{"id":127,"date":"2014-03-26T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T18:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/altimac.com\/?p=127"},"modified":"2014-12-01T18:09:25","modified_gmt":"2014-12-01T23:09:25","slug":"flashbulb-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/2014\/03\/26\/flashbulb-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashbulb Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the\u00a0<\/span>aftermath\u00a0of Hurricane Sandy, the Long Branch Arts Council\u00a0<\/span>announced\u00a0in February that they were<\/span>\u00a0seeking submissions from New Jersey poets of all ages to write about their personal experiences or impressions focusing on the events of this “<\/span>superstorm”\u00a0and its aftermath.\u00a0Those submissions will become part of an\u00a0anthology entitled “Poetic Voices In Response To Hurricane Sandy.”<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Since I’ve had what I consider to be a somewhat unique “Sandy” experience, I figured I’d submit my story to them, and also share it here with you. Plus, all that\u00a0<\/span>writing\u00a0won’t go to waste should the powers that be at the Arts Council decide\u00a0<\/span>that my submission is not up to their standards…<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION (1963) is a prime example, although you’d probably have to be pushing 60 to have a specific recollection of that one. For those like me, who’ve been around for only a half-century or so, the Challenger space shuttle disaster (1986) certainly qualifies, as does the death of John Lennon (1980) and most recently, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the course of anyone’s lifetime there are events such as these, events of such significance that it becomes possible to recall precisely where you were and what you were doing at that very instant.<\/p>\n

Psychologists call these vivid recollections \u201cflashbulb memories\u201d because, like a camera’s flashbulb going off, they briefly illuminate and capture a moment that is typically both surprising and consequential. These unique recollections can be extremely detailed, highly accurate, and also very difficult to forget.<\/p>\n

For me\u2014and doubtless for all residents of the Jersey Shore\u2014it’s hard to imagine anything more difficult to forget than Superstorm Sandy. Due to circumstances unique and somewhat beyond my control, I’ve managed to amass an entire album of these flashbulb memories from the events of that time\u2014in spite of the fact that those recollections have little to do with the storm itself, or with its aftermath.<\/p>\n

Then again, you might say they have everything to do with it.<\/p>\n

ON OCTOBER 29, 2012<\/span>, as Sandy made landfall along the southern N.J. coast, I was not<\/i> doing what every other Bradley Beach resident\u2014including my wife Donna and our two cats\u2014had been advised to do, which was to grab some valuables and a change of clothes and head for higher ground.<\/p>\n

I’d like to say that this was due simply to a can-do spirit and a steely determination on my part to damn the torpedoes and ride out the storm\u2014sans heat, electricity and high-speed Internet. But that’s as far from the truth as I was from our condo at the time, so the decision to stay or to go was out of my hands.<\/p>\n

What is<\/i> true is that pretty much everything else was out of my hands as well, and on that morning I was an hour or so away from the Jersey shore, having spent the last few months riding out a storm of an entirely different nature, and preparing anxiously for the worst it had to offer.<\/p>\n

Specifically, I was staring out the window of the bone marrow transplant unit of New Brunswick, N.J.\u2019s Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, awaiting the arrival of a shipment of HLA-matched stem cells provided by a most gracious, generous and compatible donor from the state of California. I had been diagnosed with an acute myeloblastic leukemia earlier that year, a type of cancer that can be temporarily controlled but not cured via the multiple rounds of chemotherapy I had undergone over the summer.<\/p>\n

So for me, a transplant of stem cells from a compatible donor was the only option for long-term survival. My doctors, having determined this even prior to my first admission and chemotherapy treatments that July, had already begun a donor search. My two sisters were unfortunately ruled out early on, much to our collective disappointment.<\/p>\n

EVENTUALLY TWO POTENTIAL DONORS<\/span>\u00a0were identified; the first disqualified due to an incompatibility in blood makeup but the second found to be fully compatible. Once this donor had been cleared, I immediately underwent further chemotherapy in order to obliterate every trace of my own bone marrow, along with the majority of my immune system.<\/p>\n

This process, known as myeloablation, would allow the donor’s stem cells to be transplanted into my body without being rejected as they otherwise would have been. If the transplant \u201ctook\u201d successfully, the donor’s stem cells would create new hematopoeic (blood-producing) and cancer-free bone marrow, as well as an entirely new immune system to replace what was left of my own.<\/p>\n

