Here are the 10 most recent messages from John and Lucinda. For a more complete archive see Archives.
November 3, 2013
November 3, 2002. It was going to be one FUN FILLED New York City day for Tull and Marker. Walk the few blocks from our friend Daniel’s apartment to watch some of the Marathon, head to the Metropolitan Museum to see the Avedon show, grab lunch, perhaps at Carnegie Deli, and then pick up a rental car to drive to Allentown for an overnight visit with John’s sister’s family before heading back for lots more NYC time.
Instead, brilliant sunlight popped through the bedroom window, finding us splayed in misery, paying our penance (we were sure) for the indulgences of our celebratory Saturday which ended just hours ago. Too many raw oysters, too much icy vodka.
Screw the marathon. We slept.
Later, I forced myself out of bed after feeling John’s sweaty forehead. Ran out for a couple of bagels and a thermometer. Perhaps he had the flu.
The rest of the events of that day are almost too painful to relive as I sit here on November 3, 2013 in the comfort of our Santa Fe home.
We endured the cab ride from hell, circling for hours around marathon traffic, during which time John was starting to die in the back seat. We staggered up the stairs of an upper eastside hotel where we fell into bed in a small, dark, room and suffered for the next 36 hours with blistering fevers, paralyzing exhaustion, bone crushing aches and pains, and delusional nightmares.
Eleven years ago today was the beginning. The very start of a long series of life altering events, which careened us through the darkest of tunnels and jettisoned us over the highest of mountain passes. It was the beginning of a time in our lives which, had someone said, “Hey John and Lucinda, let me tell you in detail what you are about to go through for the next few days and then the rest of your lives”, I think we may well have said “no thanks” and found our way to some strong prescription medication and several fifths of vodka.
But no one did and we didn’t and we find ourselves eleven years later plagued only by the visceral memories of those early days when medieval darkness got on an American Airlines flight and traveled with us on a vacation to New York City.
I am here and John is here. We are grateful as hell.
June 6, 2013
Did I mention that my mother came to live with us two and a half years ago? Just before her 86th birthday she ended up in the hospital for the first time since giving birth to my twin sister and me. A stress fracture in her back had her in so much pain and on so much morphine, that she blissfully rode out a tornado warning in her hospital room one November afternoon while alarms went off and nurses frantically pushed all moveable patients away from windows and to interior hallways.
After weighing all of the not-so-great options of what to do once we knew she could no longer live alone in her home of nearly 60 years, I decided, against the advise of more than one good friend, to move my mother here to our home in Santa Fe. We built a rather large and very safe room of her own, replete with walk-in tub, and sound proofed it in such a way that she can blast her TV and we, thankfully, cannot hear it. Life is far from perfect, but I stand by my decision that this is (at least thus far) the least stressful of the available options.
Just yesterday I rushed home from a meeting due to an approaching “severe storm.” One dog was in the dog yard, one dog has been scooting himself around due to loss of muscle mass in his rear quarters, the new kitten is to never be outside due to the coyotes of the hood, John was taking his nap and I just thought it would be a damn good idea if I was home to make sure everyone would be safe for the impending high winds, hail and whatever else Mom Nature might have in store.
It was a dad-gum good thing that I came home when I did as I found my mother feeling not at all well. Long story short, she had been dizzy and nauseous since getting up, was clammy and had no appetite. She has also been fighting a cough for a while (exacerbated by the smoke from our two forest fires).
In the last 36 hours I have helped her to get in and out of bed, pulled her up into a sitting position in bed, talked her into eating and drinking a bit, helped her to the bathroom, taken her temperature, taken her to the doctor and to the lab for blood tests, assisted in collecting her urine for testing and generally stuck around. She is feeling better today, but oh my, have these few hours brought back the overwhelming memories of the days, weeks and months of very intense caretaking with John.
Caretaking (or rather caregiving) is no doubt one of the most important and loving things we can do for one another. It can be amazingly rewarding and it can drain the very life out of you as well. My hat is off tonight to all of those who care for others.
January 7, 2013
A very good friend who spent many a night with me at Beth Israel North ten years ago while John lay in a coma, barely alive, wrote this to me the other day about the New York Times article: “How’s the Times thing feeling? Want it over or pleased the horror of the event still impacts? What a thing!!”
I pondered that question before falling asleep last night. Do I want it all to be over or am I pleased that there is still impact?
“What a thing!!” And what a question!
The simple fact of the matter, the fact of our lives, is that “it” will never be over.
