I broke my neck. Then I broke my relationship.
This article originally appeared on Climbing
For Stephanie Howitt
In August 2019, after making a completely avoidable set of errors, I broke my neck. This happened because I forgot an entry level rule: If you bring a rope to a place where you might need a rope, use it. The incident can be summarized in one sentence. My partner I attempted to cross a glacier without a rope, and I fell through a snow bridge into a crevasse that required a roped rescue. Luckily for me, the rope was in my partner’s pack, not mine. Even luckier: he hauls bodies upward at heroic speeds. A week later, saddled with a severe concussion and claustrophobically restrictive neck brace straight out of Mad Max, I wrote what I thought--or hoped--was the story of what had happened to me that day.
The story was called "Broken Neck Nik," and I was still very much fucked up at the time of writing. The doctors had forbidden me from lifting anything heavier than five pounds, and things below five pounds tend, in my experience, to fall into the category of snacks. Most people thought that my incoherent typing was a good and hopeful thing, and they praised me in much the same way you might praise a child for drawing a farm animal that looks a bit like what nightmares have nightmares about.
I didn't particularly like what I wrote, but when you take a forty footer into a crevasse, break your neck, get hauled out, and walk it off, the writing doesn't have to be particularly good for it to be a good story. I imagine this is why Rock and Ice published it. It's probably also why, when it came out a year later, readers didn't actively take to any forum to disparage it (an absence of online trolling being the greatest metric for success in the modern age).
But I wasn't alone in my dislike of the story.
My girlfriend, Stephanie Howitt, liked Nik. My girlfriend did not like "Broken Neck Nik" or the actual broken Nik. Nor did she like the fact that my accident and rescue were celebrated in print while the accident's fallout--i.e. the many subsequent months of pain and depression and gross body care that she had to deal with and which ultimately contributed to the end of our relationship--went completely unmentioned.
She hated the story, and was right to hate it, because the real story, as I can now recognize, happened after the accident and the rescue. It's a story of selfless acts, endless frustration, and my belated realization that I will probably never again be the recipient of more love and kindness.
This is the far less glorious side of surviving a climbing accident.
Our relationship would best be described as tumultuous--indeed, its ups and downs would make the ocean nauseous. In 2018, a year after meeting through a now-deceased dating app, we packed up the little life we had crafted in Toronto and moved to Whitehorse, a former gold rush town of 25,000 in Canada's Yukon territory. The territory, as it's known, is a beautiful place, but I did not thrive, and my problems caused "us" problems. A little less than a year after moving to Whitehorse, we separated, and I fled south to Squamish, BC. We spent the summer separated, but with the approaching fall we decided to give our relationship another go. A few weeks later, I broke my neck. Steph had (metaphorically) bought a reliable used car with a reasonably maintained service history, and upon delivery she received a mobility scooter with no batteries or wheels.
On the day of the accident Steph was walking to her car when she was contacted by the staff who operate the SPOT emergency-beacon services. My concussed field assessment of my own injuries was wildly inaccurate (I thought I'd just broken my hand), but she sat down on the driveway upon hearing the news--a reaction far more appropriate for the injuries I was unaware of. After being diagnosed at the hospital by someone more qualified than a licensed plumber, she was informed that my hand was very fine but my neck was very broken. She booked a flight from Whitehorse to Vancouver.
At Vancouver General Hospital Steph found me immobilized in a trauma bay and the council of Jedi's in the spinal injury unit arguing about whether my neck should be fused or if I should be confined to an upper-body chastity belt. They settled on three months of the latter. Steph spent the next five days camped out on a cot in the spinal unit waiting with me for my bespoke (and back-ordered) torture device to arrive. During those days, if I was awake I was either annoying and barely coherent on pain medication or endlessly listening to the same Lil Nas X song on repeat. The CIA would do well to take notes on this new form of torture.