As with so many things\u00a0i<\/span>n life, timing is everything. The myeloablative chemotherapy I underwent in preparation for the transplant left me not only without a functioning immune system, but also without the ability to generate blood on my own. I’ll leave it to your imagination to ponder the long-term prospects for an individual allowed to remain in such a state, but suffice to say there is a fairly narrow window within which to initiate the transplant; i.e. the donor’s stem cells, which have a relatively brief \u201cshelf life,\u201d need to arrive on schedule before they\u2014or the recipient\u2014expire.<\/p>\n

Yet for transplants like these, the timing is typically not an area of great concern, given that a cross-country flight can be accomplished in the space of an afternoon and that stem cells intended specifically for transplant remain viable for a period of at least a few days. But let us consult our flashbulb memories of that time and recollect that at that very moment the entire East Coast was being hammered by a \u201csuperstorm\u201d and that power was out for millions, airports were closed to arriving and departing flights, and gas stations were either shut down or open but without any gas to pump.<\/p>\n

Given that, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. (with all due respect to the brilliant and capable Roger Strair, M.D. and<\/i> Ph.D.\u2014and my oncologist at RWJ) to realize that it was going to require nothing less than a Herculean effort to deliver anything\u2014much less a package of living human cells with a relatively brief expiration date\u2014from southern California to New Brunswick, N.J. under those conditions.<\/p>\n

WHICH BRINGS US back to the morning of October 29, 2012. From my perspective, there were actually two storms wreaking havoc\u2014one outside the window of my hospital room, and one inside of, well, me. As the hospital was fully equipped to weather an external storm of even Sandy’s magnitude, their generators had kicked in within minutes of the first power outage, and I found myself lacking little in creature comforts compared to the millions around me without heat, hot water, electricity, gasoline\u2014or in some cases, even a place to live. For me, experiencing the effects of Sandy was akin to watching a documentary on the event\u2014the chaos wrought by the storm all passed quietly outside my window as if on a movie screen, with little effect on my daily routine.<\/p>\n

At the same time, however, I\u2014and I assumed the hospital personnel as well\u2014were at least somewhat concerned about the prospects for a timely delivery of my prospective stem cells to the bone marrow transplant unit. As was my wife, who, being the more pragmatic member of our family, had already concluded in my absence that a friend’s offer of temporary housing in their conveniently-untenanted apartment in Middlesex County was without question the most sensible option for her and for our cats, a decision with which I agreed wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n

Although the apartment complex was subject to the same power outage affecting the area around the hospital, it was quiet, safe, and at least somewhat warmer and drier than most of the homes on the Bradley Beach oceanfront. One crisis averted, but as Sandy’s impact on the local infrastructure continued to worsen over the next few days, I grew more apprehensive about the timely arrival of the stem cells. If the nurses and specialists with whom I had daily contact were equally as concerned, however, they did little to betray those feelings and were quick to reassure me that they would indeed arrive, if not precisely on schedule, at least within the window of opportunity for a successful transplant.<\/p>\n

Which they eventually did, via a re-routing of the aircraft carrying the shipment to Buffalo, N.Y.\u2014the nearest airport open for business\u2014followed by the odyssey of an extremely dedicated and resourceful courier who managed to deliver the cells from upstate New York to the hospital a mere one day behind schedule, in spite of closed roads, downed trees, non-functioning traffic lights and a limited selection of gas stations along the way. The transplant, delayed by exactly one and one half days, took place on Halloween<\/a>\u2014perhaps a fitting coincidence given the amount of bloodletting involved on both my and my donor’s parts in preparation for my eventual resurrection.<\/p>\n

WHILE SANDY REMAINS<\/span>\u00a0the common thread uniting our collective recollections of late 2012, I feel reasonably confident in stating that my own \u201cflashbulb memories\u201d of that time\u2014when contrasted with the majority of Jersey shore residents\u2014are as different as they could possibly be.<\/p>\n

And precisely the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the\u00a0aftermath\u00a0of Hurricane Sandy, the Long Branch Arts Council\u00a0announced\u00a0in February that they were\u00a0seeking submissions from New Jersey poets of all ages to write about their personal experiences or impressions focusing on the events of this “superstorm”\u00a0and its aftermath.\u00a0Those submissions will become part of an\u00a0anthology entitled “Poetic Voices In Response To Hurricane Sandy.” Since I’ve had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altimac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}