My Next Step (5 page)
I wasn’t really sure where the doctor was headed with our conversation.
“Well, just be careful because I’ve heard you’ve already dropped her once,” the doctor said in a very condescending tone. I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “What are you talking about?” I was really angry by his accusation because there was no shred of truth to what he was saying.
“One of our technicians mentioned that you dropped Gail while carrying her to the bathroom.”
“That is a total lie! The nurse dropped her. I watched her take Gail to the toilet and she turned her back for a moment and let Gail fall. Nobody will ever touch her in this hospital again. Outside of her doctors, I will be the only one to take care of Gail. Do you understand what I am saying?” I could feel the blood in my body begin to boil as I lambasted this doctor for the offensive and false accusation he was making.
It turned out that the nurse on duty who had dropped Gail wrote in her daily report that
I
had dropped her because she was afraid that if the truth came out she would lose her job. When I confronted her, she began to cry and apologized for her mistake. Look, I get that people make mistakes—we are all human. However, I was willing, ready and able to be a royal pain in the ass if it meant keeping Gail safe and secure during her recovery. I was in love with her and she was critically injured. If I couldn’t be her advocate, who would be?
By the time we got back to Craig Hospital, I’d told everyone at RE/MAX that Gail was my top priority. I needed to stay by her side so nothing like this would ever happen again. We were a much smaller company at the time—just twenty-five of us in the office—but every single person stepped up to help in any way they could. Secretaries stopped at my house in the mornings to feed and walk our dog. They’d sometimes bring him into the office so he wasn’t alone all of the time. Everyone played with him, threw the ball around and let him run at lunchtime. At night another group would feed and walk him or take him back to the house. Sometimes I’d take a couple of hours away from Gail so I could go home, see the dog, take a shower, open mail and nap before heading right back to the hospital. But when I did leave, I made damn sure there was always someone with Gail.
After several weeks of this routine, one of Gail’s nurses took me aside and suggested that I—make that
strongly encouraged
me to—sit in on a group therapy session. I’d become friendly with this particular nurse because she was a no-nonsense woman—my favorite kind. She was direct and sincere, which I always appreciate.
“Dave, I want you to do this for me. We are treating Gail fine here, but you are still being a total pain in the ass to the staff, so I need you to go talk about your anger and frustration, ok?”
I hated to admit it, but she was right. I had gotten so caught up in taking care of Gail, keeping her safe and never turning my back on her, that I’d become very tightly wound. I was on verge of cracking, which wouldn’t do anyone a bit of good, so I reluctantly and begrudgingly agreed to go.
Now, I’m not sure the rest of this story puts me in the best light, but it’s honest and it’s what happened.
When I got to the group therapy session, they went around the room and asked each person to tell us why they were there. The first person spoke and said, “My husband fell out of a cherry picker, and because he wasn’t wearing his safety harness, he broke his neck and is paralyzed from the shoulders down.”
The next person said, “I don’t know what we are going to do for money. We don’t have insurance and our savings have run out.”
The third person spoke next: “Our son got drunk at his homecoming party and rolled his car four times. He killed his girlfriend and has a broken back. He’s ruined his future and ours, because we can’t afford to pay the medical bills either.”
Finally, they get to me.
I sat there, clearly angry and frustrated to be in the room.
“Dave, would you like to tell us why you’re here today?” The group therapist was speaking to me in a gentle tone, but all I heard was blah, blah, blah.
“I’ve got nothing to say. My fiancée’s nurse asked me to sit through a session, so that’s what I’m doing here today.” I’ve been known to be a bit stubborn over the years. I wasn’t budging and I certainly had no intention of sharing my feelings in a group full of strangers.
“Why don’t you tell us how you feel, Dave?”
“My feelings are
my
feelings!” I was beginning to raise my voice, so they moved on to the next person before going around the room yet again, and then once more.
As they say, the third time’s a charm. When they came back to me for the third time that day, I was ready to talk—and boy, did I.