Eventually, during a semi-lucid period between doses of pain medication and pop music, I asked the staff how someone in my situation performs a number two. Given the small hose that took care of urine, it seemed only reasonable that some hose technology that would take care of my solid waste. The staff responded, "We'll just put a pad down and clean you up after you're done."
I had barely a shred of dignity left to my name--but this felt like too much to bear.
Steph was (and still is) a nurse, and although not officially on the job, she had one patient under her care. He was high. He was annoying. And he was refusing--absolutely refusing--to take a shit. On my fifth day in the hospital, when the brace finally arrived and was fitted to my upper body, I still hadn't gone. I was given permission to stand, walk, and shit on a polished white throne the way god intended. But a man's plan and his reality are rarely in line. And after five days of opioid-assisted compaction, my body was now basically full of diamonds. My initial attempts to pass said diamonds were a complete failure. Indeed, being hypostatic from medically enforced bed rest, I nearly passed out from the exertion.
You may be asking, in what way does this relate to Steph?
I asked Steph to join me in the bathroom in case I passed out from the exertion. In the world of weight training you might liken this to asking someone to give you a spot during a strenuous lift.
But then, after I struggled for a time, she did the unthinkable.
She offered to help.
I knew what she was offering: Digital simulation. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Steph had previously helped "bowel train" paralyzed patients, and she'd celebrated the efficacy of "the technique" with me.
I stared at her for an agonized moment. Then I responded with a nod of my horrified head.
The procedure was executed in silence, and I've maintained that silence until now, telling absolutely no one. But an "authentic account" (as my therapist calls it) of what a climbing accident actually entails requires its mention.
Heroes don't wear capes, but they do need to wash their hands.
Later that same day my friend and roommate, Marie, came down to drive Steph and I back to Squamish. Being a passenger was more complicated than one might at first think. Having spent five days as an invalid, I now had the upper body strength of a spaghetti-necked infant, so Steph spent the entire drive stabilizing me on the rarely straight Highway 99. Steph remained in Squamish for a week beyond my discharge to help me acclimatize to being fucked up while operating in the normal world. She took me for walks, serving as my eyes for the five feet of sidewalk immediately in front of me that I was mechanically incapable of seeing. She also dealt with night terrors that culminated with me tossing violently in my neck brace. She'd wake up to me yelling, thrashing, grabbing her out of desperation, and she'd desperately try to calm me down and wake me up. I have no memories of the nightmare's narrative or of her frantic attempts to keep me from further injuring myself.
One of her more important tasks in these first weeks was to monitor my consumption of lobotomizing substances. In my defense, I was bored and very uncomfortable, and the only true respite available came from "cocktails" of hydromorphone, Ativan, weed gummies, and seven-percent IPAs--a comfort for my brain if not my liver. Steph did not endorse this activity, but did monitor. There was seldom a moment when she was not by my side. It was exhausting, it was boring, and it was hardly the end.
Two weeks after Steph flew back to Whitehorse, I followed. It was the first time I had done anything alone since the injury, and after weeks of care--first by Steph, later by friends--I found myself oddly trusting of my fellow humans. Though when an airport security employee asked me if my neck brace was a part of some sort of costume, my newfound faith in humanity did somewhat wane.
The trials Steph endured after my return to the territory can be divided into three categories: mental health, bathing, and feeding.
The first few weeks after the accident, although unpleasant, were at least novel. The return to Whitehorse, and the creation of a daily routine that mostly consisted of sitting, waiting, and eating, forced me to realize what my reality was to be. The mental game was mine to play, but it was Steph's to monitor, assist, and keep a vigil over.
Even when operating at full strength and physically unbraced I wasn't without my problems. Before the accident, doctors had diagnosed me with crippling anxiety that then resulted in bouts of depression. (As it actually turns out, I have severe ADHD, undiagnosed until later.) It doesn't take much imagination to see how adding physical deterioration and loss of agency to the equation could hasten my mental decline.
