mark mclane and family

One Year Anniversary!!

Hi Everyone! Everyone who is still reading this site anyway...which probably isn't many. I am here. Monday, January 30th is my one year anniversary from my accident!! I have come so so far as many of you are aware of. I am compensating for my lack of sight and hearing, depth of field, directional hearing, slow cognitive functions, equilibrium problems, short term memory loss, back pain and more!

It's just remarkable how far I've come, especially to me. I am hiking, and even trail running a little, playing tennis whenever I can, working out at the gym, riding the stationary bike, cleaning house, doing laundry, playing with my little one, cooking, a little gardening, taking out trash, moving things around, grocery shopping (OK, I admit Melissa still does most of this!) and so many other tasks I couldn't really of imagined doing a year ago.

I am shooting photo jobs part time as I get them. I just started College of Marin with 2 classes and a lab (Medical Terminology and Biology 110 and lab) 2 days a week to start the journey towards becoming a Registered Nurse. I am paying our bills (logistically...Melissa is still making most of the money....sometimes all of it!), managing the medical bills, selling our Mercedes, my bikes, some office furniture and cameras, I'm working at Evan's Pre-School on Fridays, I'm still looking for part-time work, and trying to have dinner on the table, and the candles lit, the fireplace going, and the house clean each night for my wonderful wife and kids. They have really been so much support. Melissa is working so hard, and has all along, to compensate for the income and physical loss from my accident, and has done such a great job. I really owe my life, my love, my heart and soul to that women! She is my angel. Physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially she has been there 150 percent, and I am grateful beyond words. It is simply a life blessing to be her husband, and her my wife.

The other angels in my life have been my moms. That would be my mom, and Melissa's mom. They have been there 150 percent all along the way as well. Emotional support, as well as spiritual...and some finanicial, has all meant the world to me and my faimily. They have helped me keep site of the bigger picture, of being alive, being relatively functional, and supported by all, as well as encouraging me to keep eating 'my elephant' one bite at a time.

I'll spend the rest of my life, and theirs, trying to repay them in whatever ways I can. I am so grateful to everyone that has helped and supported me, called me, written me, sent gifts and financial help, gone on walks, and visited me over the past year. You all know who you are, and trust me, even with the brain injury, I do too!

Guapo, Mike & Melissa, Gary & Chantal, Kate & Chuck, Jeff & Rebecca, Marvin & Ann, Elaine Cramer, Dennis & Denise, Valerie & Tim, Carsten & Gail, Bob K, Mani, Will, Brian, Shawna, Al & Peggy, Jan, Jean, Harriot, Matt, Jen, Bill, Margot, Doug, Lise, Matt & Janet, Laura & Greg, Michelle & Tommy, Jonny R, Cathy & Bruce, Tom & Beth, Margaret & Alan, Rabbi Michael & Noa Lezak, Rabbi Staci Freedman, Moji, Doreen, Tim H., Ray, Katie K, Gwynne, JP & Joan, Franck, Dick C, Larry M, Curt & Rebecca, Wally & Claire, Chris & Debbie, Adrian H, Ann Segerstrom, Paula, Victoria Yee, David White, Betti Castro, Al Baum, Julianna Carlsen, Andy Brown, Jonny R, Ed & Candice, Gary Kern, Mitch Feinberg, Chris & Joselyn, Hank, Jeff Kausch, Rob & Kate, Eric R, Jim Taskett, Martin & Tony at Sunshine Bikes, Julia @ Gravy Wheels, Debbie and crew @ MCBC, Calanchini Family, Carol Fones, San Anselmo Co-op Parents, Rodef Sholom congregants, Manor School parents, SFPFS, APA, Red Dot Staff, Sheila Kelly, all my doctors (and there are a lot), and nurses, and hospital staff who all nursed me back to health, I am so grateful for.

I'm sure I forgot someone important, so please don't take it personally! This was a major cognitive success getting this many people's name down! There were many more....amazingly...who helped me over the past year and please forgive me and I thankyou....and good night!!!....just kidding!

