my name. The doctor said it was flu and a lack of sleep that was causing the confusion. He tucked him up with a temperature of 104 and a bottle of sleeping pills.

"No need to stay home," he said to me. "These'll knock him out for eight hours. Go to work."

I went to work. When I came home that night the bed was empty. His pajamas lay crumpled in the middle of the bare sheet. I screamed his name. Running the length of the flat, I already knew something bad had happened.

"I'm never ill," Clive used to say. And he never was. Then all of a sudden he was. But instead of a normal illness, this one is rare, sneaky. Nobody knew what was wrong with him: not the taxi-driver who found him wandering the streets that night, nor the policeman who traced his address from his credit card and called me.

When we finally got him to St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, the doctors thought he was a goner. Only they didn't put it like that. They told me what they thought he might have, and said it had a high mortality rate. I didn't know if that meant probably live or probably die, and I didn't like to ask.

The diagnosis came 11 hours after our arrival at St Mary's. A virus had caused holes in Clive's brain; his memories had fallen out. The doctors said it was encephalitis, from herpes simplex, the cold-sore virus. The virus, they explained, lies dormant in most of the population. Once in a blue moon it slips its moorings, and instead of going to the mouth it goes to the brain. The brain swells up, and, before long, brain crushes against bone.
The virus does its damage before anyone knows it is there. Affected areas include temporal lobes, occipito-parietal and frontal lobes... thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala; it just keeps on storming through. The part it wipes out completely is the hippocampus, Greek for seahorse. These structures are what we use for recall and remembering, and laying down new thoughts.

By the time they had figured out what was wrong with Clive and started pumping anti-viral drugs into him, all he had left where his memory used to be were seahorse-shaped scars. He could not remember a single thing that had ever happened to him, but he remembered me and knew that he loved me.

August, 1985: "How long have I been ill?''

"Four months."

"Four months? Is that F-O-R or F-O-U-R (ha ha!)?"

"F-O-U-R."

"Well, I've been unconscious the whole time! What do you think it's like to be unconscious for... how long?''
"Four months."

"Four months! For months? Is that F-O-R or F-O-U-R?"

"F-O-U-R."

"I haven't heard anything, seen anything, smelled anything, felt anything, touched anything. How long?"

"Four months."

"... four months! It's like being dead. I haven't been conscious the whole time. How long's it been?"

After two weeks, I decided it was legitimate to start saying, "Nearly five months," to skip the joke. It was all I could do to manage the dialogue itself, but finding the patience to react each time as if for the first time - so that he wouldn't feel that I was ignoring him - was sometimes beyond me.

Clive was constantly surrounded by strangers in a strange place, with no knowledge of where he was or what had happened to him. To catch sight of me was always a massive relief - to know that he was not alone, that I still cared, that I loved him, that I was there. Every time he saw me, he would run to me, fall on me, sobbing, clinging. It was a fierce reunion.

"I thought I was dead," he would say, "if I had any thoughts at all."

If I left Clive's side, the impact of my reappearance after a trip to the bathroom, a word with a nurse, was no less than at my first appearance that day. Clive was living in an abyss, and then out of nowhere, without any warning, I, his wife, would appear over the rim, right there in the room with him.

Sometimes his right arm shot up in the air and he would sing a high note, a little cadenza, he would lift me up and swing me round and laugh, then stop and hold me and look at me, study my face, grinning, searching to see if I had cottoned on to the fact that he was awake now, alive, truly seeing me.

"I can see you!" he'd announce triumphantly. "I'm seeing everything properly now!" It was hard to look excited and delighted for the umpteenth time on one visit, but being besotted with him helped. I was always delighted to see his face, to hold him and kiss him. Before he'd been ill, we would greet each other whenever we found ourselves in the same room together.

When we met at the end of the day or in the street or at rehearsal (Clive was a conductor and BBC music producer when the illness struck), we always hurried to reach each other, passionate and full of affection. So, although it was painful when Clive was so distressed, hugging him for some minutes after a visit to, say, the bathroom, was in keeping with our relationship.

In spite of Clive's amnesia, inside he retained his fundamental intelligence: the same intelligence that had propelled him throughout his career. He was often lucid and, apart from occasional episodes when he was full of rage, he was himself. That was what made his condition all the more horrific.

Clive no longer had any episodic memory, that is, memory for events. Clive did not have the brain parts necessary to recall anything that had happened to him in the whole of his life. But, as is the case with amnesia, he could remember general things. For example, Clive knew that he was married, although he was unable to recall our wedding - a civil ceremony in Camden Town Hall in September, 1983.

He could not have described my appearance, although he knew me as soon as he saw me. He knew he was a musician and conductor, but could not recall any concert. He knew his children by his first marriage - two sons and a daughter, all grown up - but expected them to be much smaller and wasn't sure how many he had. He was surprised to see that The Times no longer had personal columns on its front page, and thought it would cost fourpence, a pre-decimalisation price.

