A Year Ago . . . and Now

Not to scare anyone, but here's what Mark was up to this time one year ago. . . .

Most of our posts have been about our travels. A few have had more to do with our romance. This post, however, is about an anniversary of sorts. A year ago, Mark was recently out of surgery for multiple fractures sustained in a bad fall in Bluff, Utah. He had broken, we kid you not, his left elbow in multiple locations, his left femur, and his right kneecap. (He has Osteogenesis Imperfecta, aka "brittle bones," so these sorts of catastrophes are always possible.)

 Things back then were bad enough that his orthopedic surgeon had coined nicknames for the various disastrous joints—the left elbow, for instance, was “the bag of bones,” while the left femur and knee were “Pandora’s Box.” Whether Mark would ever get much use out of his arm or perambulate again was in question, to put it mildly.

Meanwhile, Sarah was living at the hospital, sleeping on a window seat to keep Mark company. If you have never tried either of these activities, as patient or loved one, you haven’t experienced the depths of dreariness and drollery that an American hospitalization can bring. One year ago today, we cheered ourselves up by taking cellphone snapshots of ourselves in Mark’s hospital bed together. 

We really fell in love at that hospital. It was, to mint a phrase, the worst of times and somehow also the best of times.

To commemorate that moment, and at the risk of inviting dies irae, we decided to publish one post of “Then” and “Now.” The first photos are the ones we took on the phone in that unlovely hospital bed. Please forgive the inevitable low resolution of the images. The second set of photos features Mark hopping about the world on sticks and bandy legs—in Namibia driving a 4x4 stick-shift with the “bag of bones” elbow and “Pandora’s Box” on the clutch, paddling a canoe in the Outback, and so forth. Enjoy.

Then:

And Now:

And his lovely bride couldn't be more proud. Nor he more grateful.