Thanks again for all your support and love and kindness. I'm not sure I'll keep this site up past it's due date, which is coming up in the next week or so. Please keep in touch. It really does change things, and is appreciated and makes a difference. I'll keep livin' in the moment, best I can, and hope to see you all doing the same, for many many years to come out on the road of life. Not by bike though!! Let's walk, or kayak, or swim, anything that doesn't recomend a helmet!!!!...and is far away from the traffic!!!!!!!!

Lots of love,

Mark
BEFORE
AFTER
AND NOW!

Rollin Right Along

Hi Everyone.....or anyone who's still checking this site to find out about me. I'm doing well overall, considering I had to close my photography studio (due to the accident), and move into my basement. It's all good though in the end. It will be awhile before I can produce big advertising shoots again....if I ever want to again. I began my first Nursing Course at College of Marin. Not bad heh? 8 months out of the hospital, and I'm changing my career! Yeh, just can't get enough of that hospital! Maybe a few marbles got bonked into place that were loose before the accitdent!

I am a little concerned, as all Nursing students are I found out, about the science courses. I have no idea how I'll get through any of that, but heh, I'm alive and can go at my turtle pace. Might just win the race yet!....not that it's all about winning! I will really start school in earnest in the Spring 06. I'm also looking into working at Marin General part-time. I figure if I'm in the hospital all the time anyway....might as well make some money while I'm there! I will be continuing to shoot photography jobs in my spare time (I know...sure). I still get calls for food and wine work, and portraiture. I shot 20 families the other day for Evan's Pre-School. Somehow I shot (well not literally!) 20 family portraits for the holidays in 5 hours. Yes, I was wiped out. Even without a brain injury I probably would have been. They each got 15 minutes with the 'one eyed photographer!! Look great though. I gotta charge more! See examples below.

So, we (Melissa & I) are still reeling from medical expenses and trying to reduce our overhead at home to survive all this. Amazing the impact a few seconds (head impact that is) can make in your life. You really, really, really don't know what's on the horizon next in your life, and I hope all who read this will take that to heart. There really are much more important things to bring your attention too then rushing around everywhere trying to cram more and more and more into your lives. Not that I didn't do that for 40 years! Just a small drop of wisdom from someone who cares!!!

Love to you all,

Mark

Where am I?

Hi everyone...that's out there still reading this! Forgive me for the lack of recent posting. Life has seemed to take new turns by the minute. I have spent the past 2 months getting back to work at the studio...be it all part time. As I approached Yom Kippur this year, I realized the realities of building back up my business right now are not in sync with our family finances/needs, especially in leui of the medical bills coming in. It's amazing how much change occurs from an accident like this. It has been like a stone falling in a pond, rippling out to touch everyone in our lives. Melissa and Beverly (my mother in law), have been effected as deeply as I have, in many ways more. I am so grateful to them both for all their patience and support with the consequences of my accident to our whole family. They have truly 'been there' and had many many reasons to bail, and didn't!

So, I am closing my photography studio in Sausalito, selling off most of my equipment and turning over the lease to some lucky person, yet to be found. Hopefully I can still do some projects from my home office. I do believe my business will never be as it was, as I am not who I was. Not just physically. My priorities and focus on life has drastically changed. I will never want to be that crazed and busy, under that much stress and anxiety (all of which I took for granted as some sort of 'expected' price of living/working) in my work and home life again. I just want whatever I do to work for my family, and to be manageable for me within my new capacity and abilities. Sounds like not too much to ask huh?

Before the acccident, I would just take on so much, as I'm sure we all do. But now I ask why. How much was I even accomplishing in the end. Was it so much more, if any, then if I had just structured my life within boundaries that I felt were easy, and comfortable? I think it is a lot like driving to work. We can rush and be crazed, not stop completely at stop signs, run a few yellow lights, get around some slow drivers, increase our speed by 10 or 20 miles over the speed limit. Do we save significant time? Do we get to work all that much quicker. Maybe five, ten minutes earlier? Does that truly matter? Only in our minds. No one else cares. We could leave 10 minutes earlier so we are not rushed. People are so lucky to be able to drive a car and get somewhere in just 15 or 20 minutes, versus the bus etc.

