Xena, with some new bling!

How many people ever get engaged while having over 150 stitches in their body? Well Xena did. Just a few days before Christmas her boyfriend Selves got down on one knee and asked Megan to marry him. She responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” Selves has been by Megan’s side every day since the accident that almost killed her 5 weeks ago. As a crane operator at the shipyard, he was actually the one that had to carefully lift the giant concrete pilings off of Megan after they had shifted unexpectedly, crushing her legs. I asked Megan the other day if he also had to use the crane to lift the enormous engagement ring out of the box! Once again, it was great to hear Megan laugh.

I have only met Selves once but by all accounts he’s a knight in shining armor and I’m really looking forward to getting to know him. His devotion since the accident has said a lot about his character and it is obvious in listening to Megan talk about him that she is deeply in love.

I took the Miles and Alex over the other day for a visit along with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and my two nephews. I just happened to have my camera, and Megan just happened to look fantastic for drop in guests; two things that in actuality are pretty much a given. This was the first time that I had seen her legs mostly unwrapped and she is healing very well. She has red stripes on her left leg where skin is healing after some was taken for grafting onto her right leg. The soreness is getting better slowly but surely. The most pain comes from, as she calls it, “Shorty”, in other words, the site of the amputation. Shorty? Megan’s sense of humor and positive attitude are sure to help her leapfrog over entire stages of her recovery. She told me that she would eventually like to tattoo some eyes on the end of Shorty just for fun!




(Miles helping out by holding up my jacket as a photo backdrop)

Alex was very sweet and asked a lot of questions about how Megan was feeling. I told her while pointing at the painted toenails on Megan’s left foot that at least now she can paint her toenails really fast. To which the master of witty quips, Megan’s dad Denny, said slowly with a twinkle in his eye, “Yeah, that’s true, in fact now she can do her toenails TWICE as fast.” He cracks me up.



With a fractured pelvis, numerous broken and now reset bones (compliments of a fascinating array of rods, pins, screws and other things that are sure to set off airport metal detectors for the rest of her life), skin grafts and pain medications, Megan is pulling big time from her Xena powers to get better. The latest prognosis is that she looks on track to be able to put some weight on her left leg in a month, which is about a month faster than originally thought. Until then it’s dealing with getting around in her wheelchair. Or when Selves is around, he just scoops her up in his arms and carries her wherever she needs to go. I hope soon to photograph them both together and when you see the photographs you will instantly understand why lifting Megan up is no problem. I had biceps like his once too…in a caricature that was drawn of me.

We had a nice visit that day and while chatting the subject did turn briefly to the reality that the result of the accident completely sucked. But then we got right back on the underlying miracle…that she survived. And now here she was, the same as before the accident in almost every way, beautiful, welcoming, funny, wacky and loud. She still has the world before her but now her course is different. In many ways, I am led to believe that when all is said and done she will look back on her life and realize that she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

She almost got killed at the shipyard, but without her job there she never would have met Selves. While holding up her left hand and showing off the ring she said with a glow, “Nice huh? You should see it when the sunlight hits it. Then it’s really beautiful.”

Oddly enough, that’s what more and more people are saying about my cousin Xena, the newly engaged Warrior Princess.