After the Accident

After Kirt’s surgery, return to work and re-injury in the blink of an eye, he became what they called permanently, totally disabled. Heavy narcotics barely changed the pain, but oh, lord, was he loopy. A couple of years after his second surgery we were still going to pain clinics and therapy in hope of improving the outcome.

My forty something husband aged over the winter; together we became rotund. Did you ever notice how good food tastes when you stress eat? He hurt, he ate; I stressed, I ate.

We had no money coming in for a few years, so we took a second mortgage on the property and began selling the beautiful furniture we bought when newlyweds. With our location on a busy road, garage sales made enough money for groceries and utility bills. My fondness for auctions paid off, when I’d pick up nice antiques for a good price and sell them for a better one. Kirt hated not being able to go. He’d inspect all my finds. So many of the farm antiques he’d used as a kid, so he’d explain how the implements worked. He had a story for everything.

Job possibilities came my way, but leaving Kirt never felt right; between the pain meds and the muscle relaxers he didn’t know which way was up. I had a group of people coming over to train dogs a couple of times a week; it’s what I did for fun, which for me was the best part of this time period. When I told people that I wouldn’t be working with them and their dogs because I had to go back to work, they offered to pay me. At first my low self esteem wouldn’t allow me to believe I was good enough to be paid for training dogs or working with behavior problems, which is what I loved to do.

I began training dogs for a living and Kirt started going to auctions with me. Many times when we arrived he’d say, “I’ll just wait in the truck.” The tightness about his eyes and mouth told me he hurt. A new dog training business and week end garage sales came close to paying the bills, but you know, how close isn’t good enough. Kirt had to see the dentist, Dr. Dave, because he was grinding his teeth. Stress makes us stupid to begin with; stress, narcotics, and muscle relaxers took a toll. Kirt sat in a stupor while the stove caught on fire. I walked in the door just as the flames started. You can’t imagine how bad he felt after that.

One of my new dog training clients, Debbie Howard, talked me into pet sitting as an additional income source. Pet sitting in Illinois meant going out no matter what the weather, which in the ten years we did it, came to some nasty extremes. I say in which we did it because no matter how much pain Kirt was in, he would drag himself to the car to ride along with me. It was appoint of honor for him to not let me go by myself.

Kirt didn’t boo-hoo, “Look at those fall colors, I’ll bet Michigan color can’t compete with what we have right here. What’s your favorite color yellow or orange?”  One afternoon I returned from an appointment with a potential pet sitting client to find Kirt had filled the dogs’ little kiddy pool. “What’s up with the pool?” I asked. “Look,” he said. In the pool were six baby wood ducks, who wandered out of the woods. With a yard full of Rotttweilers, it could have been the end of baby ducks, but Kirt kept the dogs a respectful distance away from the chicks paddling in the pool. As I brought some groceries in, he called, “Here comes the mom.” She circled overhead, he backed away from the pool, called the dogs to come with him, the mom landed, and she quacked, the chicks jumped out of the pool to form a line behind her. We hugged each other, as they waddled away.

Kirt understood that medicating for pain would be a way of life for him, so he cut back on the meds. A doctor sent him to take biofeedback training. The therapist allowed me to go in with him because I was fascinated, but Kirt didn’t believe in it, before long he sat outside while I went in for his biofeedback class. Years later Kirt would appreciate everything I learned in those classes.

As soon as our finances allowed I resumed showing dogs. By this time Kirt had a decent pain management regiment established, so he’d come to the shows to hold dogs for me. After years of taking lessons and hard work I began to win. Kirt developed a following of people who would sit ringside with him to pick his brain for training tips or ask questions. I was running around the ring like a crazy fool while my husband was holding court. One day in particular a man kept pressing him for information on how we got our dogs to stop four square every time. Kirt knew it had something to do with how the dog held his head, but couldn’t articulate what the man wanted to know because he didn’t know. The man kept pressing the question, finally frustrated he said, “You’ll have to ask Pat.” I enjoyed watching Kirt with his groupies and wasn’t going to let this guy get the better of him, so I replied, “If he won’t tell you, it must be a training secret, so if you want to know, come to class.” Later, I gave him a hard time about dispensing advice on things he didn’t know too much about. To which he replied, “But I’m having fun,” with that mischievous boy look I could never resist. I rolled my eyes and laughed; what could I say, the man was having fun.  

I was so maniacal about doing my best and winning. Kirt taught me to enjoy life. For me winning was fun; for him hanging out with me was fun.