The K&S 2003 Misadventure

The Trip We Never Made (And the Detour That Changed Everything)

It's strange how a single map coordinate can hold a permanent place in your heart, even if you have never actually set foot there. For two decades, Bath, Maine, was that place for me... a destination that came to symbolize the exact moment my life split into "before" and "after."

Back in June 2003, Kristan and I headed out for a two-week holiday, planning to join with family at my cousin's relatives' coastal Maine cottage. We were flying from Denver to Boston, and had planned a scenic route, first driving our rental car from Boston airport through Vermont to Blue Mountain Lake in upper New York, so Kristan could show me a beautiful place where she had made wonderful memories. 

But we didn't even get to Denver airport before things began to go wrong. Kristan had packed the wrong bag. Instead of bringing all the clothes she had carefully selected for the trip, she had brought the bag full of clothes she had rejected. Even worse, she was taking too many prescribed medications to count, and those were also in the other bag. This kind of lapse wasn't new to me, and I felt a sudden sense of hopelessness. My initial instinct was to suggest that we completely cancel the trip, as it was too late to drive back home to exchange bags, and still make our flight. But Kristan insisted she could make everything work. She got on her cell phone, and called our trusted neighbor Marian, who agreed to let herself into our house, find the wayward medications, and mail them to the place we were scheduled to stay on our second night. I reluctantly agreed to go along with the plan. 

The evening we landed at Boston Logan airport, our plans began unraveling even more. Kristan had a small, benign foot wound on her heel that she and her doctor had been closely watching. Even after being inside her protective boot, it looked angry and inflamed. It was our first introduction to what would become a long, grueling history of serious diabetes-related infections over the subsequent years. Because I was completely unfamiliar with a loved one developing an acute medical crisis, I found myself paralyzed, unable to make good decisions. 

Kristan desperately wanted me to see the lake and the gorgeous old mansion on the island where she had stayed and worked as an au pair for the established family that owned the property. Because driving is something I love to do, she convinced me to keep going. So we picked up our rental car, and drove to Manchester, our first planned overnight stop. 

The next morning, her heel was looking about the same. Kristan was really missing some of her prescription medications, especially the strong anti-pain opioids. We tried to get an emergency prescription at a local pharmacy, but the pharmacist and her Kaiser doctor were both unwilling to help, because we had just picked up a full prescription for those in Littleton earlier in the week, and with the new high-visibility issue with opioid abuse, they were not willing to step up, believe us, and help her get the oxycodone she needed to block the pain. Still, already in major discomfort, she insisted on pressing onward, especially since all her prescription meds should be waiting for her, at tonight's destination. 

We continued our long drive through the beautiful Vermont countryside, stopping to snap a photo at one of those characteristic New England covered bridges. 

The drive was a lot longer than I expected, but we pressed onward to a late-night arrival at our rustic cabin on the shore of Blue Mountain Lake. 

One positive thing was that the package containing Kristan's meds was waiting for us on the table in the living room! 

By the next morning, the wound looked so much worse, that I finally asserted myself. We snapped this self-timer photo of us on the front porch, and checked out of our little cabin. We sought help at the local health center in Indian Lake, and they took one look, saw the blotch of red heading up her leg, marked it with a pen, and immediately advised us to head to the nearest hospital, which was in Glens Falls. The emergency team saw that the red blotch was expanding up her leg past the ink, and admitted her on the spot for intravenous antibiotics and constant supervision. I think they had to wait for the antibiotics to work, before they were finally willing to perform what ended up being a grueling debridement surgery. The procedure removed necrotic tissue all the way to the bone. Suddenly, our summer vacation was replaced by a three-week hospital stay.

The day after Kristan was admitted, I left a tearful message for my younger sister Mikele. Luckily for me, she was carrying a cell phone that allowed her to get voicemail. She was down in New York City with her family, taking tours and getting ready to drive up to Maine. The moment they got the news, they dropped everything. They drove straight up to Glens Falls and spent a few days with me, and with Kristan in her hospital room. 

