• helene reminds me of another time

    This type of weather always scares me. 

    One February morning when I was 10 years old, I had to have been the only kid who had to go to school at like 10:30 in the morning after a tornado hit our neighborhood that morning. That was a bum deal; I was traumatized and wanted the day off too, but Mama and Daddy made me go. 

    The week before had been a tornado too, and but the worst of it was that we’d lost a tree that had come within probably 10 feet of hitting our house. 

    But the next week, a tornado picked up a whole house a hundred yards from my house and put it in the middle of the street, foundation and all. The only reason somebody wasn’t killed was that the people who lived there had moved out a few weeks before. 

    For months after the tornado, you could see the inside of the Greene’s bedroom, up the street, from where the tornado had torn off the whole front side of their house. They eventually had to tear the whole thing over and build from scratch.

    The people’s trampoline next door ended up in the back yard of the house across the street. 

    Some kids down the street rode their mattress down into their front yard, when the front of their house was torn off and their room was exposed. 

    I still remember my friend Amanda yelling my name frantically from across the street at like 6 am when the weather had passed and it was safe to go outside. Mama and I walked up the street, and Channel 2 news was there in front of the Greene’s house. Mama was interviewed but so far as we know they didn’t use the footage. 

    People from all over Carroll County (and probably farther) came driving through the neighborhood for days and probably weeks to rubberneck. 

    I was in high school or college before I found out that the lay of the land in that part of Carroll County is primed for tornadoes, just because of the contours of the land. 

    We took down five trees earlier this year in the yard we have now, and it’s nights like tonight that I am so grateful we did that. And I wish we’d taken down about four more that I would go take down now, in hindsight. 

    I am the Mama who goes and gathers up all my children and shuttles them to bring their blankets and pillows and make pallets on the bathroom floors in severe weather— my kids have grown up doing that and know the drill.

    And that is why. Because when I was 10 years old, there was very good reason to be afraid of a storm. 

  • random facts about my back

    My back was not happy last week with the weights exercises, and it’s still not really happy, but I wrote most of this last week. The pain is worst at night. So, you get random facts/ memories about my back related to my scoliosis whether you want them or not. This blog is going to be equally personal and client work, so here goes:

    1. The curve was 87 degrees when they operated in 1993. It got corrected to 15 degrees, but settled back around 45, precisely where it was when they found the curve when I was 6 years old.

    2. I grew an inch and a half in that 10-hour surgery that saved my life when I was 13 years old. It was a 2-part surgery; I don’t even know what all they did except in the first part they cut open the entire length of my side and took out a rib and a little piece of my hip bone. Then they turned me over and cut open the entire length of my spine and Dr. Fackler said he stopped counting after he removed 8 discs, so I don’t actually know how many he took out. My curve is sort of like a corkscrew and was going to crush my heart without the surgery.

    3. My spine is fused to and including my sacrum all the way to just be low my shoulder blades. I bend from the the leg joint just below my hips, not at my waist.

    4. Despite not being able to touch my toes, that isn’t actually a byproduct of the surgery. I couldn’t touch my toes before the surgery, and I have precisely the same flexibility as before in that regard. Dr. Fackler said I would and he was right.

    5. I wore a ginormous plastic back brace from the ages of 6 until the surgery at age 13. I tried to look for the first one to take a picture because I do still have that one, but I am feeling lazy this morning. There were at least 5 of them as I grew, I know. I only have the first one from when I was 6 now. It was tiny; I was tiny. Instead, I found the x-ray they gave me years and years ago, the x-ray is marked 3/3 but I don’t know if that is 3/3 of 1992 or 1993. I do know it was progressing fast right before the surgery and I know it was 87 degrees at the last x-ray the week before the surgery.

    6. To make those braces, they made a cast of my whole core, from just under my arms all the way down. All I remember about it was that it was unbearably hot once it was almost done curing, before they cut it off, and those strips of plaster were wet and really gross going on. I still remember George at CH Martin & Co on Marietta Street a block away from where the Aquarium is now, and Debbie, their receptionist. George made most of the casts all those years I think. I remember being really super scared of the saw when I was super little.

    7. I had two sets of school books my 8th grade year and didn’t have to carry a backpack or do PE. About a week before the full year anniversary of the surgery was up (and I was to be cleared for whatever activity I wanted), the very first physically strenuous thing I tried doing was water skiing with Brandi at Lake Wedowee. I wasn’t very good at it, though, and only tried it the one time.

    8. One of the “twist ties” as I call them that hold the rods

    together busted within a year of the surgery leaving one of the rods poking out of my back. I had to live with it for about a year and it was extremely painful depending on which way I moved. I requested the piece of the rod Dr. Fackler cut off in December of 1994, which is why I have a part of the rods now.

    9. I only missed one day of school for that follow up surgery to remove the busted twist tie and cut the rod shorter that December. It was the day before Christmas break and I didn’t want to miss the fun with my friends even though I’d finished my work early. I remember standing in the bandroom and Mr. Elrod seeing me and asking if the surgery got cancelled. I just held up that little bit of rod and smiled and he shook his head.