I will be looking for a part-time job now. One that does fit into my skill set, and new capabilities. I want to be involved more wiith people, food, and making a difference in our lives. I know I won't ponder over my past, and it's changes, or worry about what may or may not happen in the future. It's not the way I want to live now. I will simply keep doing what I need to do to move forward as a responsible person, with 2 kids, and a beautiful wife I adore, with each moment I breathe. I like living in the 'Now'...now! It's all I can effect. It's all that really matters. It's responsible for our world, whether we ignore it, or dwell in it fully!! Kavanah. The hebrew word for 'living in this moment', is also about the intention we bring to the moment. Positive, negative, love or hate, it changes our world on a moment by moment basis. It's hard to change it if we aren't present in it.

Hope you are all doing well, and please don't hesitate to write. L'Shana Tova. Have a happy Jewish New Year. I know our family is looking forward to it!

Mark

Here are photos from Lucie's Wedding in Montreal!

Julia's Mitzvah

A mitzvah is an act of kindness or charity towards another, or others, for the good. For anyone who didn't get the link to what Julia did for me for Father's day this year, please go to:link to read about it. She is my sweet angel and I of course am partial, but heh, she's the best 11 year old in my life!

I feel like what she did, and what so many others have done for me in gifts, rides, kindness, support and love, prayers and thoughtfullness, has to have made a huge difference in my healing. Kentfield keeps telling me that the my glass is indeed half full. I'm just at six months and have so much to be thankful for. They say it is remarkable to be where I am now, and I believe it, even with the limitations I am adjusting to. Something in the fiber of the world that you all created, knowingly or not, deeply effected my recovery so far. I think it truly is more powerful then any of the medicines I took.

Tennis anyone?!

From my heart,

Mark

One-Eyed Tennis

Well, the past two weeks I've seen some improvement in my physical abilities! Yep...I played tennis last week....one-eyed tennis though it be! Did pretty well actually. I haven't played in 20 some years but it seemed to come back a bit. Like riding a bike!...or? Kentfield seems to think it will be good for my depth of field, reaction times, directional hearing, brain stimuli, back muscles, etc. I enjoyed it anyway, and am now looking for people to play with, so if you might be up for it give a ring.

I haven't had any improvement in my eye, or ear, but my back is doing much bettter as well as my walking, and cognitive tolerance is increasing by the month. I can also now read books for an hour or so at a time! It's really just amazing how far I have come in just 4 months of being out of the hospital at Kentfield. Did have a little scare last week. Had a bad chest pain, cramp thing, that wouldn't go away. They rushed me to Emergency again in case it was another blood clot (I just came off the Cumiden blood thinner). Turned out it was Bacterial Nuemonia. They also found a small nodule in my left lung. Who knows what that is, yet, but they'll let me know next week. Hopefully it's no worse then what I've been through so far. I'm not worrying anyway!

I also shot my first photograph job in the studio. Two half days shooting 4 varieties of endive. It went well (I brought home boxes of endive!), I was happy with my creative problem solving abilities (which I feared were lost), and the clients were very happy as well. I realized I can only take half day shoots at the moment, but that is really something great from where I've come from. I seemed to benefit from all the 'here & now' focus I've had over the past 6 months, as well as the heightened creativity.

I am home now for a while. I'm up for hiking, tennis, or just visiting if anybody is still out there! Please don't hesitate to write or call.

Enjoy the last days of Summer!!

Mark

Mo Betta'

Hi Everyone,

Well, I'm coming home from the ranch tomorrow, Saturday...see photos below. It's been three weeks of recovering and healing down here, and as you can see it is a great place to do that. I'm going to start shooting jobs back at the studio next week which is a big change. Just small jobs and projects I can do on my own terms right now, but it's a start. I still can't drive, so WhistleStop vans will be running me around.