Mikele knew I was overwhelmed, and with Kristan's encouragement, convinced me to take a brief break, driving with them down to Highland Falls — the town where our Mom grew up, and where Mikele, Mom, and I had spent a month together, living with her parents, after a stressful relocation journey around the world back in 1966 (see my story, The Long Way Around).

We walked around the neighborhood where our grandparents had lived on Mearns Avenue, and stopped to chat with the people who lived in their old house. We learned something new about the whole Google (and other) Maps technological evolution. Their address, which I have burned into my memory for eternity, was changed to accommodate the way GPS mapping is done. 

While we were there, we visited our late cousin Chris' husband Michael and met some of their family. He is a passionate history buff who gave us tours of the local area, including the West Point cemetery where so many famous military figures are laid to rest. 

We visited the Highland Falls cemetery, standing together by the resting place of our Mom, who had died in 1981, far too soon at the ripe young age of 60. That short, nostalgic detour with family was exactly what I needed to ground myself. 

After my family departed, I returned to the reality of the hospital. While Kristan slowly recovered and doctors struggled to stabilize her blood sugar so she could heal, I spent my remaining days hovering in her room, running errands, and exploring the unfamiliar local area. At first, I slept at The Queensbury Hotel, a historic — and incredibly expensive — local landmark. Eventually, empathetic hospital staff directed me to Amanda's House, a delightful lodging house dedicated specifically to families traveling with hospitalized loved ones.

We spent the Fourth of July together in the hospital, celebrating the holiday from the confines of her sterile hospital room. We looked out the window at a few meagre, distant fireworks bursting over the densely forested New York skyline. Wanting something grander for her, I pulled out my Sony VAIO laptop, dialed into the internet, and found live video streams of massive fireworks shows happening across the United States. We sat there in the dark, watching the digital sparks fly. 

That medical fiasco took over our lives for the better part of two months. My corporate life and my caregiving life collided in bizarre ways. When Craig, my Director at work, asked how he could help, I half-jokingly asked if he could get a corporate Lockheed Martin jet to pick us up from a small local airport I had scouted out, sparing me the stress of driving an unstable patient back to Boston Logan. To my amazement, he actually got approval for it — a logistical feat that caught the attention of the CEO, who came to know me personally because of it. But our luck ran out on July 8, when a horrific workplace shooting took place at a Lockheed Martin facility in Mississippi. Instantly, the corporate fleet was rerouted to transport the families of the victims. My director, still determined to help us, managed to pivot and bought us tickets to fly home out of Albany instead of Boston, saving me hours of agonizing driving. 

The hospital doctor finally decided she could be discharged on July 16. I had made some friends at Amanda's house, and I had to say goodbye to them before meeting Kristan at the hospital, and waiting an interminable amount of time, for them to finally discharge her. We almost missed our flight out of Albany. 

We did barely make it to our flight out of Albany. Unfortunately, unlike the nonstop flight we had booked from Boston, we had to connect in Chicago from Albany, and then fly to Denver from there. Navigating those stairs from the ramp up to the CRJ was a real challenge, when she wasn't supposed to be putting any weight on her recovering foot. The good news was that Craig was also able to score us first-class tickets on a high-end Boeing 777 airliner for the flight from Chicago to Denver. That super-comfortable flight was a real high point of our misadventure. 

Kristan's health went medically downhill over subsequent years, and we never made it to Bath together. It wasn't until 20 years later that my partner Jennefer and I finally made our first trip out to that coastal town to meet up with the same family crowd. The peaceful, beautiful waterfront location completely captivated us. Standing there, watching the local lobster boats, looking out past Cundy Harbor, and checking on a nearby Osprey nest, I finally found a sense of closure. It took a long time to get there, but looking out at the water, I couldn't help but reflect on the detour that changed the course of my life so many years before.