Morning Glory
What ails me 19 years after September 11, 2001.
Most mornings are tough. I get up earlier than I usually would just to get my mind and body right. There are days when I wake up and my brain is rattled from the nightmares that went on through most of the night. It doesn’t take long from the time my alarm goes off until I start feeling the pain. Sometimes its in my legs, other times my foot is completely swollen. On bad days it’s the coughing. The coughing is the worst because I don’t to leave the house if I don’t get it under control.
I don’t remember what it’s like to actually put my feet to the floor for the first time each morning without pain. Over the last few years I’ve worked with doctors to build enough tolerance and get on a good regiment that allows me to accomplish the simple task. I don’t take it for granted, believe you me. About 8 years ago on most mornings in 2011, I’d wake up and not feel my legs at all. I’ll take the pain every day over that.
People ask me all the time, am I sick from September 11? Hard to say. I’m alive. Most people go through life suffering from much worse. The symptoms I’ve described above have become part of my routine. There are things I used to love to do that I can’t anymore like running (I know, hard to believe given my current state) and playing sports like soccer, basketball and football. I used to love pickup games.
I’d say lately the hardest part about 9/11 is reading in the news or getting a phone call that another person you knew or someone else knew have succumbed to injuries from that day. It’s difficult to read or hear that and not get emotional. Some of us actually thought we were in the clear and that we had some how dodged a bullet and some of us just might.
My good friend Mike DeStefano passed away in 2011 and I was always in awe with his approach to life. He had been diagnosed with HIV in the 90s and at the time that was a sure death sentence. When I met him he was supposed to be dead years before he actually did. Or at least that’s what he would say. He had made peace with death and was ready at any time. Unfortunately I haven’t achieved that kind of zen. But I keep working everyday using the tools he gave me to get there.
His brother John was a firefighter on 9/11. He goes about it a little differently. As most firefighters do right through a brick wall. There was something John said a couple of years ago and continues to replay in my mind almost every day: “When my time comes and its fucking coming soon, I’m ready. I won’t have any regrets about what we did.”
So what’s wrong with me? I developed a blood disorder that eventually contributed to a diagnosis of pulmonary embolism. My body has issues with clotting. I typically experience both numbness and sharp pain throughout my legs and feet every day. While having clots in my upper body are dangerous the most common are the clots I get in my feet. As my sweet aunt Maria once said “Oh my God you are a ticking time bomb.” Not quite, but I get a chuckle at the way she said it.
I’m not looking for pity or anything like that. I’m writing this because I know there are people like me that might be experiencing this. You are not alone. We don’t talk about it because over three thousand people have died since that day and it feels like there’s one or two more deaths each week. We are all alike. We’re grateful we get to live another day. We don’t take it for granted and there’s no time to look back and say what if.
I’ve got this great doctor I go to in LA. He’s one of those genius arrogant guys that think they are Alec Baldwin in the movie ‘Malice’. You remember the line. “You ask me if I have a god complex? I am god.” Yes that guy. He’s been treating my blood for 5 plus years. The results have been mixed but the difference is certainly felt. He’s made me his project. He doesn’t get many patients who have been “injured by 9/11” so this has become a mission for him. I have a team of doctors I go to in New York. They are a little more humble, but I appreciate each and every one of them. I don’t tell them enough because my head is always somewhere else, but they have saved my life and keep me upright. Without them I certainly wouldn’t be here.
What else is wrong with me? The nightmares man. I thought by now they’d dissolve into mere passing thoughts, but they are just as bad as they ever were. If I don’t wake up in cold sweats, it’s usually my bones shaking from whatever physical trauma I just experienced in the dream. Sometimes it’s just reliving certain things but then there are these psychedelic bursts of horror that spiral into a realistic fight for my life. And then you wake up.
Anything else? Yes. Any time you see me I could be thinking about 9/11. I have no control over it and nor do most of the people I talk to. There are instances where it comes and goes within seconds, but depending on what I’m doing if there is quiet for more than a couple of minutes it will overwhelm me. You won’t know it if you see me. I don’t freak out and burst into tears. It’s just happening.
Enough about what ails me. I wanted to make sure everyone acknowledges our current heroes. This pandemic has reminded us what front lines actually are. The first ones through the door are usually the ones hit the hardest and that is true for our nurses, doctors, EMTs and paramedics. They have stepped up. On 9/11 many of the same people were waiting at the hospitals for a flood of victims to come through those ER doors. It never happened. 19 years later they have taken on something even bigger. The stories I hear about the physical and mental toll it has on them are not far from what first responders went through during and after the events of 9/11.
One other thought. I remember everyone around me complaining about President George W. Bush in 2001. There was so much indecisiveness then too. Tension was building among political parties as well as liberal and conservative groups. The events of 9/11 gave us all a common enemy, shut everyone up and united us. Of course there were the conspiracy theorists, but overall the country came together. White and Black didn’t matter. People of all colors and creeds were one. I thought the pandemic could have the same effect of uniting us versus one common enemy but it just seems like the gap is too big to fill. Despite how incredibly hard it might be we seriously need to find some common ground.
If this experience has taught us anything it’s that after 9/11 we banded together and rose up better for a time because of it. We are squandering an opportunity to do that again. We are forcing people to choose a side instead of presenting each other with a chance to come together despite what our differences are. That always has to be an option. If we don’t the heroics of 9/11 and subsequent battles we’ve fought and soldiers we’ve lost was all for nothing.
It’s been 19 years. To the people I knew you are missed every day. Mike Marti, Jennifer Mazzotta, Lucy Crifasi, Volunteer EMT Richie Pearlman, Sean Powell, Dominique Pandolfo, Firefighters John Moran, Adam Rand, Joe Hunter and John Giordano.