I wasn't making "good choices," as they say. I was sliding into a vicious depression, felt totally hopeless, and was in constant discomfort. Oh, and I had a bottle overflowing with opioids. On more than one occasion I dumped the full bottle onto my bed or into my hand and just had a staring contest. Steph was understandably concerned, especially since I was hiding my mental condition from everyone except her.
For the first month of my confinement I was forbidden to remove the claustrophobic neck-brace/chest-harness saddle, resulting in a transition from Broken Nik to Stinky Niky. It's also why, on the theory that a clean body lends itself to a healthy mind, Steph spent the next month giving me baby-wipe sponge baths, sliding pristine white wipes under my brace and bringing them out looking like mechanic's rags. Even once the doctors permitted the removal of the brace for cleaning I was under no circumstances allowed to move my neck. A game of high stakes bathing began. Standing in the bath tub, gripping my beard to stabilize my neck, Steph scrubbed me carefully, a dangerous dance on a slippery surface. Exiting a wet bath tub with a broken neck? Also terrifying. I regretted cursing all the curbless showers I had installed over the years as a plumber.
I had no friends in the territory aside from Steph. And since I was heavily concussed, screen time, reading, or general concentration were uncomfortable. This left eating. During my ten weeks in a full-body brace I ate all of my feelings. Typically it can be hard to quantify emotions, but, in this instance, they were thirty pounds of human mass. There were few activities left available to me: I could go on short walks on sidewalks I was familiar with, so as to prevent tripping; I could sit; I could eat; or I could sit and eat. Truthfully, most walks doubled as a quest for snacks. I didn't think I made a mess while eating, but a man who can't look down is the definition of blissfully ignorant. Thirty pounds of snack weight likely correlates to hundreds of pounds of crumbs deposited in the folds of a couch that I could neither see nor clean. So Steph cleaned up for me on top of actually cleaning me. Steph worked her full time job of caring for others, then came home and spent an equal amount of time caring for me. No one, myself included, was doing anything to care for her.
It was lonely for Steph. I know this because, only minutes before typing this, I asked her. She said it was lonely. She lived a professional life of care. She lived a personal life of care. Yet her only source of care was completely absorbed in his own personal struggle. Beyond infancy, there is no time in my life that I can reflect on as being more selfish.
*
Immediately after I finished my recovery, brace removed, I did what most relationship counsellors would suggest: I got a depressing job in a remote northern gold mine doing shift work, four weeks at camp, four weeks back in Whitehorse with Steph. Co-workers at camp would compare their divorces as though they were baseball card collections. None of them seemed to acknowledge the common denominator in these stories: Our jobs and the people like us who agreed to take them.
It's far more pleasant to blame what's outside than assess what's within.
So it's no surprise that, fourteen months after the accident, just as "Broken Neck Nik" appeared in print, our relationship was over. There was no connection between the two events beyond unfortunate coincidence, but the fact that our relationship ended alongside the publication of an article from which Steph was absent was the perfect way to cap a disastrous chapter.
Yet, for whatever reason, Steph didn't despise me. In fact we were on a sort of relationship farewell tour when we were able to buy copies. Steph took a picture of me holding the final print issue of Rock and Ice. We were in the Smoke Bluffs in Squamish, grey granite cliffs in the background, magazine in my hand, Steph nowhere in the frame. It was, yet again, another me moment--not unlike this one, the one where I write, with my byline, a story about how I'm sorry Steph didn't get enough credit.
Days later, mountain biking together at the Whistler Bike Park, Steph broke her neck and the orbital bone in her face. Her neck was less broken than mine, not that it's a competition, but her face was very broken. She had steel plates surgically installed to rebuild the bone around her eye, and in the weeks that followed, I tried my best to care for her with the same tenderness she'd shown me. But even so, it wasn't until now, years later, that I've really come to realize what Steph realized all that time. Accidents don't end during the ambulance ride, or even with apology publications years after the fact. There is no justice beyond that which we make, just bizarre stories, the truth and the crumbs.
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