Ghosts

Collision

On March 29^th 2003, I was paged (yes, you read that right!) that a client was in labour at 3am on a clear winter’s night. Just before I hopped in the shower, I decided to do a pregnancy test. It was the end of the month, after all, and my period hadn’t paid me a visit in a while. Almost as quickly as I peed on the stick, two lines appeared confirming why my period was MIA.

I gently woke Tim to tell him that I was pregnant before I stepped outside to the stillness of the early morning. I looked up to a clear night sky full of stars. I was giddy with excitement and in awe that I was actively growing a human being without even knowing it.

I headed out onto the barren highway to make the 60km trek to Ottawa. As I reached the outlying area of the city, still high from my recent discovery, I hit a deer that stepped out of the median into the path of my oncoming car. My excitement turned into horror as the deer landed on the hood of my car, it’s head hitting my windshield before it’s body swung around slamming into the driver’s side door. Alone on the highway and with the deer dead in the ditch, I put my car in gear and drove to the closest off ramp. Police were called and after making a report I was on my way to the hospital to provide labour support.

Due to the collision with the hoofed highway crosser, my car was making an awful noise, the front tire was warped and rubbing on metal and there was mud, blood and deer fur embedded into the driver’s door. I had to clamber out the passenger side door to exit the car. I arrived to my client with a headache, a sharp pain in my neck, in shock and still in disbelief that less than 2 hours earlier I learned I was pregnant. Ever dedicated, I went on to provide 22 hours of continuous support unaware that I had sustained a soft tissue, cervical strain injury that would require ongoing treatment.

That is how I ended up receiving weekly massage therapy and chiropractic care throughout my pregnancy thanks to our automobile insurance. As we had just moved into our first home in a new town, I looked forward to these appointments and the tender care that was provided by these professionals. My chiropractor was young and expecting his second child in just a couple of months after I started seeing him. He was often tired from having been up during the night with his toddler yet managed to put a positive spin on the parts of parenthood that caused me anxiety. We often talked about pregnancy, birth, and all the things I had to look forward to when my time came to launch into motherhood.

In the very early morning of December 5^th 2003, I woke in a lot of discomfort with severe pain under the right side of my ribcage. By 6am, I called my chiropractor who had made himself available to me once labour was underway. He showed up by 7am, performed a gentle maneuver which essentially dislodged the baby’s foot from underneath my ribcage and consequently relieved me of this pain. As a result, the contractions became more regular and we started down the path towards birth.

Twelve hours later, Meredith was born. Having suffered a sudden hypoxic event (cord compression?) at the time of birth, she was whisked off to the local ER, intubated and stabilized before being airlifted to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario where she would spend the first 10 weeks of her life followed by a total of 8 months of hospital stays in that first year. My focus was on her from that moment on. I never saw my chiropractor after that and 7 months later we moved to the town we are in now to be closer to our parents.

Collision 2.0

Fast forward to this past weekend when Tim and I got away for a couple of nights. We rented a quaint air bnb in an equally quaint heritage town just minutes away from the town where Meredith was born 22 years earlier. We awoke on Saturday morning to frigid temperatures (-35 C/ -31 F) and Arctic powered winds. It was the epitome of a cold, winter’s day and we bravely ventured out to a local café to sit by a fire and enjoy a latte. With only one vehicle in the parking lot, we knew the lineup would be short for most people were not crazy enough to go outside on a day like this for any reason.

As we walked into the warmth of the coffee shop, we were greeted by the only other customers who were ordering their drinks. I shivered and announced “It’s fresh out there today” which caused some chuckles. We had a brief exchange and then made our way to the counter to order. It was then that Tim said, “That guy looks familiar.” I agreed and suddenly I realized who he was: the chiropractor who cared for me while I was pregnant with Meredith. As Tim ordered, I walked over and said, “Are you a chiropractor?” To which he replied, “Yes.” I quickly explained that I was his patient 22 years earlier to which he replied: “You’re Julie!” Over two decades had passed since I last saw him in those early hours of labour. I recall sending him a card after Meredith was born to let him know how it all unfolded. He came around the table to hug me. After sharing updates on “our baby” and agreeing that it was so great to see each other, we made our way to our own table.

Tim and I looked at each other with the expression of: “What are the chances?” My chiropractor had shared that they go out for coffee in this particular town to avoid running in patients in their own town which was hilarious considering what had just occurred. Tim and I just happened to pick this town for our getaway which is an hour from home. Had we arrived 5 minutes later, we wouldn’t have noticed them sitting in the far corner of the café. Had there been other people ahead of us in line, we wouldn’t have struck up a conversation. These moments feel serendipitous; more profound than a mere coincidence.

It didn’t take long for me to have a visceral reaction to this brief but powerful exchange. I felt a heaviness rise from my chest and soon tears formed in my eyes. My joints hummed and vibrated a little. You see, there is a solid line between life before Meredith and the moment when we learned she had suffered a massive brain injury when she was 5 days old. In the time it took for the words to tumble out of our neurologist’s mouth, we found ourselves freefalling and frantically grasping at any thread of the life we had imagined as it dissipated before our eyes.

Seeing the familiar face of my chiropractor, like a ghost from the past, launched me back in time to “before Meredith” when I was a pregnant, excited and completely oblivious to what lay ahead. I was unexpectedly launched back to early labour; something I hadn’t really tended to as after Meredith’s birth we hit the ground running and never looked back.

I was very aware of what was happening on a physiological level. This chance meeting alerted my nervous system and my amygdala. The amygdala’s main function is to respond to threats whether real or perceived but this oversimplifies its many functions which include the storing and processing of memories that are tied to strong emotions. My reaction after returning to our table surprised me and it also acted as a gentle nudge that there was some unfinished business to revisit and some incomplete traumatic responses to tend to from a long time ago.

I share this story as an illustration that as American writer, Katherine Anne Porter, wrote: “The past is never where you think you left it.” I consider these experiences like a form of time travel that provide gifts that I can unwrap or I can shove into the back of a closet. I choose the former as I learned a long time ago that when your body and mind are ready to tend to something of significance, it is wise to follow their lead.