Two-Plus Days in the Hospital (When You Become the Lead Story, part 4)

Carole spent most of Sunday afternoon in the Emergency department. She underwent a CT scan and at least two rounds of X-rays before being formally admitted to the hospital roughly six hours later and given a bed in the Emergency General Surgery department.

Late that afternoon we learned that she apparently had four cracked ribs on the left side (the side the cyclist hit as she was crossing his path from right to left), a separated left shoulder (the representative X-ray at right is not hers), and a chipped “wing” of the first or second thoracic vertebra. That last should be of no concern, the trauma physician told us, because it would either float in place or be reabsorbed by the body.

The thing to remember with the ribs, she was told several times, was to keep breathing deeply and filling the lower end of her lungs, even if it hurt a bit, to prevent infection. Health-care professionals no longer brace or bind cracked ribs for healing because people would breathe shallowly for fear of the pain and contracted pneumonia in their lower lungs.

When You Become the Lead Story, part 3

A little earlier that morning, Carole had started to cross Tilikum Crossing bridge with Pixie to the other side of the river as part of their daily hour-long walk. She had ridden across the bridge on the streetcar and MAX light-rail preview rides with me in August, but had not yet traveled the brand-new span on foot.

As the pair climbed the west slope of the bridge, however, Carole became concerned that the fairly lively pedestrian and bicycle traffic was making the dog nervous, and that a panicked Pixie might slip between the horizontal spars below the railing and fall into the river.

So Carole decided to turn back and continue their walk north along the west bank of the Willamette instead. To do this, she and Pixie would have to cross the road and rails that lead up to the center span of Tilikum from the west bank, and travel the breadth of the bridge instead of its length. The first pedestrian crossing Carole encountered came at the east end of the lengthy platform where Orange Line MAX trains and Trimet bus lines pick up and drop passengers, toward the western terminus of the bridge.

When You Become the Lead Story, part 2

Now that you know the catastrophe Carole suffered on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2015, and have a basic sense of how it came across on the local news, we can start to take a look behind the scenes.

Things to keep in mind:

•        Carole would spend more than two days in the hospital, getting her injuries assessed and receiving medications to get her through the coming weeks.

•        I took off roughly a week from my various jobs to stay with her in the hospital most of Sunday and Monday, and then bring her home and care for her after she was discharged the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 13 … helping her get out of bed and walking her to the bathroom, administering her ice pack and heating pad and medications, cooking the meals, walking the dog alone three or four times a day, answering the phone, and retrieving packages and mail.

•        Ten days (Oct. 11-Oct. 21) passed between the morning of the collision and the day it made the news.

Let’s go back to the morning of the incident.

It was a Sunday. Carole had established a routine of taking the dog -- our six-pound toy fox terrier named Pixie -- for an hour-long walk every morning. It was a great way to exercise herself and our girl, as well as explore the new neighborhood to which we had just moved a little more than four weeks before.

We had lived ten years in an apartment in the heart of downtown Portland. Our new locale, known as South Waterfront, is undergoing rapid change. It’s a former brownfield industrial strip on the west bank of the Willamette River just south of downtown. Seven apartment and condo towers, and a health-care structure, all between 20 and 32 stories, have been constructed here within just the last ten years. According to Wikipedia, South Waterfront “is one of the largest urban redevelopment projects in the United States.”

When You Become the Lead Story

We are closing in on the sixth anniversary of the debut of this blog. I posted my first “American Currents” commentary on Nov. 6, 2009.

At that point, it was the brainchild of Jeff Weiss -- though I coined the name -- and the shared production of an array of writers. Jeff wanted to establish a forum for voices across the political and social spectra to comment on breaking news and issues of the day.

For six months, half a dozen of us traded off posting on topics Jeff assigned to us: everything from charging children for adult crimes (here’s the news story to which I was responding), to a sexting tragedy (background), a tweeting Mom who posted online updates about her two-year-old son’s drowning, and my initial reaction to the blockbuster movie “Avatar.”

Over the ensuing months, some bloggers dropped away, and others came on to replace them. But aside from myself, nobody could keep up the steady pace, and the endeavor petered out in April 2010. I picked it up again in May, and have mostly had the space to myself ever since.

Though with regular months-long breaks, I’ve talked about everything from a purported near-bombing by a supposed Muslim terrorist here in Portland to my budding acting career. I’ve inveighed against the overuse of mobile devices (repeatedly), celebrated the legalization of same-sex marriage in Oregon, and offered my advice to high school students on how to choose a college.