Benjamin's Lens

I was beat up and left for dead after a 4 wheel drive car chase through the mountains of southern Costa Rica.

It feels a little strange to have an opinion about health that actually matters to people. It seems that once you have lived through such an event, and not died, and didn't go crazy, you get viewed as a possible source of counsel on such matters. Funny.

It took 1 1/2 hours for the ambulance to arrive. I was taken to the Cortez hospital. They recognized that I was going to die, and they didn't want that on their books, so they told my gal and friends that they couldn't help me. One of my friends said that a helicopter was the only way, and that even though they had never flown at night before, and in fact felt that they couldn't, they did. I was airlifted to San Jose to CIMA hospital.

My brain was swelling and they were about to do a pressure relief hole when it stopped, and the swelling receded. My family and friends were told that I would live, but that there were no guarantees about how much of me would come back.

As I've come to discover since then, I had chased the thieves from my home up in the coastal mountains. We got to the highway and headed south. The bad guys realized that they couldn't get away from me, so they pulled over. I parked right in front of them so that they couldn't drive off. Unbeknownst to me, a neighbor was following and so he is able to fill in the details. I have not recollection of the events of that evening.

He said that I was attacked by a guy and that I fought him off and that I had the upper hand in the fight. This isn't too surprising since I have practiced the Indonesian art of Muah Thai or kick boxing for several years. This is surprising in that I have never in my life been in a fight, and I only used the discipline as a form of exercise.

However, at some point in the fight, I decided to stop. The witness said that it was a little odd, since I was dominant. All I can figure is that I felt that dominance had been determined and since the next step would have been to start breaking bones, or worse, I likely stopped, thinking that the fight was over.

It was at this point that the criminal was provided with a baseball bat by one of his companeros, and he evidently swung for the fence, connecting with the left side of my head.

I don't remember much from that night other than flashes of the car chase. My neighbor followed us down the hill after trying to block the thieves escape by parking in the one lane road. He reported the details that I now know about the night.

Where I live in Costa Rica is a long way from anywhere. There is a hospital down here but it took them 1 1/2 hours to get the ambulance to me. I was found on the side of the road by some friends who knew my car. Natalie and Neil were called, as were a small platoon of my friends. When these friends heard that the hospital didn't want to take me in (they evidently didn't give me much chance of surviving), my compadres called and hired a flight-for-life helicopter that air lifted me from Cortes to CIMA hospital in San Jose.

I was a mean brain trauma victim. They ended up having to tie me to the bed. I would tear out my tubes and was threatening violence to the various care givers, as well as my friends. After a couple days, it was determined that I wasn't going to die, but the concern then was how much of me would come back. By the way, I am a totally peaceful kind of guy. I have never fought in my life. So I can now say that I have had 1 fight. I have studied and practiced kick boxing as an exercise for about 7 years, so I suspect that I can kick and punch pretty hard.

According to my neighbor who witnessed the encounter, he said that I did, in fact, kick and punch pretty hard. To the point that I had the upper hand. I suspect that I had a rather gentlemanly outcome in mind to the fight. I probably supposed that the fight was for the purpose of establishing dominance and that I had pretty well established this, so I let up. Neighbor said that he couldn't understand why I stopped. Meanwhile, the other guy is a criminal, and criminals have a very different outcome in mind to their fights than us non-criminals.

I think that my attacker has a temper problem. I know that must sound absurdly obvious, but my point is, I think that he attacked me with the idea that his younger, fight experienced criminal self was going to whup-up on the old man. Instead, he probably got hurt and the pain gave way to rage. Rage in a criminal mind is not a good thing. He essentially tried to kill me. I suspect that it was a form of temporary insanity.

I spent one month in the hospital. The first 2 weeks I was in a coma. The second 2 weeks is when my memory starts to come back in hazy outlines.

My next episode in this tale is my favorite one. It has to do with the amount of love & support that I received from my community. The photos below indicate how this cloud definitely has a silver lining.

I can honestly say that I never thought of that sort of thing as happening to me. I've certainly read about such things, and seen movies and CSI shows about such things. But to actually be a real live player in an actual event has taken my personal reality over to the surreal.

