Eclipse 2024 compared to partial of 2017
How life changed in the seven years.
April 8th, 2024 was promoted around the state of Arkansas for at least the past four prior years. In the six or so months leading up to the actual date arriving, it became a source of anxiety for state officials, at least in their public statements. They spoke of the event as a natural disaster, preparing various departments for a state of emergency. Many schools, particularly those in the path of totality, canceled for the day in order to allow children to experience this rare event. Meanwhile on the day of the eclipse, I made my way south down I-49 from Bella Vista to Fayetteville. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s rewind to a bit, introduce my situation and go to 2017 and the partial eclipse that passed by my home in Bella Vista, Arkansas.
I was born in 1977 in a small hospital in Madison county Arkansas. I inherited a rare form of muscular dystrophy known as congenital myopathy. This is a progressive neuromuscular disorder. I learned to walk a little slower than others as a child, side effect of which is probably why I learned to read earlier than others as that sort of pursuit fit me better than physical ones early in my life. I grew up on a small rural cattle farm in Carroll County. Apparently from stories I’ve been told, I have always had a fascination with the moon even as a small baby. I suspect truth to this because I recall staring out the window of my bedroom at nights entranced by the stages of the moon traveling all through my childhood and into adulthood. I recall seeing several Lunar eclipses in the 80s. As well as the 1986 return of Halley’s Comet (preceded of course by the childhood shared memory with others of my generation of the Challenger disaster).
So yeah, space events have always been something that fascinated me. Perhaps not in a purely scientific manner but in a fantastical, mythological sensibility. I have always had a rich inner imagination, fueled by my unending need to read books of all types. Fiction, non-fiction, historical, biographical. Anything I could get my hands on, I would devour. Space was always a source of adventures that I would make up in my mind. I even made a comic book in the early 90s as I was learning to draw, focused on a so called ‘last man of earth’ that survived an alien invasion by stealing one of their invasion force ships. He would find prisoners on board that would become part of his ragtag group of adventurers. I had never heard of Guardians of the Galaxy at this point. I really should have done something with the idea, in hindsight.
My whole life I felt like there was a counter above me, ticking down. It was an expectation from the medical experts that my disability would probably not allow me to see past the early twenties. Obviously writing this right now means that did not come to pass, but in my late teens and early twenties I did not know that. I suspect some of my sense of directionless is a result of that misguided timeline they wanted me to expect. This leads us up to 2017 and the partial eclipse. I had plans to try to reach perhaps Wyoming to see it in totality. But life has a way of rearranging your plans in ways you could never forsee.
In the first weeks of 2017 I had begun have stomach pains and bowel issues of which I’ll spare you the details. I had only been living in Bella Vista for a couple of years after many prior years living in Fayetteville. It had been a move to be closer to family to help me out as my disability’s progression was limiting me to using a power wheelchair. I was still very independent otherwise, though I had to rely on public transportation. See, this is what we call foreshadowing, keep that in your mind for now. The stomach problems would be intermittent so at first my mother (an RN at the time, now retired) thought maybe I had indigestion issues or IBS type of thing going on.
For those of you who might not grasp this, having stomach problems that require you to use a toilet, when you are a full time wheelchair user that can not stand on your own and have strength issues…well that’s a real annoying thing to deal with. So when it would stop I’d be relieved to be back to ‘normal’ and not think about it till it would flare up again.
Around the end of April into early June of 2017, it started getting much worse. I was starting to feel lethargic and even drinking water would upset my stomach to the point of making me feel like I was going to vomit. When this started, I knew something was wrong. So I scheduled an appointment to see my GP. This would be on a Wednesday. The soonest that I could get a scheduled transportation (through medicaid program) required a 3 business days wait. So this meant Tuesday. This, my dear readers, is what we call a mistake of life altering proportions. In hindsight I should have pushed harder or even just called an ambulance.