“You want to know how I feel? Ok. I’ll tell you how I feel. My fiancée has a traumatic head injury and we don’t know how much she’s going to come back from it. Right now she’s also paralyzed on the left side of her body. Her life has changed forever. And I feel very sad for that loss. I’m angry about it. This is a wonderful woman who got hurt by no fault of her own. I’m not here to cry or bellyache and tell you all how bad I feel about our situation. I know what my next step is going to be. I’m going to get her out of this damned hospital and she is going to learn to walk. We are going to make the best life we can make with what we have left. I know it will never be the same, and I can live with that. I’m not going to talk about it anymore. It’s happened, and I’ve put that story in a box and hid it in the back of my brain, which is where it will stay. This won’t define who we are or who we’ll be. I have a beautiful woman in my life. And as she heals, we’re going to make a brand new life together. Can I leave this fucking meeting now?”
When Gail’s nurse heard about my outburst, she smiled and said, “I’m very proud of you.”
Mission accomplished.
Looking back, I realize I shouldn’t have handled the group that way, but I was extremely uptight and although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, was about to explode. The fact that I could look forward was a gift—not a detriment. I sat in that group therapy session and listened as each person spoke. They had no idea what their next step was going to be. They were lost and couldn’t figure it out. The therapist was trying to show us that if we talked about the fear, anger, resentment or loss we were experiencing and allowed ourselves to feel our emotions, over time we’d come to grips with the situation. Then, once we did that, we could start moving forward one step at a time. I was already ten steps ahead of the others when I sat there that day, and I don’t regret a word of what I said.
Life brings us unexpected happenings every day. We have the choice and the power to choose how we react to those situations and circumstances. At some point, each of us will likely face something terrible—the loss of a parent, best friend or child, a bitter divorce, or even the bankruptcy of a business. We’re left to pick up the pieces. Our response to the occurrence dictates the outcome.
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
-M. Kathleen Casey
Several years after Gail’s accident, I was struck by something I read in Jack Canfield’s book,
Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
. It was called the E+R=O theory. Event+Response=Outcome. Canfield’s book is one of the best success and motivational works that I’ve ever read. In the book, Canfield tells a story about a big earthquake in Southern California. Freeway overpasses buckled, city streets were torn up and commuting around LA had suddenly become a science. A reporter was in the field covering people’s reactions, doing man-on-the-street interviews. The first man he stopped to talk to was sitting in his car. Traffic was at a complete stop, so the reporter knocked on the window and asked, “What do you think about this mess?”
The man in the car was a heavyset older gentleman who was clearly unhappy. “First it was the floods and then it was the gangs and now it’s the damned earthquake! I HATE California. It sucks!” Veins were popping out of the sides of his neck, as his face grew red from rage.
The reporter knocked on the next car’s window.
“What do you think of this mess?”
The demeanor of the man inside was drastically different. “Well, we’ve had an awful earthquake. The streets have fallen down and they are blocked, so it’s much harder to get around the city. I get up an hour and a half earlier than I used to and it takes me almost two hours to get to work, but it’s ok. I have a Thermos full of coffee, a couple of sandwiches and cookies, and am listening to tapes to help me learn to speak English a little better. It’s slow going, but it is what it is. This too shall pass.”
The same event happened to both men. The earthquake and traffic jams affected everyone, but one man’s answer was filled with anger and hatred while the other man’s answer was relaxed and accepting.
The Event–E—was the earthquake.
The Response–R—was anger versus acceptance.
The Outcome–O—was a man who was tightly wound and most likely headed for a heart attack versus another who who took the event in stride and actually used the time to improve his English.
E+R=O became a lesson I would include in many speeches going forward, especially when the housing market began to collapse.
In 2007, Margaret Kelly, Vinnie Tracey and I set out on a thirty-city speaking tour around the country to give a three-hour course on the changes in real estate that were just beginning to unravel the industry. We wanted to prepare our brokers and agents for what was coming, explore what it meant and suggest ways to respond to it. We called this our
Be Great in 2008
tour. The basic message was that everyone needed to understand the local market and respond accordingly. For many, this would require a major change to meet the new conditions. There would be no overnight fix—if your market changed, you had to change with it. We urged each and every person to stop daydreaming about things going back to the way they used to be, and to do the work necessary to adapt.
