Lorie Sheffer – Page 46 – Disney Leadership Keynote Speaker

Lorie Sheffer’s Story Continues

Mid Life Celebration is excited to have Guest Blogger, Lorie Sheffer return for the second in a three part series. Lorie and her husband Gary, have an amazing and challenging story to share. We can all benefit from this inspiration. Take it away Lorie:

Imagine if your dream changed from “skiing the Swiss Alps” to “being able to use the toilet without any help”, or “learning to count to 10 without making a mistake”. That is what happened to my husband after suffering his stroke.

On day one of getting his life back, Gary’s physical therapist let out a yelp of pure joy. “Feel these quads! WOW! I have something to work with!” In Gary’s case, no matter how he had taken care if himself, the bleed in his brain was inevitable. The tangle of blood vessels that made up the AVM had been there most likely since before he was born. AVMs happen in fetal development, and usually make their appearance known sometime between the twentieth and fiftieth year of life.

Because he had quit smoking over 10 years before, had skied, ridden his bike and ran, and was at a healthy weight, Gary stood a chance of recovery. The music lessons that his father refused to pay for are another protection. It seems that anything we do to strengthen our brain, learning new things, playing music, and speaking a second language all contribute to the strength and overall plasticity of our brain.

Still, Gary was in for the fight of his life, and statistically things were not in his favor.

He had trouble understanding what he was supposed to do. The therapists would show him, and then he would imitate their movements. I stayed with him till late at night, helping him with daily self-care. He had to be held on the toilet by me, or he would have fallen off onto the floor. I had to sweep my finger into his mouth and remove the chunks of food that he couldn’t feel, something known as “pouching” food. I flossed his teeth and helped him into the shower. I learned to transfer him from wheelchair to toilet to shower chair to bed. It was humiliating for him to have me do those things, but I wanted to be comfortable assisting him so as not to be panicked when we got home.

He slowly went from wheelchair to wide based cane, from wide based cane to straight cane. His speech was slow to return. When a doctor asked him to draw the numbers as they appear on the face of a clock, Gary drew a smile face. Because of his paralysis, he was unable to feel the drool, which often ran from his slack mouth. In addition to his own trauma, we witnessed the sudden death of his roommate. We made friends with an 18 year old who had been in contention for being named high school valedictorian before a traffic accident left him in a 3 month long coma, part of his brain missing from the impact. Sometimes I would stop by a friend’s room to offer support, only to be told they had passed away. It seemed that Gary was determined to do it not just for himself, but for all of them. Six weeks after being admitted to full time inpatient rehabilitation, Gary was discharged to day rehab. He was going home. His one wish, to walk out the same door he had been wheeled into.

I was told that as the brain heals, strange emotional things could happen. And they most certainly did.

Gary would burst into tears at the oddest times. He would explode into fits of rage, most often directed at me. And yet we kept going. Recovery is so excruciatingly slow that it is easy to see why some people just give up. There are no guarantees how much recovery will be made, if any. It’s not like rehab on a knee replacement or a broken hip or a torn rotator cuff. Strokes can cause disability to so many different areas that it’s hard to even know where to start. What is fascinating about a brain injury is that all the parts are in perfect working order, but you can’t get them to move. The electrical system isn’t working. Now Gary’s dream was to figure out how to make his brain work again. Everyone was anxious to see how far he could go.

Lorie Sheffer Returns

Lorie Sheffer returns for more of her midlife wisdom. Take it away Lorie:

When people meet my husband, they think he is polite, friendly and rather quiet. While he is all of those things, he is also the single most driven person I have ever known. Never one to announce his dreams or his goals, he just goes about quietly and methodically checking them off of his “to do” list. In the 1960s, he was one of millions of teenagers who were struck with Beatle mania. He wanted to learn to play electric bass guitar, but his father saw music lessons as a waste of money. Gary found a cheap bass and taught himself to play by ear. He got so good that he was able to supplement this income through high school and college, and even into his adult years, by playing in local bands. In high school, he played football and his team became county champions. When he decided he wanted to become an engineer, he was told by guidance counselors that his math skills were too weak, and to consider another career. Five years later he graduated from Penn State with a degree in mechanical engineering. He skied for the first time at age 21, and by the time he was 26 he was a member of the National Ski Patrol. It seemed that nothing was out of his reach if he set his mind to it. And then, at the age of 44, the unimaginable happened. Everything was taken away in a matter of minutes.