Before the weekend could even arrive, my mother came to check on me and I was apparently having trouble breathing and unresponsive. I vaguely remember getting up that morning, feeding my two little kittens and doing my regular routine where I would listen to the morning radio and relax in my wheelchair that had a function of reclining. It is probably good that I don’t recall anything after. My next memory outside of a few fragments of my mother asking me something is waking up in the ICU of Northwest hospital in Bentonville with all the requisite tubing for stomach and breathing and IV lines.
You are probably asking, what in the world was the escalation that lead to this? Well, see…parts of our bodies don’t always like us it seems. My gallbladder had decided to try to take me out. Not too unsurprising, it is a common thing in my family that has to be removed. The big problem however, for me, was that it had caused my stomach issues that had become progressively more intense. This had led at some point in my sleep to me aspirating things from my stomach. This then lead to septic pneumonia and with my disability it weakened my ability to breathe properly. In my fortieth year, my gallbladder nearly did more than any of the muscular dystrophy in being my nemesis.
I spent a very heavily medicated three weeks in ICU and now years onward my memory of it is quite hazy. I recall a sense of dread of whether I would ever leave the hospital at all. Then there were the major medical decisions that had to be made when I was in no mental shape to be making them. I am thankful I have family around me that could do these things for me. I often try to imagine how those who don’t have that support survive similar ordeals and it sends me to a dark place. I suspect many do not come out of it, alive or in good shape for going onward in life. Due to the weakening of my breathing capacity after the pneumonia and being on ventilator support, we had to put in a tracheostomy tube. This was when I lost my ability to speak. Some might find that concept utterly frightening but it’s strangely had very little effect on me in reality. I never liked talking that much. I still have the trach tube to this day. Over time we weaned me off using the ventilator support and I only rely on it while sleeping, more as a precaution than anything else.
I got released at the end of June and was home just in time for the partial eclipse in 2017. Even though I had some weeks home before it happened in August, a lot of that time is a blur to me now. There were a lot of changes that were having to be put into place. I was no longer able to be as independent as I had been prior to this health crisis. We had to struggle to obtain in home nursing and find resources to keep me in my home rather than be sent off to Tulsa as that was the supposed nearest place that could even support my needs in a facility setting. Let’s be quite honest however, a facility is the last place I wanted to be. I’m convinced even now that if I had ended up in one that I would be absolutely miserable.
I recall watching the partial eclipse in my driveway, my power wheelchair reclined back to get a good angle. I was frustrated and sad at the state I found myself in, moreso than probably any point in my life. But as they say, time heals. Well maybe not heals, but transforms is a more apt way to put it, from my experience.
In the years from 2017 up to now in 2024 we have all experienced a lot of drastic changes. For myself it wasn’t quite as much as 2017 itself. I had been mostly at home, rarely traveling even before I got sick. When you live in a place that has little public transportation and you use a wheelchair, things are far more difficult than most people realize. 2020 didn’t bring that much change to my life as it did to everyone else in the world at large. I was living that sort of sequestered lifestyle for a very long time. In fact, in some ways, my life actually improved. More delivery options and more online conversations became the norm. Many people in the disabled community have talked about this and how the rollbacks of some of these things as we’ve supposedly ‘returned to normal’ is depriving them of the gains we had.
So as the state talked of state of emergencies over the 2024 eclipse-apocalypse, I was looking forward to a rare travel event. My brother with his two boys, my sister and my dad planned to see this one within the path of totality. Or as my nephew would mistakenly call it the ‘fatality’. We were going to rent a better accessible van than the one I use for the doctors visits every six months. We left at 8am and traveled down I-49 towards Fayetteville. Then a call comes in right as we are getting into town that “oh sorry we don’t have a van to rent right now”. Plans right? So we called an audible and just decided to take the less reliable van on the trip.
Passing through Fayetteville then through Goshen onward to highway 412 was a trip down memory lane. I had not taken that route in probably 20+ years as it was often the road that I would take between UofA and going home. It was strange, very little has seemed to change on that route since the late 90s and early 2000s. One of the few places in northwest Arkansas that hasn’t. This was the longest trip I had been on since my health had taken the big hit to it. There were traffic backups, especially at a bridge outside Kingston that was down to one lane thanks to the construction that never ends on our highways. We made our way through the edge of the Buffalo River region and onward to a remote mountaintop church in Swain, Arkansas.