    10. I got lots of cards and kept them all for years after the surgery. Tommie Freeman sent the very first one; it was waiting for me in ICU at Piedmont when I got out of surgery.

    11. The whole reason I started loosening those braces when I was still wearing them all those years was because somebody at school told me to or dared me to, one. I got in a lot of trouble over the years for that, though thankfully I know now that wouldn’t have prevented the surgery regardless. And kids with my severity of scoliosis especially rarely wear my kind of brace anymore anyway.

    12. When I went for the last visit with Dr. Fackler before he retired, he said “We don’t do surgeries like yours anymore.” To which I was like, “Great, I’m already an ancient artifact.” But, when I went back after Jared and I were married and after Dr. Fackler had retired, the orthopedic surgeon I saw at Peachtree Orthopedic Clinic was the one who told me that surgery had saved my life, that it would have been the only option available to do so, and that I was one of Dr. Fackler’s miracle cases. I got paraded around to the other doctors on the floor that day for that very purpose. He told me to go home and thank my parents for saving my life, which I promptly did. He told me Dr. Fackler was the only doctor in the entire Southeast who could have done that surgery. But, I’m glad people don’t really have go to through that anymore because it wasn’t fun.

    13. The worst pain I have ever felt in my life wasn’t giving birth with nothing for pain but Tylenol, which I have done twice and it wasn’t a c-section either. It was having the chest tube removed after that back surgery.

    14. Because of the fusion from the surgery, an epidural was not an option for childbirth. Which is why I opted for nothing— I’m not sure the Tylenol counts because I had it so late with Porter and I’m not sure I had it at all with Liam. And because of not being able to have an epidural, when Oliver’s heart rate plummeted after they induced him, it was off for an emergency c-section under general anesthesia. At the follow up with Oliver the doctor was surprised I’d had two babies the natural way— the only way it probably happened was they were both preemies— Oliver was our only full-term baby.

    15. Just like I know what it is to have people reject me socially for mental health reasons, I know what it is to be the weird little girl with a back brace that a lot of kids don’t want to play with.

    16. A few days after I got home from the hospital after the surgery, I thought to feel my back with my hands. I was astounded to find out that the ginormous hump I’d previously had on the left side of my lumbar spine was completely gone. The fact that it is gone is still weird to me 31 years later.

    17. When I was super little in first grade when I first got the brace, it was fun to let the boys in my class take turns trying to punch me in the stomach. It only hurt their hands, not me.

    18. I still remember having to buy clothes that were too big for me, to fit with the brace. I remember being very glad to be going into high school not having to wear clothes that were too big.

    19. There will be no revision surgery; I was told in 2022 when I visited an orthopedic surgeon with hip pain that those don’t turn out well at all. Basically, I was told I just can’t ever get into a car accident or have any other sort of traumatic injury. It would go badly.

    20. All I cared about during the surgery was two things: I was very concerned about how Dr. Fackler was going to eat lunch if he had to do a 10 hour surgery, and I wanted to see Picket Fences the Thursday night after the Wednesday surgery. It turned out Dr. Fackler had a sandwich right in the operating room, and the nice nurse in ICU did turn on Picket Fences but I wasn’t with it enough to ask for my glasses and I am blind as a bat without them, so I couldn’t follow any of it.

    21. The bottom half of the brace always had to be tighter than the top. And it couldn’t be up too high. Both things would put me in a bad mood all day long. Or I would take it off entirely, which was actually very difficult for me to do on my own. I certainly couldn’t tighten it by myself.

    22. The rods line both sides of my spine from right at my shoulder blades all the way to being held together by these little twist tie looking things, held together by a little plate at the base of my spine, splitting and are drilled most of the way through into both hips.

    23. When we were still taking Liam to CHOA neurosurgery for his Chiari, the doctor who had followed Liam since he was 2 said he remembered Dr. Fackler well. He said he didn’t know how many scoliosis surgeries he did at CHOA, but it was a lot. Mine just happened to be at Piedmont.

    24. It is only comfortable for me to lay on my left side, because as the curve has progressed up into my rib area, the curve moves to the right. Fighting the direction of the curve is the only thing that is comfortable.

    25. I only know my upper back doesn’t look like it used to because I caught a glimpse of a chest x-ray at urgent care when I was sick about a year and a half ago. But whatever the full length looks like must be fairly unusual/impressive because the orthopedist I saw about my hip in 2022 ordered a full x-ray panel and I put it off till mid-2023 when I finally thought to do it…. The radiologist or some random medical person came out of the office and gawked at me a minute after I left the dressing room. My only guess is it’s not quite something they see every day. I still haven’t scheduled the follow up with orthopedics, so I don’t know.

  • fun at the pool

    I used to enjoy doing a lot of stuff I don’t do much anymore.