February 11, 1996 was a glorious winter day in York County, Pennsylvania. Gary had recently mastered snowboarding, and was taking a few runs while his 11-year-old son was practicing with the ski-racing club on another ski slope. While boarding on a steep but otherwise unremarkable slope, Gary fell. For him, this was unusual but not cause for alarm. What did interest him, however, was his seeming inability to hold his right glove in his hand when he removed it. He boarded to the bottom of the slope and rode the lift back to the top, only to find that it was now difficult to push his boot into his binding. Clearly something was wrong, so he headed to the ski patrol building, where it soon became obvious to his fellow patrollers that something very serious was happening. That something turned out to be a massive hemorrhagic stroke, caused by a congenital arteriovenous malformation, or AVM. Over the course of the next few hours, Gary lost all sensation in the entire right half of his body, lost the ability to speak and understand language, was partially blind in his right eye, and suffered from complete right side paralysis. I was in the shock trauma unit of the hospital when I was told by his neurosurgeon that he was “probably going to live” but would be left with “significant, permanent disability”. My first reaction? “You don’t know my husband. He won’t finish this ski season, obviously, but I’ll dust off my skis and have him back on the slopes when they open next season.” Ignorance is bliss, and I had no idea what we were in for. Had I known then what I know now about traumatic brain injury, I would have fallen apart for sure. I had no idea at that time that his chances of ever even walking again were about 10% at best. After a week in the intensive care unit, Gary was moved to a rehabilitation facility. He was one of the worst cases they had ever seen for a person his age. When I was asked by a group of his therapists about his interests and goals, one of them laughed and said, “Doesn’t this man ever do anything easy?” At that point, they knew they were working with a fighter. They considered it “game on!”

This story is one that can’t be told in one single blog. Patience is something I never had. Patience is something that every survivor of traumatic brain injury has to learn. Patience is what it will take for you to find out how this story ends, or if it has indeed ended. I promise I will let you know what happened, and how it happened. Have patience.

Lorie To jeff To Lorie & Back

jeff noel’s original email reply to Lorie…

Perfect timing with your note.

Been writing most of the day.

Am trying something radical, instead of waking up with no clue what the five blogs will be about…just wake up, think, go, write.

In two weekends, the goal is to crank out 155 posts.

Is that not crazy? Wonder what I’d think of me if I was on the outside looking in. Some sort of compulsive, freakish person who ought to get a life… 🙂

Or maybe a man driven by the ticking clock, racing to catch up, or make up, for squandered years….the 1st 40 were all about me.

Lorie Sheffer’s reply to jeff noel:

“Squandered years”. Oh how I envy you! I think we should all have some squandered years, when it’s all about us. What a luxury. Imagine if you had Chapin a month after you turned 20. Imagine being 25 and having 2 kids and two marriages.
But you know what? If we changed even one single detail about our past it could alter what our lives are right now, and in ways that we may find unbearable. Leave out even one minor detail, and it could change life as we know it.
When I was 17, all I wanted was to get the Hell out of York. I had this dream of living in a large city and going to discos (Hey! It was the 70s!) and having quite the life. I had no clue what I was going to be doing to support that life, but I knew I would be single for years and years. I was not going to get married till I was at LEAST 40, and I didn’t like kids, so they were totally not even a consideration. Three years later I was living in a tiny town on the Pennsylvania Maryland line, with a cheating, drug using husband and a baby. So much for big dreams! Every one of my friends except for one went about their lives as if they had never known me. They were busy with college parties and newfound freedom.
I thought that since I had my kids when I was so young that I would hit 40 and finally it would be ME time. But then Gary had his stroke and then my grandson came along and then my brother got cancer and then our cousin/friend died and then Dad got sick……. I’m still waiting. You think about the years that were all about you and I think of the years that were never about me. The road not travelled.
But like I said, if we think about what would have been or could have been, it’s just a waste. It is what it is. Not to say that I don’t appreciate my life, because I do. My family means the world to me. My family means the world to me. By family, I mean not only those who are related by blood but also those who always have a room at my house.

Anyway, Jeff, I will bet that clock began to tick really loud for you when your dad got sick. I know how Gary began to kind of worry about his own health when his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He has brain damage from his stroke, which is a known risk factor, and genetics going against him. Those factors can’t be controlled, but he takes such good care of himself he is probably not at any more risk than the average person. Still, if he can’t remember a name I can tell it hits an internal panic button that wasn’t there a few years ago. You and he will both probably live to be 100.
You are who you are because of what you have been, and you are a wonderful person. If you were on the outside looking in, you would like what you saw. I had no contact with you since 1977. I missed the “squandered years”. What I am seeing through your writing is that you are not that different from the kid I knew in 4th grade, the one who spoke with wonder and awe about the little newts he had found in the woods behind his house. That little boy didn’t have to say that he treated them gently; it went without saying.

Guest Blogger Miss America

Please welcome back to Mid Life Celebration, Miss America Lorie Sheffer, from Central Pennsylvania. Lorie has been here before and her wit, wisdom and candor are refreshing, and inspiring. Take it away Lorie:

It comes as a surprise to some of my friends when they discover my dream of a crown. Doesn’t really fit the personality of a woman who is politically active, has taken part in a massive march on Washington and who doesn’t put much importance on outward appearances. But ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been besotted. I’ve never missed a Miss America pageant. I get misty when high schools crown their homecoming queen, and I won’t even try to explain how I felt about Princess Diana. Show me a crown and I turn into a star struck six year old. I think when I was younger, it came out of a desire to be “the best”.

I was the girl who sat home dateless almost every weekend. I had boy friends, but not boyfriends. I tried out for cheerleading a total of six times and only made the squad once, for 8^th grade wrestling. We had to sit in the bleachers the whole time, wearing home sewn uniforms, as the “good squads” got the good uniforms. Clearly, we were not “the best”. Every year, I would sit in front of the TV and see Miss America walk down the runway, crown on her head, and think how it must feel to be told you are a winner. I always envisioned her as a benevolent queen who was adored by everyone. In my eyes she was kind and gracious and empathetic.