He knew his own name and the names of his siblings and childhood family. He knew facts about his childhood life: where he grew up, where he was evacuated to in the war. He knew that he went to Clare College Cambridge, on a choral scholarship, opting against King's because "everybody wanted to go there".

After that, his sense of his own autobiography got a bit hazy. It was just as well we'd been together six-and-a-half years, or he might not have been able to remember me.

We were looking around for treatment, a brain-injury rehabilitation programme that would take him on. But could rehabilitation stick when nothing else had? Clive could not remember the sentence before the one he was in. Conversation, watching television or reading were beyond him.

I learned that amnesic people have some residual learning capacity that is implicit; they can learn through a kind of conditioning process. A person can learn to respond to certain stimuli even if they think it is their first experience of the stimulus. For example, since the staff always gave Clive a small plastic beaker of water with his medication, he would expect it, raise the beaker and say every time, "Is this champagne, or real pain?"

Amnesic people can also recall by using "priming": that is, if they hear one thing or phrase associated with another, hearing the first prompts a statement of the second. So, if I said, "St Mary's," Clive could say, "Paddington," though he had no idea what it meant.

When Clive made the first entries in his diary it was at my prompting. But on Sunday, July 7, 1985 he made his first spontaneous entry: "Today: 1st CONSCIOUSNESS... Conscious for the FIRST TIME."

This probably marks the first time Clive was able to articulate to himself the strange phenomenon of immediate and blanket forgetting that he had experienced since he was brought into hospital.
Clive made entries in the diary every two or three minutes. People have sometimes interpreted that to imply a new awakening at two- or three-minute intervals. In fact the lapse between each entry signified only the time it took for the process of recording. It involved deciding to write down the fact of his awakening, pulling a pen from his pocket and writing; then a read-through of previous entries, scoring these out because he was sure he had been unconscious when he wrote them.

When he came to the last entry he checked his watch and saw that it was incorrect, so he amended it, reinforcing the last and only true entry by underlining it. Finally Clive would replace the top on his pen, put it back in his pocket and look around to get his bearings in the room. That process might take the few minutes between entries. His span of "consciousness" is actually a great deal shorter.

Every diary entry gives an eyewitness account of a life with no memory: "5.10am Conscusch FINALLY AWAKE AT - AM [a hotchpotch of successive times all scribbled out later] exactly. Newspaper arrived at 8.40am Medicines arrived at 8.45am AND I AWOKE properly AT 8.47am. And completely at 8.49am And became aware of the problems of understanding me."

I was reading medical books, but the cases I read about bore little resemblance to Clive's. For one thing, he started to talk backwards. It had the qualities of compulsion, as if it were his language of choice. He spoke backwards more quickly than anyone could decipher what he was saying. He thoroughly enjoyed this, and gave the staff a run for their money, giggling when they couldn't make him out. He didn't seem to be able to recall my name, but recognised it when he saw it.

"harobeD!" he said. "O harobeD, I evol ouy!"

The fact that Clive could spell and speak back-to-front with such facility and wit showed there was some real intelligence alive in there. His brain might be dark, and yet he was a crack backwards-speaker.

I was soon to discover that more of Clive's brain was intact. There were not many places to go off the ward with Clive but the hospital chapel was one of them, a familiar environment to Clive, who had spent his whole life singing, playing the organ or conducting in similar rooms.

I picked up some music and held it open for Clive to see. I started to sing one of the lines. He picked up the tenor line and sang with me. A bar or so in, I suddenly realised what was happening. He could still read music. He was singing. His talk might be a jumble no one could understand, but his brain was still capable of music.

This opened a door for Clive. He could sit down at the chapel organ and play with both hands on the keyboard, changing stops, and with his feet on the pedals, as if this were easier than riding a bicycle. Singing was in many ways easier than talking. It transcended language.

And the momentum of the music carried Clive from bar to bar. He knew exactly where he was because in every phrase there is context implied: by rhythm, key, melody. When the music stopped, Clive fell through to the lost place. But for those moments he was playing he seemed normal again.

I had long worried about Clive's future care. He continued to live in the same room in the psychiatric wing of St Mary's, but it was not ideal. Then, in 1992, a new residential unit for people with acquired brain injury opened that was just right for Clive: a beautiful house in the countryside in the grounds of a large rehab center.

With Clive settled, I could begin to plan my own extrication from the brain-injury world. I thought leaving England would perhaps be a way of leaving all the pain. I'd been 27 when Clive got ill. I was now turning 35. I initiated divorce. I took a plane to Washington DC and sold the London flat. I planned to stay away forever, make a new life. It didn't work out quite that way.

Clive never knew we were divorced because he was incapable of knowing anything. His family and his consultant agreed it would only upset him at the time, and he would remember none of it afterwards anyway. Legally he could not give informed consent, so his son acted for him.