It's really amazing how much better I am after the past month or so. I'm swimming, doing Tai Chi again, walking better and staying awake longer during the day. I'm amazed that my body can be doing as much as it is after only 6 months. There are still plenty of challenges, but I am truly feeling better. I'm sure only those that don't know I was in an accident could even tell there is anything wrong with me. Most of you know there was always something wrong with me!!

Actually, all your support has been so healing for me. I feel really blessed every day. I have been reading a lot about the mind, and healing, and meditation, and mindfulness. I can see how they are all tools for me to use in recovering from this accident. It's interesting though how it seems that not any one thing in itself makes you whole. I could go off meditating for years, and never have to deal with my emotions, my relationships, and all the issues and challenges related to them. Yet, slowing down enough to meditate, or do Tai Chi, or other 'slow' things seems so easy now.

Maybe as I start working that will change, but I hope not. I really love not rushing around, worrying about every thing, fearing disaster around every next corner coming up. I can see how most everything can wait, or isn't all that important anyway. I'm not referring to responsibilities, obviously! But the stuff that comes up moment by moment in our minds. Most of it can just keep going right out the other end if we let it. I know....easy for me to say!!

Hope your summer is going well. Please keep int touch.

Best,

Mark

Sweeping Denial

Well....what does it all mean? I wish I could sweep my own denial of what life is, or may be, away. But mostly I'm affected by a sweeping denial of how delicate the balance of our lives are. Who really wants to have clarity around the future gifts and tragedies? Who wants to beleive bad things can happen to them. Even to this day, a part of me wants to sweep it all clean with a sense that it was all meant to be, and for a reason.

I certainly don't beleive that now. I think things just happen. What matters, is what we make of it. There is no reason for anything except what we place on it. The denial comes when we give everything a purpose, a reason to be. I'm referring to the chaos of the world around us all. I touched that chaos for a moment. I know I can survive it and make something of my new, normal life. My own sense of denial could easily fuel the good and bad reasons for it all happening. Then I could just live in that fear that it could just happen again. I find it's not true, but it's so easy to embrace. Embracing the fear distracts me from facing the challenge.

I will never understand why I feel clarity now, after the accident, around the possibilities of change I can make for my life now. Before the accident, I could get so absorbed in the details of my world, that denying the possibility of touching chaos, became a survival mode for a dream of sanity. Before the accident, if I held how precious life is, how much I can contribute, or inspire the world around me, I'd have to hold the saddness of loss and change that could happen at any moment. Now, in the rawness of my brain I must balance the denial with the realities, every day, and it's OK.

Coming back from my Mom's ranch in Escondido gave me a perspective on my healing. It was so quiet, with so few demands on me, that I finally was able to experience myself healing, and making progress physically and mentally. Spiritually, I will never be the same. No matter how far I get from the accident, I will hold the constant fragility, and the constant stability in change, of our lives.

Being back in Fairfax, and challenged with the noise and busyness of our normal life, I understand that I can find solice in the corners, I will recover regardless, and it is all part of the precious jewel that I will continue to live and love. I'm up to 4 hours out of the brace and 2 hours in it, rotating throughout the day. I'm finding new energy to contribute to the household chores, and the needs of our children, and my sweet wife. I'm also getting better at accepting my limitations and needs, and asking for help, and saying no when it's consistent with what I need.

Below are some new shots I took at my Mom's place in Escondido. I know, still no food or wine photos! No wine for the next year though! No seizures as well, hopefully. I do miss the wine....and the food photography. It will come.

Best to you all,

Mark

What Really Matters

Well, after four months I’m still getting better! Surprise huh? No matter what I think or feel about it all, I’m continuing to heal. I’m truly recovering from almost dying three times, breaking my back, losing an eye and an ear, and whacking my brain so hard it’s never really clear. Yet as a whole person, not just the sum of my injuries, I have been able to stay relatively positive and optimistic so far. I think that has to have some effect on my recovery. The doctors say I can’t speed up the recovery time but there are lots of things I can do to slow it down, i.e., depression, anger, resentment, etc.