When life knocks you to your knees as it is bound to do with most of us at some point in time, we will go through what we must go through to survive or we will perish. God knows John and I have gone through every imaginable device, vice, shrink, exercise, heart-to-heart discussion, argument, emotion, exertion of pure will and attempt to deny, but it all finally comes down to facing, accepting, and embracing the fact that life has changed. Period.
The “it” and the “impact” is what we live with each and every day. If we try our damnedest to look at our dark experience as a sort of gift (and sometimes we are able to do that) then the impact is not so much one of horror, but of love, survival and growth.
If our ever evolving story can help others with the trauma or tragedy they may encounter in this journey called life, then we are pleased to tell it as many times as need be.
Happy New Year to you all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/health/when-the-plague-came-to-new-york.html
November 26, 2012
November is a tricky month. It is a time for gratitude and humility, the start of the winter holiday season. Yet for me it has been historically a month of upheaval, change, sometimes pain.
Everyone seems to have a month or a season that they look to with some dread, a heavy heart and a bit of fear. For me, it is November.
My great grandmother died on November 13th thirty plus years ago. My father’s death followed almost to the day years later. I underwent a fairly extensive operation one November and I bought my first new car just before Thanksgiving of 1993 after moving to Santa Fe from New York City. The experience of plunking hard earned money on something as frivolous as a car nearly sent me to an early grave. I seriously considered walking to work for the rest of my life, but my new boyfriend with the Texas drawl and charm to spare talked me into a fine green Subaru Legacy (at that time almost the official Santa Fe car) and that was that.
Then came the November of ten years ago. It was November 26th 2002, when doctors performed surgery on that good looking Texan who had become my husband, in a desperate attempt to save his life. I had made the hardest decision of my life in giving consent for John’s legs to be amputated.
No one knew if John would live or die after the surgery, but I was willing to take what I saw as our only chance. I could not allow myself much time to think of the future, of what our lives might be like after such a devastating change. During those days, by John’s bedside, I lived moment by moment, as did he.
Today we have much to be grateful for. Life is far from perfect, but we make the best of each day and we make each other laugh. And we do not fear November.
November 6, 2012
Wow. It has actually been ten years today since John was put into a medically induced coma at Beth Israel Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We had the good fortune in an unbelievably unfortunate medical drama of being quickly diagnosed with the plague in a city that was on high alert for possible bio-terrorism and thus fully capable of handling a disease from the Middle Ages and one that had not been seen in New York City in over 100 years.
A nurse named Nina came to my room that afternoon to wheel me to the ICU for a quick conversation with a doctor who explained that he wanted to put John to sleep for a while to allow his organs to rest. In our feverish states of mind neither John nor I could begin to comprehend the nightmare that was about to be our lives. John asked me to rub his feet and I gave him a kiss. That was the last time I talked to him for two and a half months.
The grand gift of our harrowing experience was that we both learned to live completely in the moment as that was literally all we had for a long time. We learned that nothing is more important than love.
On this election day that culminates a time when emotions have run as high as I have ever witnessed in politics, when relationships have been broken and vitriol has been abundant, we are grateful to have the perspective and the memory of that time ten years ago when we came to know what matters.
Much love,
Lucinda
October 5, 2012
October 5, 2012
Greetings,
We are anticipating the airing this evening of the last docudrama we filmed. This one will be on the Animal Planet tonight as part of a series rather dramatically entitled “Monsters Inside Me”. We are hoping it is not as distasteful as it sounds. This was filmed about a year ago and we partially agreed to do it because the director seemed to be quite a talented and accomplished documentarian. We shall see how it turns out.
The continued interest in our story is what led me to finally start this long delayed project of writing. There have been various parts of our story told over the years through print, radio and television, but I feel the need to tell the real story. It is a story quite full of drama without a need for sensationalizing.
So stay tuned and feel free to let us know (via e-mail) if you have any thoughts on tonight’s version of the John and Lucinda story.
By the way, we are going to go back to treating this site as a blog. We wondered whether to create more of a true blog, but our website advisors suggested that we just use the site as we did during the days of active recovery. So do feel free to drop an e-mail any time.
Also, don’t know if you caught by essay on salon.com this summer. Here it is http://www.salon.com/2012/07/15/we_survived_the_bubonic_plague/.
And here is an article that followed http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2174243/We-survived-bubonic-plague-Couple-diagnosed-medieval-Black-Death-horror-tell-book.html.