By this time, many who couldn’t make it in the new economy had fallen out of the business, so the bulk of the people we were addressing were those who already had the survival mentality it took to succeed. We drew upon Jack Canfield’s E+R=O theory as a way to illustrate to those agents and brokers that their response to the housing and economic crisis—and not the downturn itself—would dictate their outcome.
Were they willing to be retrained or were they determined to hang onto the memories of how easy things used to be? Would they work hard, learning how to navigate through foreclosures on distressed properties and deal with panicked sellers whose homes were upside down in value? Could they face the reality that they themselves would need to tighten their belts because fewer sales overall meant lower incomes for most? If they weren’t willing to make that kind of commitment and sacrifice, it was time to get out of the business because they would never survive.
To succeed, they’d have to figure out a plan and then decide what their response would be.
Even though I didn’t have the benefit of knowing about E+R=O when I was dealing with Gail’s recovery, it perfectly matched my attitude at that time. She had had a terrible event, but our response to it, together, would determine the outcome of our lives going forward. And our lives were going to be great.
I would use the same formula later in my own recovery, when I lay virtually motionless in my hospital bed, thinking about the choices I faced.
Because of all we’d been through together twenty-nine years earlier, it was incredibly important to Gail that she had the chance to support me through this crisis as I had supported her. We committed ourselves to each other many years ago—in good times and bad, in sickness and in health. A bend in the road is not the end of the road. We’ve had a wonderful life together, and that wasn’t going to change because of my illness.
In my case, E+R=O, at least for the things I controlled, was a pretty simple formula:
E—Getting sick
R—Giving up or fighting
O—Living or dying
How I would proceed was my choice to make.
JUNIOR
O
nce we were told that Dad could die, John, Mary and I quickly rallied as a group. Mary and I live the closest to the hospital and are the most available so we each took a twelve-hour shift ensuring that Dad would never be alone. Mary came around six o’clock in the morning and I usually arrived around six at night. Everything was happening so fast that our brother Chuck, who lives in Florida, wasn’t yet aware of just how bad things had gotten. Once we filled him in, he made arrangements to be by Dad’s side that same day.
The first thing we did was set up a barrier at the hospital to protect my father’s privacy. The hospital placed him under VIP status with no name on record. If someone called looking for Dave Liniger, no one could unintentionally give out any personal information about his condition because he wouldn’t appear as a registered patient. The answer to such callers’ questions would be, “He is not a patient here” or “Contact his family.”
A friend of mine, who works as a reporter for a local news station, just happened to be in the hospital that day and wanted to know why I was there. By this time, Dad was comatose. He wasn’t able to speak for himself and we wanted to do everything we could to preserve his dignity. I didn’t get into details with the reporter that day, but I knew she could tell something was very wrong.
Next, we sat down as a group and set some ground rules amongst ourselves. By this time my brother Chuck had arrived from Florida, so he was in on the decision making too. John, Mary, Chuck, Gail a small group of Dad’s closest friends and I determined that every decision had to be unanimous. No one was empowered to make a single decision without sending a text or email to everyone else to be sure we were all on the same page.
We unanimously agreed that we wouldn’t turn Dad’s condition into a high-pressure situation where everyone is fighting, arguing and competing to be the person who did the most. When the stakes are this high, even the littlest things can turn a close family against one another.
Someone told us the reason they keep security in the ICU waiting room is because families explode from the pressure. It has nothing to do with stealing drugs from the pharmacy or any other crime. It’s because families have a tendency to collapse on each other. We each vowed that wouldn’t happen to us.
Finally, we gathered Dad’s cell phone, iPad and other personal items and put them all in a safe. If, for whatever reason, Dad passed away, his privacy couldn’t be intruded upon. We all agreed that if something were to happen, that’s where it would stay, unopened and never to be viewed. It’s not that we thought Dad had anything to hide—it’s just that we all agreed that he deserved his privacy in life and if needed, in death.
