Reflections after maybe almost dying

I'm a little surprised to be here.

I could’ve died last weekend. A few times, in fact.

I guess what happened was a ‘freak accident,’ although it was actually quite banal. My family and I were at a vacation rental that came with a pool and hot tub. The pool, though, wasn’t done — contractors being contractors. So, instead, there was a huge pit, lined with wood, the edge of which was only two feet from the hot tub. Saturday night, after a long day of rain, I was opening the lid of the hot tub when I took a step and there was nothing beneath me. I fell into the hole.

Or rather, it now appears, three feet to the little ledge in the photo, and then the rest. This detail might have changed my life.

I have a fractured pelvis. Google this: “Open Book Pelvic Fracture.” I didn’t know about it either. But a few inches either way, and I might have suffered a spinal cord injury and been paralyzed. I’ve wiggled my toes for doctors several dozen times by now. This was luck.

Had I hit my head, I might have died. I was outside alone, my partner and friend inside the house. They didn’t see what happened and didn’t hear me when I screamed for help. I somehow crawled up the pool stairs, across the deck, and into the house. But had I not been able to do any of those things, I would likely not be here right now, on the sofa in my home, released from the hospital, writing this post.

Thank you, nature and/or deity, for the shock response and adrenaline.

I was taken to the hospital. Everyone was great: the EMTs, the nurses, the doctors. We initially thought it was a hip injury, since that’s where the 10-out-of-10 pain was, but eventually the doctors figured it out and I had surgery. I now have titanium bolts in my pelvis, which must count for something. (Yes, I will be able to go through airport security — bizarrely this is everyone’s first question, including mine.)

While in the hospital, though, my blood pressure crashed two times, both without warning. I turned grey (so I’m told), got extremely hot, and I felt like I was going to pass out. The nurses and doctors looked seriously concerned. I don’t want to exaggerate anything; I don’t know if I was close to death or just close to fainting. In retrospect, the doctors think that those were sudden periods of internal bleeding and that they were serious. I got a transfusion and haven’t had an episode since. So who knows?

It's now Wednesday, three and half days after the accident. I’ve made a great recovery. I was released from the hospital yesterday, I am walking with a walker, and apart from some seriously unpleasant side-effects of the fall and the surgery, I’m basically “fine.”

Overwhelmingly, the feeling is that I got very lucky. I feel gratitude, but to whom or to what? I feel disoriented that it all could have been very, very different.

* * *

I don’t ascribe meaning or intentionality to events like this. I don’t know if that’s a matter of education, belief, or just temperament — I think the latter. Maybe it’s the shadow of the Holocaust, or just everyday theodicy, but it isn’t a matter of philosophy. It just isn’t how I see the world, or how I feel it to be. Did I get lucky or unlucky? If the Universe (let alone “God”) saved my life, didn’t the Universe also get me in this mess to begin with? None of these kinds of explanations make any sense to me. They seem ridiculous.

I have many friends who believe in the ‘Law of Attraction’ in various forms, and some friends who are traditionally religious. I respect their ways of interpreting events, but this kind of thinking is a foreign language to me. It seems completely implausible, and unhelpful, like it’s missing the real point. Which is simply that things happen. Life is uncertain. We are delicate creatures.

This is where I find comfort, although it’s precisely a kind of non-comfort. The truth is a kind of release. This is how life is.

I do feel more alive now than a week ago. I didn’t learn anything new on a cognitive, intellectual level. Life is uncertain, and the most important things are beyond our control. And because of that, it’s better to be compassionate, alive, and open. No profound Chödronisms here. But I’ve certainly been reminded of the truth of these very simple statements, and with them comes a sense of vitality, even wonder.

Most of my writing, whether on spiritual or political topics, is the result of reflection and revision. I’m still in this, though. These are thoughts in mid-flight, or mid-fall, or whatever. And I’m quite aware that I haven’t shared any startling insights here. As I’ve said before in my writing, most of the life-changing insights I’ve gotten over the years can fit on bumper stickers. It’s how you know them that matters.

* * *

There is a strange, background calm. I feel I’m living on borrowed time. Sometimes I feel like I did die, and that this is a simulation or alternate reality: Jacob’s Ladder but with laundry and lunchboxes. Fortunately, I’m not at all dissociative and so I don’t take that feeling seriously. Life is plenty real for my partner and family, as is the shock that mine could have just ended, or at least been radically transformed.

The calm is also sometimes disorientation. I’ve reviewed the picture of the pool pit several times. I don’t remember hitting that ‘shelf’ halfway down, but I must have. So maybe I didn’t “almost die,” though that fall is still surely enough for a spinal cord injury, and I did fracture my sacrum as well as my pelvis. It’s as if the amount of the gratitude I should feel depends on the architecture of what might have been.

“Hedonic Adaptation” is once again the salvation and the adversary. We get used to anything. People can be happy in refugee camps, and miserable in mansions. We reestablish our emotional baselines very quickly, and reset to wanting more good stuff and less bad stuff. This is why rich people aren’t happier than the rest of us, and why I can start complaining again, four days after the accident. Already, I have to remember to become grateful to be alive.

But for now, there is still a peacefulness here. Since my main job is now healing the body, sitting around doing nothing is actually being on-task. Like some older people you see at nursing homes or hospitals, I’m content to stare at the wall and rest. Not for long, I’m sure, but I’m enjoying it for now. Hedonic adaptation hasn’t taken over. I can notice every sandwich, feel good about being able to stand up. And I can appreciate how vital I was, obliviously, until this happened. I was quite lucky even before I didn’t injure my spine.

Maybe my standard for profundity is too high. Maybe these scribbled insights are enough. But everything I feel right now seems obvious. And it seems equally obvious to ask why I didn’t feel this way before.

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Thank you for reading. A few other notes.

First, unfortunately, due to my injury, I’m unable to make it to Psychedelic Science next week, which is a major professional bummer. My presentations and panels have been assigned to other folks.

Second, I’m very aware that this may be one of the most impactful authoritarian weeks we’ve experienced this year. Fortunately many others have been reporting well on it, and I have little to add since my attention is elsewhere. If nothing else, perhaps this post can serve as a distraction from that news. I hope you’ll consider turning out on June 14 for a ‘No Kings’ protest near you. The lies, conspiracy theories, incitement, and of course the outrageously norm-breaking sending in of the military — all of it is a moment of acute crisis. I just felt I had to say that.

Here are a few political links I wanted to add:

Chris Murphy on Trump’s threat to use violence against peaceful protesters this weekend:

A reminder of this simple fact:

A headline I’d like to see:

And here’s my friend Don Shewey on the front page of the Daily News. Very proud to be friends with Don - subscribe to his newsletter!

Follow me on Instagram if you like these things. Regards from the couch.