They put me in a coma for the first two weeks. So, I laid in a hospital bed and thrashed about, uttering vile commands and "let me go". I tried coercing Natalie to "take me home". I still have the scars on my wrists from where they tied me up - well actually - from where I pulled against the restraints.

From my perspective, I fully lived those two comatose weeks, going about life as - well I can't say "as normal" - but I was unaware of the fact that I was tied up in a hospital bed. I carried on my life, complete with good times and bad. I even came up with a tourism marketing strategy that I may even implement once I get back into the swing of things.

So I use the expression "when I arrived" instead of "when I came out of the coma". I really thought that at about week number two I had driven up to the hospital and checked in. Granted I would be hard pressed to explain the "why" behind my "checking in", but that's just a slight inconvenience of the tale. I checked in and they were working on me in ICU.

It was at this time that I started hearing about the support from family, friends and community.

As I began to grasp what had actually happened, and that my recollection of my recent personal history was in fact flawed, and the reality of what had actually happened set in, the surreal was taken to a new level. The effect of this new level was not due to having been a player in a violent drama, but what was particularly surreal was the amount of love and support that was coming my way. Frankly, it was difficult to believe and I, at first, felt that the ones reporting The Love were just being nice.

I know that at some point I'm going to have to deal with the event. That night, chasing the thief - catching him after a relatively high speed car chase, fighting, and riding the 'flight to life' to CIMA (a mighty fine hospital in San José), extreme pressure on the brain and skull, jaw reconstructive surgery.

Oddly, these happenings just aren't taking that much of my mind-time. Sure, I get recall flashes that make me suck in, alarming anyone in my immediate space. But by comparison to the much greater picture, these are low-level-events.

The "Greater Picture", is the family, friends and community support which turned out to be Global in its reach.

My father was a doctor in Davis California. He was well loved in that university town among both college students and residents alike. He was a care-giver who genuinely loved people and seemed to only have the capacity to focus on the good in people. One of the few Father / Son lessons that I remember from him was: "son, when they lay you in your grave, and you're looking up, if you see three faces peering down at you, faces of people that you would call genuine friends, you'll be able to say that you lived a good life."

Well, in a sense, I did die and I did look up. But there weren't three faces. There was, in fact, no daylight when I looked up, so numerous were the faces.

So I've had time to think about all this, and as a result I've come up with what I call My Sermon, and you dear reader, get to hear/read it (should you choose to continue reading). My sermon started as a title and grew from there.

The Trauma Did Not Create the Love

Acceptance was the first step for me. As I mentioned, I felt that they were just encouraging me with "everybody is rooting for you and hoping you'll get better." My grasping the reality that there were a lot of folks out there moved by what had happened to me and were taking action to help me pay my medical bills, and support me in whatever way they could - acceptance started to take shape.

To put this in the vernacular of video gaming, acceptance was the first level. The next level was understanding what was, for me, a new perspective on my fellow man.

Here in Costa Rica's southern pacific zone, we expats live a uniquely communal lifestyle. There is very little that goes on that doesn't become known to the rest of the community. We eventually get to know most of the other full time and part time residents by face recognition or, for the more astute among us - by name.

So, in keeping with this model, I had/have my inner circle of friends that I regularly do stuff with - conversations, exercise, lunch at The Dome, an evening at Cuna de Angel, Toby & Kim's Movies In The Jungle and so on. Then there are People Rings, emanating out from the core, and I'm always happy to see the familiar faces, in fact it is one of the aspects of life in the zone that I feel rather smug about. It's like Old Tyme, Good Ole U. S. of A Small Town Living around here. You can't walk into a restaurant, say Frank & Naomi's Casoña María in Uvita, without being greeted by name and then greeting the diners at the other tables since they are friends and you are genuinely happy to see them.

I don't believe for one second that my traumatic event resulted in, or caused the existence of any love, but rather, I feel that it gave expression to love that already existed amongst my family, friends and community. I will say however that I was truly unaware of just how much love was available in our community until my event.

I'm fascinated - the drama continues