Oh, Sandy

     Early in the evening on October 29, the hybrid superstorm hurricane known as Sandy made landfall around Atlantic City, NJ.  I'm about 120 miles northwest of there.  In the days before, my mother and I made sure that we had everything we needed in case the power went out (which in our area does happen, considering it is a heavily wooded area that is poorly maintained by the power company) and when we lose power, we also lose heat and most importantly, running water.  The radar pictures were both awesome and terrifying--800 miles across and 2,000 miles long--and the evening before captured an historic image of what was going to make Sandy such a superstorm--the powerful, energized cold front just to the west of it that was going to be absorbed into the storm.  And, might I add, oh the pain as she came closer and hit!!
    Then around 6pm we lost power that Monday.  It had gone off twice earlier, but quickly came back on and had been flickering the rest of the day.  For 11 days, we lived off of generator power.  It was about 2 days before I got my first glimpses of what Sandy had done to the Jersey Shore, 4 days before we had heard from my uncle and cousins who live close to the shore, and an additional 2 before I heard from the rest of my friends.  My brother?  I heard about him through his ex.  He still hasn't called my parents to see if they're okay.  It's not like my mother wasn't almost rushed to the ER and still might end up back in the hospital or anything.
      We were very lucky that we didn't suffer severe damage, but only some branches and power outages.  For us, the challenge was to try to keep conditions as sanitary as possible and temperatures in the house as constant as possible.  With my autoimmune diseases and powerful immunosuppressants, on a good day, stress alone causes wreaks havoc on what little immune system I have left now.  My mother's immune system is also compromised because of renal failure.  I seem to be lucky to only have a minor infection that I am carefully monitoring right now.  My mother is a different story.
    But I did learn some valuable things from all of this.  I am much stronger than I thought I was.  With very little sleep, I was able to keep the generator going, making sure that the most important things were taken care of around here (mom kept busy by cleaning stuff up around the house she had been putting off lately), checking with police departments' social networking pages for information, staying in touch with friends to make sure they were taken care of, keeping in touch with family, and finding a way to get through it all.
     I also found it incredible that my close knit community of neighbors became closer as we took care of each other, sharing generators, gas, food, wood, information, checking in on each other, watching out for each other when vandalism and thefts started happening,  and depending on who could get to what store, supplies.
    What I did learn is that I need to find a way in case something like this happens again (extended power outage/stressful situation) is to try to find that balance so that I'm not putting my body into a further compromising position than it has to be.  Our house was about as prepared as it could have been before my father found the bigger generator, but it took 7 or 8 days before I was able to find that center, or inner balance I needed for myself to continue to keep going.  I realize that my old way of just shutting down, going into auto pilot and getting things done is not going to work--it barely worked now and it won't work in the future as my fever is rising and an infection is setting in.  My body is just no able to do that anymore for any real length of time.  But for now, I can't even begin to express just how thankful I am, my friends, and my family for having made it through all of it.  And for those friends who were there.  And I continue to pray for those still dealing with it as I try to get myself back on my feet.