Love to all,
Lucinda (and Tull
Update July 14, 2012
July 14, 2012
Greetings,
Please pardon the eighteen month hiatus since my last update. Little has changed and yet so much has changed. More about all that later.
I welcome you back or welcome you in general if you’ve never been here before. This site has been woefully neglected and we are going to rectify that situation slowly, but surely. There is finally some time, some peace and some determination.
We are truly at work on our book after a few half-hearted previous attempts. I think that neither of us was really ready to face the challenge of putting to paper the ten year roller coaster that has been our experience until now. So here we are and all is well.
In invite you to stay tuned as it is my intention to use this site as the voice of John and Lucinda as we struggle with our book and our lives. I assure you (and I bet you already know this) that life is not uninteresting. It is scary, painful, beautiful, miraculous, cruel and a barrel of laughs.
Much love,
Lucinda
January 17, 2011
Dear All:
I well recall eight years ago when John Tull had actually awakened for the most part and was being seen daily by a psychiatrist who visited his room daily to ask the standard questions to determine if his mind was at all functioning: Where are you? What is your name? What is the date?
She wrote in her chart and charged what might have been the accepted amount at that time. John dreaded her visits. There was a calendar on the wall of his room in ICU, but he could not see it. So when he saw her approaching, he would often ask me “what the hell is the date?”
That year, that date, I was quick to tell him and to add “It is Martin Luther King Day”. And he was quick to spew that back to the shrink. She did not question, but simply added to her chart as she spun around to disrobe her gown, mask, gloves and move on to the next patient on her list.
Today I have listened to parts of his many speeches and stand in awe. Not only was he a great orator, but he spoke of so much of what in the sixties have led to what we experience in the 2000’s.
Love to all on MLK Day,
Lucinda
November 5, 2010
Dear All:
Can it really be eight years ago today that we mustered up the last bit of strength we had left to stumble out of our New York hotel room and travel by cab to see Dr. Ronald Primas who miraculously diagnosed us correctly with bubonic plague and sent us straight to Beth Israel Hospital? We had spent less than 48 hours in our east side hotel room where we got progressively sicker with aches, high fevers and extreme fatigue. We both know that had we not asked the hotel desk for a recommendation and gotten to Dr. Primas when we did that at least one of us and likely both of us would have crossed over to the other side while in that room.
Our lives from that day on became a roller coaster ride like none we ever imagined. We are grateful to be here today, eight years later, back in our beloved Santa Fe home and (by sheer grit and determination) still married and in relatively good health!
As always, we appreciate the fact that we would have been goners at some point without the love, support, care and prayers of so many.
Thank you, blessings and much love to you all.
John and Lucinda
July 4, 2010
Dear All,
Seems about time to update the website. In fact, we are about to update this site in many ways! For now, we will just bring you up to speed on our lives.
It was 17 years ago today that John Tull and Lucinda Marker met in Santa Fe, New Mexico on a lovely mountain biking expedition/4th of July picnic in the Jemez Mountains with a group of friends who to this day have remained true blue. We are truly in the mood to celebrate!
Last we wrote we were still living in Stamford, CT where we had moved for Lucinda’s job for a private equity firm which is located in Greenwich. Alas, Lucinda was downsized right out of that job at the end of January and we were faced with yet another major change in our lives. After careful consideration, we decided to head back west and packed up our belongings for temporary storage. Lucinda made a trip across country through a February blizzard to take Puck and Chica to her sister’s place in Albuquerque for a bit and after her return by air to CT, we got in our other car and drove southwest. We took our time and saw the sights while headed to New Orleans where we spent a few hours with John’s daughter Katy who moved there recently. Then we moved on to Austin where we had decided to check out the possibilities of living and working. (We were well aware of the fact that the economy in Austin has been doing better than much of the rest of the country and we also have many very good friends there). After a month or so of seeing many friends, meeting some very interesting new folks and eating lots of barbeque and Tex-Mex, we drove on to Santa Fe to see how we felt about our old home. Within hours of arrival, we both knew that we wanted to be here again.
It has been an emotionally and physically exhausting six months or so marked by moving complications and other major stress inducing factors, but we are finally back in our beloved adobe home with most of our “stuff” put up and away. We took a little trip to California in May upon learning that we could not get back into our house when we had expected and so we have literally driven across the entire country in the last few months. We do not feel like taking any long drives for a while.
So that is the basic scoop for now. Again, the site will be updated soon and we have plenty of news to talk about. We hope you all have a grand 4th of July!
Love,
John and Lucinda