Chance Encounter

It's not everyday that you get to meet an unforgettable character.  Whether by chance or some sinister twist of fate, I found myself in that position today.

First of all, a terrible cold has plagued me for the last 4 days, creeping its way through my body, from my clogged up sinuses to the ever-growing tickle in my throat that makes me want to cough my lungs loose, it continues to make its way through my respiratory system with reckless abandon.  I actually lay in bed this morning and fought that battle with myself.  You know the one, where you know your body is not going to keep up with the demands of the day, yet you feel the only option before you lies in your responsibility to others.  So I dragged myself up and got ready, dropped my boy off at school, drove up to the center and got the van and started my day of picking up senior members to attend Senior Action for the day.

In a way, this day snubbed me with irony at every turn. Off for 5 days in a row, I didn't recover from my cold fast enough to get back to normal before going back.  The new van driver was supposed to have started today, but got held up by HR paperwork.  The rain is a bitch when you're loading and unloading elderly folks from that large vehicle.  You could say if imaginary straws were drawn for this day, I drew the short one.

Once I got the van and started driving down Slater rd. I started to feel better about things.  The ride up highway 11 o pick up one of my members is a pleasant drive--relaxing even, and I started to look forward to it.

Then I happened upon a chance encounter with a woman named Karen.

At the end of Slater rd. I pulled up to the traffic light which was red at the moment.  I stopped with my right turn signal on, looked to the left, let two cars go, then looked back up at the light.  In that short amount of time the light had changed to green, so I while looking to the right out my windshield, proceeded to turn left.  Suddenly I heard a scraping and crunching sound.  "Crap!" I said.  "I hit someone.!"  I couldn't even see what or whom' I'd hit.

I got out of the van and ran around to see for sure what I had hit.  It was another car.  The woman inside wore her long graying hair in a ponytail.  She smelled of cigarettes and her car was filled with garbage, prescription bottles, you name it.  At first glance I thought she was elderly and I felt so badly that I reached in and hugged her and told her and asked if she was okay.  She said she was fine, but she was worried about her car and worried someone was going to hit her from behind.  I told her turn her flashers on as I called the highway patrol to report the accident.  Once we moved our vehicles out of the way, I invited her to come sit in the van with me where there was AC so she would not get so hot.  This woman was a character!

She had an expensive smart phone, but no service on it.  I had t let her use my phone to call her husband and daughter.  When she got out of her car and saw that her door was dinged and her tire was flat she went into panic attack mode.  I had to help her breathe through it and try to keep her in the moment with me instead of letting her mind rush off to the worse case scenarios of the future.

Her abusive husband showed up--yelling at her and then trying to yell at me.  I relished the opportunity to stand up to him and tell him he would not speak to me in that manner.  The lady asked me how did I do that without being scared.  I didn't have a real answer for her, I just know that a man isn't going to speak to me that way, no matter who he is/

Apparently it was a busy day for the Highway Patrol.  We waited 3 hours for an officer to arrive to file a report.  Three hours I was with this woman and intermittently her husband and 21 year old daughter who has suffered numerous serious injuries from car and 4 wheeler accidents.

The thing is, when you meet people in Marietta, you never really know what kind of person they are at first. This lady, whom at first glance I would have guessed was in her 70's, was only 53. She smoked like a chimney, then confided in me that her doctor told her she has heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, none of which she manages with any kind of medication. She's had cancer removed from her face and has been told if she doesn't stop smoking she will end up losing more skin on her face. I spent a long time talking to her about how important it is to take care of yourself by accepting that you have illnesses and taking steps to mange them. Her response was, "I don't claim any of that." I guess if you don't acknowledge something, it doesn't exist, huh?
I learned all about her 12 grandchildren and her youngest daughter who by the misfortune of 2 separate accidents has suffered head injury and partial paralysis of her right side.  I learned that her daughter was airlifted from an accident she caused on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest a year or so ago, and that as a result of her accident on a 4 wheeler years before that, she has a "Titanic" plate in her head now.  I learned lots of new phrases and words I'd never heard in such contexts before.  I learned that if a person gets badly burned, they can get a skin "draft" that will fix them.  That "Titanic plates" can fix head injuries, and that the past tense of "Sperm Donation" is "Sperm Doned."  I got a front seat show to the daughters tattoo display, front, back and sides as she partially undressed beside Geer Highway right in front of a State Trooper.

"See her purdy angel wings?  I didn't even know she had them till I saw her in the ICU after her second accident." her mother beamed.

"They're....Nice...." I said. I wanted to say, "Put your clothes back on girl, I don't need to see your angel wings, your bible verses or your matching doves on your butt dimples.  To each her own, but if I don't ask to see your most intimate tattoos, it's probably best to keep em private.

Today was the first time I accidentally told someone her husband had cancer as well.  Total mistake on my part, but she made me walk right into it.  She told me that her husband recently had blood work done and it showed an elevated white blood cell count.  She said he had no infections and that he was very secretive about his appointment with his doctor after the blood work.  Then, she said, a few days later he called her into the bathroom to show her a piece of bloody tissue paper.  "Oh, it's just hemorrhoids," she said she told him.

"Well," she said he replied, "I didn't tell you last week, but the doctor said I have cancer."

As she relayed this story to me see seemed confused.  "Why would he say that to me?" she asked me.  "What does that even mean?  White blood cells don't mean you have cancer and if he has cancer he might die and I don't know how to take care of anything without him.  Why did he say that to me?" She pleaded with me.

Exasperated at this point, I gently said to her, "Do you think that might have been his way of telling you that he does, indeed have cancer?"

She began to cry again.  I could see her mind racing ahead to the future, his death, her financial ruin, her feeling lost and unable to take care of herself.  I tried to reel her back in to the present and that worked.  I tried to give her some kind of hope to cling to--maybe there's treatment that can help him, maybe it's not aggressive cancer, maybe its something he can beat.  She remembered her daughters fight and decided that her husband could make it through cancer if her daughter made it through both accidents.

You hear all the time to be kind to others, because they could be fighting a battle you don't even know about.  I am the first to admit that I had a true encounter with someone today that rates right up there with the Twilight Zone experience; but all the same, she was human and I just as human as she.  She's a woman who never learned to take care of her own physical health--she was more concerned about the dings in her car than her high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.  She's a woman who is somewhat controlled and at least verbally beaten down by her spouse--a spouse she's so dependent on that if he dies, she son't know how to do life.  And that spouse she depends so much upon likely has cancer.  She has a daughter with severe disabilities who will likely need care for the rest of her life.

I didn't tell her much about me personally.  I just listened and let her talk, finding some of her language anecdotes highly entertaining.  I tried to keep my patience and help her stay calm in the midst of a highly stressful situation.  Then when the police got there she turned into a monster with two heads, arguing with the cop, telling him I said things I didn't say, suggesting that she wasn't beside me in my blind spot, etc...I could have felt angry I guess, after having kept her in the van with me for hours running the air so she could breathe better, letting her eat my breakfast and use my phone and giving her information on Medicare, Disability and Medicaid for her daughter, but what good would getting angry do?

I'm just glad everyone got out safe.  No one needed any titanic plates in their heads and no one had to get skin drafted.

We won't even go into the story about Karen's real father who "Sperm doned" her.   I can't even.

God bless us everyone--Especially Karen.  Hopefully life will look much brighter for her again soon.

And hopefully I will not "run into her" again anytime soon.