Everyone understood that the divorce was partly one of expedience, since I would not be in the UK to look out for Clive; and partly an action to help me move on to a life beyond Clive. But I would remain joint next of kin with his son, because I wanted to continue to be involved in taking decisions about Clive, to continue to be his advocate. His family supported me in that.

I continued to visit him. Nine years into the amnesia, there was some difference in our reunions. For the first few years Clive had always found them intensely emotional, bringing on either grief, high-note joy or furious anger. Now, when I came back from America, it was my turn to feel intensely emotional. I was longing to see him.
When I put my head round his door, his face registered a rush of delight and surprise as if he were about to dash to me as usual and lift me up and swing me round, but then he checked himself. He stood where he was, diffident. He knew enough about himself to realise that although it might seem like months or years of absence to him, I might only have been to the bathroom.

He seemed to be learning, through a kind of interior rehabilitation. He was developing a growing sense that he had asked and heard these questions and answers of awakening before. Though his stump of memory never allowed progression from first moment to sustained time, he understood enough of his situation to help him relate to others without constantly shouting to be let out of his amnesia. As I observed these subtle changes since my absence, I could not suppress a flash of hope. What else might he accomplish?

For the longest time little changed. Clive and I were each in a limbo of our own. But one night in 1999 I discovered, during a phone call to a friend, that God is real and who He is. Suddenly I knew what was important. I was beginning to know how to live, and discovered the power of prayer.

Meanwhile Clive, from being withdrawn and morose in his room, became garrulous and outgoing. There were certain themes he stuck to, and some of what he said was rather odd, but he had come a long way from the years of the endless same few questions.

Now he would string all his subjects together in a row, and the other person simply needed to nod or mumble agreement. On days when he was in particularly good spirits, he might run through all his topics at once. Then I knew he was happy. If he was unhappy he would revert to the desperate old questions - "What's it like to have one long night lasting ...how long?"

Now that it had been 14 years, nobody liked to tell him how long. "It's like being dead!" The staff had come to call these his "deads", and they would count them and enter them in their records as a measure of how he was doing.
Clive was, granted, still perhaps the worst case of amnesia in the world, but there was no doubt he was learning new things and the difference it made to his quality of life to be able to converse more easily was significant.
One day I rang Clive and asked him how he'd feel about renewing our marriage vows. "What a lovely idea," he said.
And so, on Easter Sunday 2002, Clive and I dressed up to the nines. Clive's son Anthony came with his wife and two children, and so did Clive's care assistant, Laura. We had not made our marriage vows in church first time round so this would be much more powerful.

Clive was able to participate completely, remembering the Lord's Prayer and saying all that he wanted to say. The best bit was when we knelt down and our joined hands were wrapped in a golden sash. It went beyond a physical joining. It felt like we were touching something of eternity. Afterwards the tea room served us large slices of Victoria sponge and Clive, although he had no memory of what had taken place, was delighted, laughing and quipping and eating everything put in front of him.

Back at Clive's home, they had made up a bed for me in his room, strewn with red rose petals and balloons, like a fairy tale. The decorations made me sad. It's still sad - that he's like he is and that, apart from the heart-to-heart love, we have nothing resembling a regular marriage.

Even spending the night together in the same room doesn't work, as he wakes up constantly, several times an hour, wondering who the shape in the next bed can be.

Clive still writes his diary. The entries have barely changed, but the handwriting is calmer now. And his disposition is a lot happier. He knows he is in his place and I am out in the world.

"When are you coming?" is his regular refrain. But if I hesitate at all he reassures me that he is all right and he understands I have to do what I have to do.

"Get here at dawn," he says anyway. "Get here at the speed of light."

And one day I do arrive at dawn. I drive through the near-empty roads, hoping to be there when he wakes. But when they open the front door, he is there, already awake, and I am the first person he has seen and he clasps me to him and sings a high G and waltzes me into the living-room.

"My eyes have just come on," he says. "I can see everything normally for the first time."

"And I'm here!" I say.

He hugs me again, holds me at arm's length and smiles.

Later, when he makes me coffee, he knows where the cups are and where the milk is kept. I take him for a drive, and as we draw near to the house on the way back, he must recognise the place, for he unclasps his seat belt and offers to get out and open the gate.

When I leave that night my car doesn't start and I have to come in and call the breakdown service. We make a drink in the kitchen. Seven minutes after the last mention of my car Clive says, "Well, at least it means you can stay a bit longer!" Perhaps he had been rehearsing the event in his mind through those minutes. When the garage has repaired the fault and the engine is running, I come back in to get my things. Clive is ready to say goodbye and not hello.

"Remember I love you," I say.

"I can never forget you for a moment," he says. "We're not two people but one. You're the raison d'être for my heartbeat, darling. I love you for e-ter-ni-ty."