I’ve found as I continue with the healing process, that it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate what really matters from lots of seemingly urgent tasks and desires that arise daily.

I’ve been reflecting on what I did before the accident. I certainly thought of myself as someone who continually weighs the importance, or frivolousness, of things throughout the days and months and years. Now I believe that many of my choices were driven by my personal desires for myself, as well as my desires for others. It is very difficult to just strip things back to what really matters, putting aside my personal views, thoughts, opinions and preferences…even if I think it is the ‘right’ thing to do.

For example, if my family really wants to go to the beach this morning, and I for a bike ride, what really matters? I need the bike ride sometimes to be with the family in a clear way, and yet, if I knew I would get hit by a car and barely survive, impact my family for years to come, would I still choose to go? Probably not. No question they really matter most. It’s just hard to juggle our desires and perceived needs over what really matters in the end, especially when we don’t know what that will be.

I now wonder, with the brush of death, and the appreciation of life, so close, how I would choose the many paths I have taken again. That is the beauty of living I suppose, and of growing, yet wouldn’t it be wonderful to dig deep within each time we choose, being able to decipher ‘what really matters’ from what we ‘think matters’ at the time, in the circumstances we face.

I find myself faced with disabilities that I must cope with daily. I don’t always have the luxury of acting on my desires or wishes. The difference is that I’m not sure any of those desires and wishes I have are all that important to my life when it comes right down to it. Participating in risky sports, or close calls driving, etc., sometimes made me feel important as I lived through them, but I’m not convinced they were all that important to my life as far as the value they truly brought me, beyond pleasure.

I am shocked, after my accident, for example, by all the drug use in our communities (not that I wasn’t before!) not because of my sense of right and wrong so much as my new sense of ‘what really matters’. With all the dangerous, unhealthy, violent and risky things we can participate in, why make it harder and worse by doing consciously bad things to ourselves like drugs. Maybe many of those people aren’t conscious, but I wonder.

In a moment my life was changed. In future moments I can keep changing it for the better, and why not keep on changing it? I don’t know where the Auto/Stop button gets pushed. Maybe when we get so busy we can hardly manage it all? Maybe when we just loose the energy to care. All I know now is that I must hold on to all or part of this appreciation for life and the choices I have to live it.

What really matters to me now is that I fully participate in a life I am lucky to have, and to cherish and treat it as my last each and every day. Sounds preachy I know (besides, I had a brain injury!) but how many of us can stay focused with so much going on? How many of us can still see, deep and clear, what really matters?

Hope you are all listening. Hope you will eek out the time to send me a quick note about what you think, about it all!

Choices to ya!

Mark

Guacamole Falling

Well, on the good news side, my nuero surgeon said I can slowly phase out the brace! (see photo below!). I love my nuero surgeon!! He also said I am healing very well, in fact for it only being 3 months since the accident, I'm doing exceptionally well. Then, Kentfield Rehab approved me for 2 hours alone 5 times a week. I know some of you are thinking, "humm, rehab, alone time....don't do it Mark!" It's not that kind of rehab. Being alone is just amazing though. We all take it so for granted that we can be alone anytime we want, and yet, how many of us actually spend time alone, where we are not sleeping?

So, although I can be alone, listening to the birds sing, I'm not allowed to cook over open flames, juggle knives (remember the blood thinner!), or run up and down the stairs fencing. I did try and get some things out of the frig, while I was alone, and lo and behold, out fell the guacamole with a splat on the floor. Then I sliced open my hand on a broken pot outside, and then a couple days later, while sneeking a cookie from the glass cookie jar, missed my depth of field, again, and shattered the glass lid onto the glass cookie jar, which also shattered and sliced another finger open. Blood everywhere. I forgot about the blood thinner till then. Must have had a brain injury or something.