JOHN
My girlfriend who was in the car accident was able to recover from her injuries, but what we were never able to recover from was the negative stuff that occurred between her family, friends and me in the waiting room. I would say, “Guys, I know what is going on here and we have to do this because it is the next logical step.” It was an unfortunate experience in that the venom and the bad blood in that waiting room when she was ill had the worst impact on our relationship. I wasn’t willing to go through that again with my own family, so I made sure we all stuck together as much as we could. We found a comfortable place for everyone to be and it happened to work out. It was funny because the doctors and nurses would all say the same thing—that we were an exception to the rule. Even the chaplain thought we should collaborate on creating a pamphlet for people in the ICU, sharing our advice on how to cope with the stress of the waiting room.
CHUCK
When I arrived
at Sky Ridge, I w
as shocked to see how
sick Dad was. My dad is tough—like John Wayne tough—so it was weird to see someone like him in that condition. We have a tight family, especially the kids. We are all really close with our mom and dad and our stepmom and step-dad. We talk or text each other every day. This was the first time we had a close family member in that much trouble. It was shocking.
JUNIOR
We didn’t want to scare anyone outside our immediate
family about Dad
’s condition until w
e knew more about
it. We were all aware that there are a lot of people who rely on him, including the more than three hundred employees of RE/MAX at the corporate headquarters in Denver, The Wildlife Experience Museum, the staff at Sanctuary and so many others who worked by his side every day.
I spent half of my nights by Dad’s bedside keeping a close eye on him and the other half typing out texts and email replies to everyone who couldn’t get a hold of him. It wasn’t unusual for me to field messages for Dad if someone was trying to reach him and couldn’t. But this time was different because as hard as we tried to keep a lid on things, bad news always has a way of getting out. My usual response was to share just enough information without giving up his privacy. I’d write back, “Dad is in the hospital now and doesn’t have his cell phone.”
I promised that when the time was right, I’d get back to each and every person to keep them updated and if and when he got better, we’d let anyone who wanted to spend time with him have that time. In our own subtle way, it was clear to everyone we spoke to that things were serious. We were preparing for the worst and hoping for a miracle. There wasn’t much else we could do except be with Dad, support him, stay positive and offer our unconditional love and support.
MARY
As a way to keep morale up, on the morning of February 5th, my brother John came up with the idea to host a Super Bowl party for all of the family and friends who had loved ones in the ICU. Sky Ridge had never allowed anything like this to happen in the ICU. We knew how hard it was for all of the families going through the same kind of traumatic experience we were—we thought it would give everyone a much needed release of tensions to watch the New England Patriots and the New York Giants battle it out to see who would win the Lombardi trophy.
We brought in a big screen TV and turned it into an ICU potluck dinner, with each of us bringing in a dish to enjoy while watching the game together as if we were in someone’s home. There’s nothing comfortable about the ICU waiting room and worse, you know everyone there is in crisis. There was no better way to create a much-needed camaraderie among us than to watch a good ol’ football game. Even though tensions were high among the families that were there that day, every single person could breathe a little easier or simply let out a sigh of relief for those few hours. Hospital security actually showed up and asked us to keep down the noise. It’s true that we were loud, but it was a day for everyone to relax.
JOHN
We weren’t going to have the Super Bowl party at first because some people thought that it was disrespectful for the other people in the waiting room. But then, I happened to go into the waiting room earlier that day and people from other families asked, “Are you going to bring in the big screen TV?”
I knew every family in the ICU was struggling. We didn’t want to intrude, but I genuinely thought the Super Bowl would provide a great four-hour break in the tension. “We already ordered pizzas and were planning on this,” some of the other families said. “We need to escape from our reality.” It was obvious they agreed with our decision, so we carried on with the plan. The staff had to tell us to keep the noise down a couple of times, but they wandered through to get the score every now and then, too.