When I reach home several hours later I call him. I want to tell him I've arrived safely but he's forgotten I was there.

"When are you coming?" he says. "Please come at the speed of light!"

"I just got home from you," I say.

"Oh really? Well, come at dawn then..."

-By Deborah Wearing, 2005

Happy Trails?

It's hard to believe that my mini marathon is in less than 2 weeks. The training has gone fairly smoothly-- I only had to take one week off (I was coming down with a cold). I have been following Hal Higdon's training regimen, and I was due for my 8 mile run on Sunday. The weather hasn't been the greatest on the weekends (cold and rainy!), so I was running on the treadmill. (Prior to Lisa and Nick visiting, I was running on the roads around my apartment complex, but they were both very adament about me finding another place to run because of safety concerns.) I remembered hearing about a bike trail in the area and managed to find it online.

For anyone familiar with Indianpolis, the Blackstone Valley Bikeway is similar to the Monon Trail. When it is complete, it will extend 48 miles from Providence, RI to Worcester, MA. Currently, there are several of patches of completed trail in Rhode Island. So, map in tow, I attempted to find one of the entry points. However, the directions on the site were less than ideal, and with my natural sense of direction (I have none.... no really, none. I once got lost in the woods on a retreat in high school and they had to call the police to find me... oops.), I was lost for about 20 minutes. I parked illegally (no spots were left) and was all fired up for my big run. I had a Camelbak (small backpack that also carries water- I highly recommend you invest in one if you do any decent amount of hiking or biking) so that I wouldn't have to stop for water, and I was wearing a Nike headband/sweatband to keep the sweat out of my eyes (granted, this is not the most fasionable look, but I feel so much more intense when I put it on- ha!).

I always walk for at least 5-10 minutes before I stretch and start my run. When I begun on the trail, I discovered that my headphones only worked in one ear. Alright, that's not the end of the world. Then I came to an outlook point and began streching, during which I got at least two bug bites (I HATE BUGS). After the bugs, I went to turn on my Nike Plus running system, which I use to calculate distance and keep track of my speed. (Another good investment if you like to run and are into numbers. You put a chip in your shoe and a chip onto your iPod, and they are connected wirelessly. It can tell you how far you've gone, how fast you're going, calories burned, etc. This data can then be downloaded onto Nike's running site when you sync your iPod on your computer.) When the chip on my iPod was trying to locate the signal from my shoes, I realized that I had forgotten to put the chip into my new pair of running shoes. Great. Now I can't really calculate how far I will be running. No big deal, I thought. I was going to do this run no matter what.

Turning on my favorite playlist ("Take Me Away"), I began to run. I kid you not- within the first thirty seconds I must have eaten five bugs. (Remember, I HATE BUGS.) I immediately proceeded to turn around, run back to my car, and leave the park. I'm sure the people there thought I was a nut job because I had so much gear on but ran less than 0.1 miles. Instead of running when I got home, I took a three-hour nap. I think running on Sunday just wasn't in the cards this week.

I did run my long run yesterday, and it was a little short of 8 (5 miles)- I was still proud of myself, though. I ran another 4 miles today, and then my next run on Thursday will be 5 miles long. I've got one more long run next Sunday that I'm doing with Nick (he could run the mini tomorrow if he wanted to, what a stud), which will be good practice for me. I enjoy running by myself, but there have definitely been some days when I could have used a training partner for additional motivation.

Since I started training, I've run over 100 miles! Even though I am enjoying this challenge, I am looking forward to tackling a new type of exercise this winter. Any suggestions?

Let Me Go Home...

Sometimes it's easier for me to pick a song to express how I'm feeling rather than try to write it all down myself. Here are the lyrics to one of my favorite Michael Buble songs, "Home."

Another summer day

Has come and gone away

In Paris and Rome

But I wanna go home

Mmmmmmmm

May be surrounded by

A million people I

Still feel all alone

Just wanna come home

Oh, I miss you, you know

And I’ve been keeping all the letters

That I wrote to you

Each one a line or two

“I’m fine baby, how are you?”

Well, I would send them but I know

That it’s just not enough

My words were cold and flat

And you deserve more than that

Another aeroplane

Another sunny place

I’m lucky I know

But I wanna go home

Mm, I’ve got to go home

Let me go home...

I’m just too far

from where you are

I wanna come home

And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life

It’s like I just stepped outside

When everything was going right

And I know just why you could not

Come along with me

That this was not your dream

But you always believed in me

Another winter day

Has come and gone away

In even Paris and Rome

And I wanna go home

Let me go home

And I’m surrounded by

A million people I

Still feel alone

Oh, let me go home

Oh, I miss you, you know

Let me go home...I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done

I gotta go home

Let me go home...

It'll all be all right

I’ll be home tonight

I’m coming back home