Part of the scoring for Miss America is based on talent, and back in the day when I was eligible that amounted to 40% of the total score. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, fall if my feet leave the ground, and cannot play an instrument. I took baton lessons once, but my mom made me quit after I kept catching those high throws with my face. I tried ballet, and that ended about as well as the baton lessons. If pie baking was an acceptable talent I may have had a shot.

Years passed and as luck would have it, the same people who ran my daughter’s ballet company were also the directors of our local Miss America preliminary. (My daughter’s natural grace is one of life’s greatest mysteries to me.) I once heard “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” All of those years of pageant obsession paid off! I volunteered my time, became very active in the organization. Over the years I helped to prepare dozens of young women to compete on the local and state level, as well as helping two of them to prepare for Miss America. Last year alone, the Miss America Organization awarded over 45 million dollars in scholarship money to more than 12,000 young women.

I met one young woman whose parents had set aside money for her education, but instead had to spend it on nursing home care for her grandmother. The scholarships she won paid for her final semesters of college. Another young woman paid for her master’s degree entirely with pageant winnings. Where else but in the pageant world would I become good friends with a young lady who holds a Masters in neurobiology from Johns Hopkins and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA? It felt good to be able to volunteer my time to help make the dreams of those remarkable young women come true.

Over the years, I realized that I didn’t need someone else to tell me I was good enough. When our pageant board discovered that one of the crowns we had ordered was missing a stone, I bought it instead of having our director send it back. I didn’t care if it was one rhinestone short of perfection. I cleared a spot in my grandmother’s antique breakfront, where I can see my crown every day. I don’t need a panel of judges to tell me I’m good enough. I may have “aged out” of the pageant over 25 years ago, but I earned every rhinestone in that crown, and don’t even notice its imperfection.

Lorie Sheffer Guest Blogger

Lorie Sheffer provides us with much “food for thought” today as we journey through our Mid Life Celebration. Ladies and gentlemen, Lorie Sheffer:

What time frame do we put on reaching our dreams? How high do we aim? It’s fine if your dream is more of a whim, and it’s fine if you don’t have complete success. Sometimes getting there is half the fun. But sometimes we hit highs that we never imagined. For the following two ladies, life didn’t begin at 40; life began after 50.

Julia Child was not one to be rushed. She stood 6 feet 2 inches tall, came from a privileged background, was college educated and had jobs as an editor, as well as working for the Office of Strategic Forces during WWII. She married at age 34, which was unheard of in the 1940s, when most young women married right out of high school. Julia loved food, and she wanted something fun to do while living in Paris with her husband, so she took classes at Le Cordon Bleu. She wanted to teach American housewives how to cook the amazing foods she had mastered, and decided to translate recipes from French into English. It took her and her collaborators a decade to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and they were dismayed when their first manuscript was rejected. The legendary cookbook was finally published when Child was 49 years old. Julia’s television show, The French Chef, aired its first episode in 1963, when Julia was 51 years old.

Paula Hiers was a 4 year old growing up in Albany Georgia when Julia’s show aired. While Julia was teaching American cooks to “be fearless” in preparing dishes such as Boeuf a la Bourguignonne, Paula was learning how to make her Grandma Paul’s fried chicken. Paula grew up in much more humble surroundings. She married at a young age, lost both of her parents by the time she was 19, and raised her younger brother as well as her own two sons. Her husband, Jimmy Deen, drank heavily and Paula cracked under the stress. She started having severe panic attacks, which soon developed into agoraphobia. She would, at times, be unable to leave her home without having an incapacitating attack of severe anxiety.

Paula would find solace in cooking those wonderful comfort foods from her childhood. She later found the strength to take a job as a teller at a bank near her home, and save enough money to leave her abusive husband. To supplement her income, she made bag lunches for her young sons to sell to area business people. Out of that was born her catering business, The Bag Lady. From there, Paula opened her first restaurant, The Lady, in a tiny rented space at a local Best Western Hotel. Paula put in so much time at The Lady that some nights she slept in a booth for a few hours before starting a new day. She was not making much money, and she longed for a day when she could open a bigger restaurant for herself and her sons. After receiving a loan from her aunt, Paula opened The Lady and Sons in downtown Savannah Georgia. A food critic, who was passing through town, stopped on the suggestion of an innkeeper, and the rest is history.

Gordon Elliott got wind of Paula and featured her on Door Knock Dinners and Ready Set Cook. Paula’s warm presence and down home personality did the rest. Paula’s Home Cooking made its Food Network debut in 2002, when Paula was 55 years old. A star was born. Paula has since written numerous best selling cookbooks, she has a total of three shows on Food Network and sells her own line of cookware. In 2004, she married her best friend, Michael Groover. Unlike Julia, Paula never set foot in a cooking school.

Don’t count yourself out of the game just because of age. Think what these ladies, and the rest of us, would have missed had Julia and Paula thought they were too old to dream.