Disturbing sights and sounds

It was about 5 years ago that I was jogging, almost home, when my two leashed dogs performed a cross-wire dance, ripping my arms in opposite directions and feeling me surf face first on the asphalt. I accept full responsibility as wrapping the straps around my wrists is not an advised standard, but it was still a horrible and terrible surprise that has been hard to erase from my ears and mind. The sounds and images are disturbing.

The dogs, Telli and Jigsaw, had been on the rampage from the start, pulling and acting wild as we headed down the street and then onto a favorite trail. Telli, a border collie, usually stayed close to her and, if she wandered off, she always returned within minutes. Jigsaw, on the other hand, was a cheerful German Shorthaired Pointer puppy. Running filled him with a mad joy that sometimes left him without reasonable thought and his return less predictable. As my husband Lynn’s pet and favorite dog, I didn’t risk losing him that morning. Lynn had just landed from deep sea fishing with my daughter and she would be home in the late afternoon and of course I wanted a perfect reunion, not a dog hunt. That was my fateful mistake: never letting the dogs out for fun.

Usually once we are clear of traffic we let the dogs run free. They love freedom and it gives them double, triple or quadruple the exercise. When Lynn is with me, Jigs is much better behaved and pays more attention to commands. With me, however, he turns into a rambunctious kid, dashing off to do his own thing without giving much thought to rules and proper behavior. As I said, the dogs will come home, but sometimes this takes time and a frantic hunt.

We had pulled for four miles and then almost floated down our street to the critical intersection. Just two houses from home, the dogs jumped in surprise and a thud and crack hit me in the face. The blow was my forehead and my shoulder; I break my nose, chin and front tooth. Only in one replay can I imagine this mess and with that image comes that horrible, deafening double sound as darkness shadows my mind. My first thought was that I had imagined the fall, but then reality hit me when the dogs looked at me with embarrassment. I untangled my arms and pulled them to the center to push myself up to my knees and then forced myself to my feet. My legs were shaking with little wobbles, but I managed to move forward while looking around hoping that no one had seen this disastrous accident. We ran slowly home as blood dripped down my shirt. The dogs had stopped pulling as if they knew she was in trouble and waited silently for her to open the back door, undo her leashes, and stumble up the back stairs to the deck. There I found a dirty old beach towel which I used to staunch the blood as I turned the doorknob and went into my kitchen.

I staggered over to the sink where I spat out a mouthful of blood and my front tooth too. The blood, for some reason added to the mind, had not wanted to leave her in the street; the tooth was a false tooth held in place with a Maryland bridge that had been forced inward where it had broken off leaving my other teeth unharmed. Feeling dizzy, I sank to the ground, thinking that if I rested for a few minutes I could make the blood stop and then get on with my busy morning plans. The tiles were cool and relaxing and the nasty towel was doing its thing when I suddenly thought, “What if I pass out? No one is here to rescue me!” Pushing myself to my feet, I walked down the hall to the bathroom mirror where my shattered face was revealed. A scraped forehead and chin, a nose crooked in a terrible cutting tear from bridge to tip, my rapidly contorted and swollen lips, and a gaping hole in my tooth alignment greeted me. Blood seeped into my shirt from my shoulder and my palms held a variety of stones. I decided that I definitely needed help.

My first thought was to calm down, get in our little stick-shift van, and call the ER. As I walked to my keys, I pondered the sensitivity of this move, including the idea of ​​shifting gears and putting a towel on my nose. I decided to call my friend Joyce who worked nearby. I dialed, praying I got all the right numbers right, when her dear voice answered.

“Yoce,” I murmured, “he’s ‘ini. I need your help.”

Somehow, Joyce recognized my plea, and when I grabbed my bag and limped to the curb, she was there, engine revving. Within minutes we pulled up to the emergency entrance of the hospital and I received excellent nursing care.

After preliminary paperwork, we were ushered into a small exam room. The nurse warned me, “This could hurt,” she pulled my nose into alignment, which quickly stopped the profuse flow of blood. Actually, it felt good to have that pressure, as it relieved the pain instead of creating it. Then came a painkiller, X-rays, surgery to sew my face up, a brief recovery, and then home.

In the meantime, Joyce’s husband, Vince, had called my husband and children with the news and had come to my house to check on the dogs. Telli sat panting by the back door, eagerly awaiting my arrival. Jigs, however, realized that he hadn’t closed the door and recognized his opportunity to have fun. Vince got into his truck and after a lot of calling and driving through the streets near my house found him lounging in some wet grass with two very attractive French poodles, frolicking with the girls, as I call them. Vince pulled Jigs away from his affair, took him home, and carefully closed the door. He also cleaned up some of the blood on the floor and took my tooth out of the sink and put it in a glass of water.

As I rolled out of surgery with blackheads terrifyingly protruding from my face, my son Stan came over. A quick call to his boss put him on the 167-mile drive from his job to the hospital, just in time to bundle me up and drive me home. I can’t begin to express how wonderful it was to have him there for me.

The rest of the afternoon friends came offering me food, flowers and shocked stars while the eyes lit up on my face. Lynn and her daughter Allison arrived from San Diego early in the evening and my family’s nursing team went into full force. I have never been so grateful for such loving attention.

While my nose has horrible white scars and a huge lump of cartilage/calcium that it didn’t have before this fall and my forehead and chin have patches of peeling, I’m lucky. The trauma of the cracks and bumps reverberates in my head every time I pass that fateful place where my dogs taught me a lesson about leashes and my heart learned a lesson about family and friends and unconditional care.

I also had the help of my friend Linda, a psychologist, who helped me deal with the terror, the cracking noises, and the fear of repeating the performance. She walked me through each step of the horrific event, reliving it with me as she helped me face the horror as I gained strength. Her knowledge, support, and advice adjusted my perspective and addressed my distress.

My downfall was minor compared to the disasters many others face. Children are hurt by their parents, families are in terrible car accidents, soldiers are fighting terrible battles, and many are not given strategies for dealing with recurring nightmares or methods for coping with supernatural fears. From my experience, I realize that love and support are very valuable and essential for a healthy recovery.