CHUCK
I stayed by Dad’s side for about a week. I picked up a nasty cold from being around the hospital. When I discussed it with the doctors, they said it would be better if I wasn’t around—even in the waiting room for fear of getting anyone else sick. So, I flew back to Florida until I was healthy again. My girlfriend Bonnie and I started traveling back and forth with one of us trying to be there as often as we could throughout Dad’s stay in the ICU. When I couldn’t be there, I’d get constant updates. Junior and Mary were at the hospital around the clock. John personally knew many of Dad’s doctors. They were all a little more in tune with the actual illnesses and what he was going through. I would ask for briefings and updates. I told every one of them that we were on the same page and in agreement. If a surgery had to be done, they had my full support for it and if they couldn’t get a hold of me, then they should cast my vote in their favor. I had nothing but trust that my siblings would make the right decision
MARY
As the days bega
n to turn into
weeks, I became the
unofficial greeter in the ICU. Our family and friends had commandeered a table that became “our” table for the time we were there. Other families had their areas too. Whenever they’d leave for a quick shower or to walk their dogs—whatever, I’d always throw a coat over a vacant chair to make sure their space was there when they returned. It’s not that we didn’t want anyone new to come in—that of course, is inevitable. I just understood what it meant to have your own space in the ICU waiting room. It offered some comfort and consistency in an otherwise very depressing and miserable place.
When you are in the ICU section of a hospital for more than a few days, you realize there are no secrets. Doctors come in to brief family members on their loved one’s condition, on decisions that need to be made, or worse—to deliver the unthinkable news that the person you are there for has died. Everyone else in the waiting area can hear what the doctors are saying—except when they ask you to go into the private room off to the side. We all knew what that meant—and secretly hoped we wouldn’t be the next family called in.
I got to know several of the families as each came in, full of fear, angst and worry. I did whatever I could to offer support, whether it was bringing Starbucks to someone who’d slept on the couch all night or sadly, attending the funeral of their loved one who passed.
JUNIOR
The pressure in the ICU is always underlined. The
door of death is rig
ht there—all of the
time. The pressure
can build until suddenly the slightest thing can push an otherwise rational person over the edge. I’ll never forget a young girl I met, who I called “Oreo Girl.” The reason I called her Oreo Girl was because all she craved while she was waiting in the ICU was an Oreo cookie—not a mint Oreo, which seemed to be the Oreo of choice in the waiting room—just a good old fashioned plain cream-filled Oreo. Her dad was in for a heart condition and a staph infection like our dad, so we bonded over the similarity in their cases.
“All I want is a real Oreo! Is that too much to ask?” she wailed before collapsing to the floor crying. The pressure had gotten to her in a way it hadn’t seemed to penetrate our group. Perhaps we stood strong because we were never alone or because we knew that if we gave in to the pressure mounting against Dad, he might too. The only choice was to be strong and remain positive.
During our time in the ICU, we got to know several families whose loved ones lost their battles. They’d go into that room knowing what the doctors were there to say. They’d emerge a few minutes later, changed for life. One of the more interesting surprises was how often those people would return to the ICU the following day to shake hands, hug, cry on a familiar shoulder and thank everyone for their support. Sometimes they’d sit and talk for an hour trying to process their loss. Other times, it was just a way to connect with others who shared their pain for one final moment.
What I realized early on in this journey was that every family in that area was just like us. Some were only there for a few days but most of the families would be around for ten days or more. We had no idea at the time that we were looking down the barrel of a month or more of ICU hell.
MARY
We never talked about Dad dying. Not once. It was certainly the ten thousand-pound gorilla in the room,
but my brothers and
I never sat d
own and said, “This
is what’s going to happen with Dad dying.” For the first couple of weeks, his condition was hour-by-hour. One hour he was doing great and the next, he wasn’t. One hour his color looked pink and the next hour it was gray. When I first got to the hospital, someone came over and asked me if I wanted to meet with the chaplain. I was confused by their question because in that moment and for the days and weeks that followed, it never occurred to me that this might really be the end. At first I thought they were asking because they thought we were a religious family and might want to do some praying. What they were actually offering was a chance for the chaplain to deliver Dad’s last rites. Thanks, but no thanks. I knew Dad was in dire straits—that he would have a tough road ahead of him—but I couldn’t bear to think that he might actually die. Maybe I was in denial, but none of us thought that this was how Dad would ultimately go. Junior always joked that there would be some fantastic fireball or grand explosion involved when Dad’s time came. All we could do was focus on the positive. I think we all got that trait from our dad—a trait I didn’t really appreciate until this happened.
