Burden Borne

This week I’ve found it difficult to get into a writing mode. I ran out of stocked posts a week ago, but my daughter and I took a road trip to California, and so I thought I’d take an actual vacation and get back to work this last weekend, when we returned.

Our trip was….a trip. As Autumn said, as we hightailed it out of NorCal on I-5, watching storm clouds gather on the horizon behind us, “This was not a vacation.”

Quite unintentionally, but consequently unchangeable due to medical requirements, we chose to stay in the foothills of Los Gatos during two atmospheric rivers and a bomb cyclone. Our Airbnb lost power, the Jeep’s battery died and, perhaps the biggest downer for me, my cameras were not taken out of their camera bag. Not even once for a quick shot of the waves crashing onto the Capitola pier.

Instead, I found myself in warrior mode again. At least it wasn’t because of doctors this time?

We had been paying attention to the weather in California before we left. Should we have considered rescheduling? Maybe. But the main reason we were going was so my daughter could see her Lyme doctors face to face. Her local Lyme doctor is amazing and wonderful, but until we can get her body stable enough to be weaned off the IV antibiotics, she needs them, and her local Lyme doctor can’t prescribe them because she is an ND and doesn’t work with an MD because traditional MDs don’t agree with antibiotics for Lyme treatment. Got all that? In Washington state, we had discovered no MDs that would agree with not only antibiotics but IV antibiotics, which my kid needs because she also has two intestinal blockages. Ridiculousness.

During Covid, we were able to consult and receive treatment from any doctors, anywhere. But then Covid “ended” and all of us finally able to get the treatment we needed, even if it was out of state, were expected to move, travel or just go back to doctors who may be local but ignorant. Any why? Because insurance wants to make the most money, and they can’t regulate profits if patients go out of state.

Because flying causes enormous pressure and pain on my daughter’s already-compressed vascular system, we agreed to drive. I took the entire week off from all my private students, and we would make a vacation out of it. Rescheduling would mean losing out on another week of pay, for me, but also rescheduling the one appointment we had to get to before her prescription ran out would be difficult.

We just had to hope the weather would clear a bit while we were there. To be fair, when we left there were no warnings of bomb cyclones. Atmospheric rivers, yes, but we live in Washington. We understand rain. An atmospheric river in California was a day in the life of a Seattleite.

Or so our egos told us before we left.

We forgot that, while Seattle may not know how to handle snow, California has forgotten how to handle rain. At least in the quantities California has been getting.

By the time we were halfway to our destination, we were getting warnings about more than “just” rain. If my kid was healthy, I absolutely would have turned around at that point. But the burden of traveling with a sick person is that you can’t always do what makes sense to able-bodied people. After all, if my kid was healthy, we 1)wouldn’t be doing this in the first place or 2)would be flying and already been grounded.

Managing life with a sick person is that their health affects everything and anything, all the time. Making decisions when able-bodied and healthy is easy, and if you don’t realize how easy it is, you are not appreciating your situation. Yes, everyone has money to think of and time and all the things. But when you are sick or not able-bodied, you have extra layers, and the caretakers have extra layers.

Had my daughter been able-bodied and healthy, we would have totally hunkered down in our AirBnb when the generators blew due to lightning strikes. We did hunker down the first night–the generators blew around ten pm, and our unit was suitably warm enough to handle for one night. It wasn’t cold; just dark and windy. But by the next morning, cold had started to settle in for Autumn, and we needed to find heat so the “perfectly normal” sinus infection she was only just getting over didn’t resurface and hit her even harder. Our landlord had electricians coming, and she had her doctor’s appointment, so we figured we’d get out of there and find warm food and heat.

Except the Jeep was dead.

Another burden for me to fix. This kind of problem is not really a “problem.” Cars can be fixed, eventually. But it was that I had to think about all the potential ramifications and possibilities, the financials, how we would get home, and I found myself just tired of…thinking.

The day before, we had hit what I thought was a normal roadside puddle but instead was a cavernous pool of water. The water engulfed us, putting us underwater on SR 35 for a good ten seconds. My Jeep is lifted, on huge all-terrain 64 inch tires, so putting the windshield underwater is not as easy as engulfing a Tesla or Chevy sedan.

Those seconds are etched in my memory like one long, eternal moment. I was certain I would not be able to steer us out of the flash pool much less stop safely — our windshield was a heavy waterfall — and inwardly I braced for impact with the cliff. But the quick reflexes I experience during a crisis kicked in — it would be super cool if they could help me stop tripping over myself daily, but that is not part of their job description apparently, and we managed to get the tires to grip the gravel at the bottom of the pool and come to a stop inches, as we discovered when the water receded, from the cliff face. I didn’t start to shake until hours later, when we were back in the AirBnb.

I was a little concerned about the Jeep — it was built for offroading and wading, not swimming. But we had driven away for a good 45 minutes after that incident, so I didn’t think much about it given the concern about the incoming storm.

I should have.

The Jeep’s battery was drained. The owner sent a friend to jump it, but I think the battery and fuses were sufficiently waterlogged so that attempting to jump the Jeep’s V-6 engine with the cute little Chevy’s V-4 engine only made things worse.

Long, long story short, we are now members of AAA, and after backing his flatbed down the long, windy mountain road, the AAA guy jumped the Jeep’s battery in under five seconds with his portable supercharger. The Jeep still has blown fuses for the sidelights and the AutoStart, but those are bling. I knew we could get home without them.

Crisis averted. We could escape. But emotionally, I felt as if I were carrying burdens of stone.

We made it to Autumn’s appointment, and then we booked a hotel in civilization. There were other people there, in the hotel, and other people were who I was hoping to get away from that week. But my recharge expectations had dwindled from nice long quiet walks in the mountains to a working heater for Autumn to stay warm.

We left for home the next day, as we had planned, but a bit earlier and without visiting the beach, which was in chaos anyway after the storm.

I drove through all the mountain passes in the dark to get as far away from the incoming storm as I could. Mountain passes in the dark are not my favorite. I usually plan to drive through the summits during daylight hours. But I just needed to get as far as possible from the weather burden.

We made it home Saturday just as the news was telling us the storm was hitting NorCal again. I was glad to be home. Safe. With Autumn intact. And I figured I’d recharge over the next few days with my usual: lying on the couch, ordering food and binging screen.

But I didn’t, really. I’m not as physically tired. I’ve returned to work and yoga practice and cleaning the kitchen and doing all the household things. But….

We haven’t had a vacation since we fled to Scotland right after my divorce. Seven years.

Autumn often feels like a burden to me, to her brother, her dad, her friends…to life. I always tell her, “You aren’t the burden. The ridiculous reasons for why we are here are the burdens.”

I’d been excited for last week. For the first time in a long time, I was feeling thankful for ignorant doctors who got us to this place, because hey, we have an excuse to drive to California and have some fun, finally! Then, in that forever moment navigating the Jeep out of hydroplaning into a cliff, I thought, “Does it ever stop?”

I just wanted to lay down all the burdens for a few days. Just for a little bit.

I just wanted a vacation.