    The pool at the rec center closes its summer hours tomorrow, so Jared and I skipped Funny Girl at the Fox so we could take Oliver and Liam to the pool. 

    I wasn’t going to get in the deep end. I didn’t want the chlorine damage to my hair. But Oliver loves the diving boards and the deep end, so it wasn’t long until Liam and Oliver were in the deep end. And Jared joined them soon after, leaving me in the shallow end by myself. 

    That was boring.

    And then I remembered that I used to LOVE diving off the high dive at that rec center pool when I was a kid, when there was one.

    Now, there are just the two lower diving boards. 

    Oliver and Liam had never seen me jump off the diving board at all. It had probably been at least 29 years since I jumped off one of those diving boards; if I had to guess it was probably the summer I was 15 because that would have been long enough for me to do it after my back surgery.

    So I got up there, and it was higher than I remembered. But, I jumped in. And holding my nose with my hands did nothing to keep the water out of my nose because I didn’t remember to blow out my nose as I jumped. 

    And, I had to keep my eyes completely closed, which was not my style back in the day. But I had my contacts in because again, I wasn’t going to get in the deep end at all today. 

    But jumping off that diving board…..it was like I was 10 years old again, in day camp at CPRCAD. It was fun.

    So, I went again. And, I decided, what’s the worst that can happen if I actually dive? I mean, really? I used to dive off the super high dive, and this wasn’t that. 

    I may be 44 years old, and my kids may never see me do fun physical stuff much. But today, they saw me dive off that diving board three separate times. 

    It was so fun. And it reminded me that I should do that kind of stuff more often. 

  • a fresh start

    It is booking season again– at least it is at Caroline Price Photography! 

    I started a Facebook ad on July 5 or 6 and it has been super-successful— I am so pleased to have talked to some wonderful new brides! And I am thrilled to be there for their big days! 

    The ad won’t be continuous, and my rates are likely to change after August or so, for any bookings after the end of August. I’m so glad I can give a lot of folks some great pricing, but it won’t be sustainable long-term for the business. 

    I am nearly at capacity for 2024! I have room for 2-3 more weddings left on my calendar then I will stop taking 2024 weddings. And 2025 capacity is looking like it is going to fill sometime in the next month or so, as well!

    My heart is full, as always. I LOVE my clients. 

    On the personal front:

    Colorado was a very nice break, with some drives in the evenings in the mountains and website work during the day at the hotel. 

    I missed my “smile” anniversary with Jared. For those of you who don’t know us in person— we met on a dating website, and that site allowed you to send “smiles” to people you were interested in. Jared sent one to me on June 30, 2003, and I sent one back that July 1. I mark it every year, except this one, apparently. Maybe 20 years was my capacity for remembering the smaller anniversaries like clockwork. 

    Jared says he didn’t miss it, but I don’t remember him saying anything to me about it. Oh well. 

    Porter, our oldest son, will move into his dorms at Georgia State to prepare for band camp in mid-August. As I have said in multiple places, I am not ready. I am not ready to have my heart split in multiple places. But I know this will be good for him, and I know he’s going to be fine and do very well. And, I am thrilled he will be a philosophy major. That department treated me very well in my religious studies program and I know he’s going to enjoy it. And bonus— he exempted out of all the English and math classes he would need due to IB and AP scores, so if all goes well he’ll be a sophomore at the end of his first semester. And, he hasn’t ruled out the 5-year BA/JD program. I don’t know how I feel about the idea of one of my children becoming a lawyer, but he’s been interested it at least the entirety of his high school career. Regardless of what he decides to do, I am a super-proud Mama.

    Liam is starting the college tours at the end of July! Up first will be Georgia State and UGA. He’s got Kennesaw State, West GA, and GA Tech also on his list to check out, but we couldn’t schedule any of them before school starts so those will wait until later. He’s my pragmatic child, so he’s unlikely to find any of the private liberal arts type schools interesting, looking in favor instead to what will be the best financial decision college-wise.

    I am drafting this while I am sitting at the city pool with Oliver; I’m so glad he loves to swim and loves to jump off the diving boards. Today, there happen to be friends from school he knows and I am glad about that. He’s big into flight simulators at the moment and we just got him registered a week or so ago for Aviation Challenge next summer in Huntsville. But, he’s going to have to prove to us that he can eat school lunch this year before he can go since we can’t send food— he’s a picky eater like me and Porter. 

    Somehow, coming home from vacation in Colorado has felt like a fresh start. It had been since 2018 that we had been anywhere close to that far west. 

    I told Jared I could live in the Denver area if he ever wanted to look for employment out that way. I know he’s leery of taking me that far away from Atlanta, though. And Liam has two years left of high school and Porter will be in school in Atlanta, so it’s a really bad idea. But those mountains are gorgeous and I do not get the land-locked feeling that I got when we lived in Iowa, with the mountains close by. I know Jared would love to live in Colorado— I know it’s his favorite place he ever lived— but I know he won’t do it, because of us. 

    That’s all for now.

    Love, Caroline