I’m not sure if I had ever been to the spot before, it is quite possible I had drove through there at various points of my life, but it was not an area that I had reason to be in while growing up. We arrived before the mass of random eclipse-fanatics would descened on this tiny rural church’s parking lot between it and the local cemetery. Ok, yes a part of me did have a thought about zombies and/or strange plants from outerspace.
The view as the picture at the top shows was quite breathtaking. Especially as I had not exactly been outside a whole lot in the past 7 years prior. I just soaked it in and enjoyed the moment, even as it got quite a bit more crowded by random people showing up to park in every available space. My current sunburn also shows I soaked up a bit too much of the sun, but I’ll blame that on not having thought about sunblock in ages.
Seeing the moon slowly swallow up the sun and then reach the totality was something I will never forget. I’m not a picture taker by default so I have none of that moment like many. I’m not a phone person either, even before losing my ability to speak so I rarely even have something to take photos on my person. But the image of the halo around the moon is not something I will forget.
As soon as totality ended, it was amazing how quickly the less fascinated jumped back into their vehicles and sped off to be in a long line of traffic that would drive the most sane person into madness of levels not ever imagined by HP Lovecraft. We took the smart tact and stayed at the spot, still watching as the moon made the transit on through the sun’s path. Soon enough we were the only remaining people left and then a local came up to check to make sure nothing had been damaged at his local church.
Some people can be a little uptight when meeting rural locals. Not my family. For us, we were those local rurals our entire lives while me and my siblings were growing up. We knew all the various levels of rednecks and hillbillies and understood the charm and wisdom that many would overlook. We talked with the elderly man who stood in his overalls and had a welding helmet that he had been watching the eclipse with. He told us about the community and how glad he was that the concrete accessible parking spot had been useful for me in my wheelchair.
After we finally left, many hours after everyone else had bailed on such an amazing thing as a solar eclipse; we traveled back past my childhood home and visited my grandparents, whom I had not seen since covid started up. They are well into their 80s so travel has become much harder for them to come over towards Bella Vista to visit me. It was late into the evening when I finally got back home. Tired and realizing I was in fact sunburned on my forearms and hands. A price I was quite ok with paying for going on a trip.
In the seven years since my life had changed, I had only been on one other trip, to go to St. Louis to a Cardinals game; something I have always wanted to do. This was an important change for my mindset. It was proof that I could do these trips and with proper planning it was not impossible. Having sudden spur of the moment “let’s go to x spot for fun” is now out of the question and that is frustrating on a certain level. But let’s be real, those of us in our 40s aren’t exactly doing that kind of stuff terribly often anymore anyhow I would imagine.
2017, I turned 40. I’m not sure I ever imagined I would reach that age. Plus it was a survival year considering all the challenges to my health that had happened. Seven years on and I keep going. I’m not sure I’ve ever found my ‘direction’ in life and I honestly never know what to tell people who are young and trying to do that. But what I do know is that you have to follow the things you are interested in and fascinated by. I’ve always lived by that ideal. It is why I started self learning japanese. It is why I am constantly reading and drawing. It is why I fall down random rabbit holes of knowledge with every link going to some other subject till my brain can’t handle any more.
I hope everyone used this eclipse as a way of comparing the past seven years. Not in the politi-speak manner of a ‘are you better now than (x) years ago?’ sort of thinking. But more in the sense of what is the story that you have for those intervening years? We will all have ups and downs and it is the culmination of those that make us who we are. Unfortunately for us humans, this is something we can not see nor understand in our youth. I hope for everyone out there, the eclipse was a wonderful experience this past week. Take that sense of wonder and carry it with you into as many parts of your life. Look out your window at night at the moon and let your imaginations run wild. Existence is precious and we should all strive to enjoy it as much as we can.