Well, most of you are aware of how this accident has impacted our little family unit and my lovely wife in particular. I am eternally grateful to her, and yet, that is what marriage and long term friendships are all about. That we help each other, that there is someone there in emergencies, and we can grow old together, still in love! For all the hard and bad things that happen in a relationship like ours (going on 17 years) it is still so comforting to come home, or be home, to the ones we love. We have found that, painfully sometimes, the hard times really have made us closer. For me it is truly wonderful that my sweet wife is so devoted, and loyal, and caring for me after so much time and now through so much hardship.

She is accepting of me even with guacamole on the floor and a husband who can't bend and twist to get it! I think like many of us, I am the one who is hardest on myself. It seems inside my fuzzy brain that I ought to be back at work, or cleaning the house, or doing the yard work and maintainence, when I really just need to recover and heal right now. It is hardest to give myself that time. I had to come a hairs breath from dying three times in this injury to even be OK with giving myself the alone time. But why is it so hard to take care of ourselves? Does it really mean we are selfish? I don't think so. I think you should all (not at once) take a couple hours off and go for a hike with me, or alone! I realize a new depth to making sure most of the things we do are enriching and benefiting our lives as well as others.

My new guitar is like that for me. It cost a lot of money, and yet, I get untold hours and days (and hopefully years) of enjoyment and healing from playing it. I think that is priceless. My expensive bikes were like that too. I think it is so easy to overlook how priceless our lives and partners and children, and peace and sanity, are when we aren't doing things or buying things that improve and enrich our lives.

Thanks for reading! Thanks for taking a little time! I'd love to hear from you. Post me a note!!!

Best to you all,

Mark

Too Sexy For My Brace!

Yeh....I'm gettin' better! In lots of ways!...and physical therapy is helping! But that's not the real reason for that title. In the March issue of National Geographic is an article on the mind which starts out with the quote, "The Mind is what the Brain does." That is so amazing to me because it really differentiates a lot of the circumstances I'm faced with after the brain injury that aren't necessarily personal. Just because it seems perfectly obvious that I should of not picked up that small tree in the yard, and repotted it without help, doesn't mean I'm an idiot. It's just that I had this brain injury, head trauma, brain surgery thing happen to me recently! It's not personal to my mind!

I'm also not my brace....I realized suddenly after reading that article! It's just another physical restriction. My mind is where my conciousness is, my emotional processes, my inteligence, my creative talent (or so some think!), and my body is a separate thing. And, as my therapists at Kentfield Rehab keep reminding me, it's all temporary. And, as my mother used to tell me....and still does..."eat your elephant bite by bite". So, as I improve, I'm realizing it all heals in bite size pieces, eventually...I hope.

One of my occupational therapists has been trying to get me to stop, breathe, and think for a moment, before I attack a new task or project. It's funny that they seem to think of all these things that I myself can't seem to come up with. I do find that everything I see around me, that I'd like to get done, seems so pressing and urgent. If I'm on the way down to the carport to find a rake, I'll see that something else needs to be fixed and don't seem to stop myself, but dive in only to have some consequence glaring me in the face. I think even before the accident I would have been more sane if I stoppped, breathed, and thought about what's really involved in the task before I began. Suddenly I realize I could do it differently, get help, or delegate, or whatever to make it easier and more efficient. It's a beautiful thing...what I'm learning about myself. It only took an accident!

I also read something from Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind, "families and friends can get in the way of healing and medicine, or they can become the medicine". My family and friends have most certainly become my medicine and I am so grateful to you all for that. Every day I am blessed with your presence, and wisdom, and encouragement, and kind words. I feel very lucky to be alive, but even luckier to be cared for by so many people.

Lastly, I found last week that creative activities really do help uplift and restore me to a better place. Playing guitar for just 20 minutes a day is helping me maintain a reasonable outlook on my life! I also took some more photos. All of one flower, but heh, I got out and used my tri-pod for this one! The first shot is me facing my dissabilities, the rest are me jumping out of that world to hopefully create grace! Just click and view!