MIDTERM Paper

                               Jessica Reitler

                               10-30-08

Burning Love

                               When growing up, we all have learned about fire safety, and what to do in case of fire emergency whether it would be in the bus, in school, or even in your very own house. We have also learned the simple technique of “stop, drop, and roll”, if your clothes would ever happen to catch on fire. Fire can be very dangerous, and accidents with fire can happen when least suspected. A horrible accident has happened to my uncle, Chuck. It has been a life learning experience from the horrifying phone call of what happened, the frightening trip to Pittsburgh, and the fight through the surgeries.

                               It all started on the cold, breezy morning of December fifteenth, two-thousand and seven, around eight o clock am. That was around the time my mom received an unsuspected phone call from her other brother, about what he had heard that happened through a buddy of his that was a fire fighter. The phone call had shocked my mom with my eyes seeing her tears and by her facial expression; I knew something majorly had happened. After she had franticly hung up the phone, all she could say was, “Your uncle has been burnt really, really bad. Let’s go!” As unsuspected I through my shoes and coat on, totally clueless of where we were headed to. We had arrived in Templeton, where my uncle lives. My mom drove down to the river by the number-eight boat launch, which is located right on the Alleghany River. At our arrival, there was a helicopter that they had already loaded my uncle into and was ready to take off. His younger son was also standing there, with other people from the town, which probably heard the entire ruckus and was nosey to see what was going on. I stood there with my cousin and gave him a hug, as doing so I can feel his legs shaking as if he were a newborn trying to walk for the very first time. My mother told him to come with us, because his dad is the only person he has besides his brother and family.

                               After picking up his two sons, we unexpectedly left his hometown and headed toward Pittsburgh where the life flight was headed.    The ride had us all so worried to death, and with our strong prayers of hoping he would pull through. Almost an hour through, we arrived at our destination, the burn unit at West Penn Hospital of Pittsburgh. Our arrival time was around ten o’clock. We impatiently waited in the waiting room with other members of our family, and as well other families that were there for other reasoning. After five hours later, we finally had talked to a doctor; He explained to us what he had heard happened. He explained UN sure that he was working around a propane tank at his friend’s house, went into a seizure, and somehow caught himself on fire. He also said that they were taking him in the surgery room to really clean his wounds, and inspect them carefully along with his lungs, and insides.

                               Around six-thirty PM, they started to let us in to see him. We were allowed to go in two at a time. His mom and dad, who would be my grandparents, went in first. After a bit they came out, and others went in. Well everyone had their turn expect me, and I was still so nervous to go in for the fact of seeing everyone’s emotions on their faces. My gram told my cousin, Chuckie to take me in to see him. Chuckie is my uncle’s oldest son; he is my age, 19. As we walked back the hall, it felt as if we were walking a marathon and it was never ending. We turn around the corner and my cousin stops at this door and pointed around the door in the room. I poke my head in, and my eyes broke into tears. I couldn’t believe what I seen. That image is still so strong in my head. I had to ask myself, is that really my uncle.” As my eyes were unwillingly filling up with tears I slowly looked at my cousin. His eyes started to tear up as well. His face was indescribable. It looked as if he were missing part of his lip, part of his nose, and with no eye-lashes, or eye brows. His face was like three times the size of what it normally looked like and was wrapped with gauze as some of the water from his body was seeping through. The doctor came down the hall and started talking to my cousin, asking him all these different questions. He then asked him if he wanted to be reliable for all the decisions that came along since he was the closest person to him. He told the doctor that he would have to talk to my grandma and see what she wanted him to do. The doctor also explained that his dad was in a coma, and was defiantly going to need skin grafts, and possibly blood transfusions. The doctor also claimed that he had third degree burns to his face, from his waist down, and both his arms and hands. These parts were all wrapped up, not present for the naked eye to see. We were thankful, because seeing his face was already way too much. He also burnt his lungs a little bit from the flames of what he had breathed in.

                               He was on a ventilator because he couldn’t breathe on his own for weeks, and was in a coma for about two months. During this he had tons of surgeries of skin grafts. A skin graph is where doctors remove a patch of skin from a donor site, and transplant it on to another one to replace skin that was damaged. They all took except for his knees, which we were hoping would later take. He has been through many ups and downs. He was still in critical condition for months, as he fought for his life. The doctors say its going to be a long road ahead for him to recover as fully as he’s going to. After he left West Penn, they sent him to a rehabilitation center for burn victims. He was in there for about another month. They finally sent him home, but he had to go back to that center for therapy two days a week, for three hours. He still today goes to therapy and he actually went into another surgery today, Tuesday October 28, 2008 on his knees. The reason being is because when he was burnt it burnt some of his tendons and it made it hard for him to walk. He’s not going to be able to walk for a while again. He still has many surgeries to come which we can deal with, we are just thankful that he is still alive.

                               I think sometimes people don’t realize what they really have and how good their lives really are. There are people in hospitals now as we speak that our fighting for their lives and don’t even have the privilege of even breathing on their own, rather than the things that were capable of doing. This is why I feel that people should live life to the fullest because no matter how much luck or how little luck, how poor, or how rich you are, these life changing things can happen to us all, and we should be grateful for what we do have.

                               Everyday we face different archetypes no matter who you are, whether it is being a warrior, a caregiver or even one of the many other different archetypes. It could even be a situational archetype such as a quest, a task, or even a journey. I think that my uncle went through the situational archetype, the journey, and on his way went through a lot of the archetypes. I think he did go through a psychological hell and was brought into a dark hole and he had to pick himself up from his lowest point to return to living in the world and normally function again as best to his ability.  But besides the archetypes, I think that samsara had a great role to do with this as well. As I wrote in my blog entry number eleven, I wrote that my understanding of samsara would be something that goes on and on and on, and really has no ending. I definitely feel that there was a point of samsara that took place for my uncle, especially through all the pain that he thought would never end. Also I think that is took place throughout his whole journey going through this trauma and life obstacles, not knowing what was going to happen the next day. I’m sure he felt that as if he were stuck in this battle with himself, and was unable to get away. Another part of samsara would probably be going through all of the surgeries; I’m sure he feels like he keeps doing the same thing over and over again and he probably felt as if he would never get better.

                               Instead of using all of these examples from class, I’ve decided to just finish this paper by tying in my story with the things that actually meant something to me and interested me in this class.  As Marlen would want us to be social with people around and actually discuss things that we didn’t really understand, or we learned about something. I think that the experience that my uncle went through, and is still going through, would be so hard. I honestly couldn’t imagine dealing with the things he dealt with then, or now. Instead of trying to explain his pain and emotions, I wrote a poem to try and describe it instead. I chose to use one of my favorite types of poetry called Acrostic Poetry; I got in off of the Shadow Poetry website we’ve used for class.

Too much pain all at once

Help me God

Enough hurt to last a lifetime

Bad scars

Aching muscles

Tender joints

Talking through a ventilator

Living through a repeated cycle

Every day I cried

                               So all in all, I think that this class so far is something I would have never suspected it to be, but I’m glad it is the way it is. I can honestly say that I’ve never been good at literature and don’t know how well I will ever be. But this is the first English/Literature class that I can honestly say I felt that I actually learned something and it will be useful. I use to absolutely hate anything dealing with Literature or English, whatever it may be, but I think I can truthfully say that it’s really not as bad as I thought It was. I know I’m far from perfect and don’t plan on being perfect but like I said I think we should all just live life to the fullest, and push for what we want. You may never know when something good or bad will come your way and could possibly change your life forever.