Lisa Hensley Photography

Last Sunday started out to be a wonderful day, I woke up bright and early excited to capture the glorious colors that have blessed our Arizona Deserts for the past couple of days.  My alarm promptly went off at 5:30 playing one of my favorite songs and I jumped out of bed hastily knowing that I only had about 30 minutes before the sky changed from black to glorious shades of crimson, coral, blush, orchid, mauve and purple.  I gathered my camera bag that I had carefully packed the night before and headed up to my favorite hiking spot.  But after surveying my surrounding desert canvass, I decided to hike off the trail to some grand saguaros that would produce statuesque silhouettes against the impending sunrise.  December 5, 2010 will go down in my memory as one of the most breathtaking sunrises that I have ever had the pleasure of photographing.  Here are just a few of my favorites from that morning…

Sunrise 2

Sunrise 3

Don’t you agree that these images were definitely worth waking up early for?  Most of the time I just lay in my bed and argue with myself that I will just get up early tomorrow or maybe I will catch the Sunset instead.  I hate cold and I hate wind…but as I thought of my friends living in Utah and Minnesota I decided that I really didn’t have it that bad and it was worth getting up early for.

As I drove home my thoughts turned to my daughter Raygen and her dog Thrill that she has been caring for over the past several months.  Thrill is a Samoyed that we bred to our Male Denahi, she was supposed to give birth on Friday and was 2 days overdue.  So, we were all concerned that maybe a C-Section was in store for her that day if she hadn’t given birth by mid-day.  As we pulled into the driveway I saw Raygen poke her little head out of her camper door and proudly announce that she and Thrill had birthed 2 puppies, a boy and a girl.  With my camera still swung around my shoulder her dad and I strolled over the 15′ to her camper and headed inside to see the proud mama and her new puppies.  Raygen picked up the little girl and showed her off proudly to her dad and I while I took a few not so great pictures of them.  After all my camera was set up to take pictures of Sunrises and not brand new puppies.  Wide Angle lenses are not the best lens to use for close up portraits, but that is beside the point and I will do my best to stay on task.  Scott took his turn patting Thrill on her soft white fluffy head and congratulating her on a successful birth.  Although the whole time she kept peeking around at me as if it was her first time seeing me, but we both knew that I had taken her on walks and came in several times to let her out to go potty.  I even checked on her while laboring even taking the time to kneel beside her with my head on her whelping box and talking softly to her.

I thought maybe my camera equipment was scaring her a little so I took it all off and set it off to the side so it wouldn’t bother her so much.  As Scott finished up his congratulatory pats on the head and made his way back over to my side, I decided it was my turn to congratulate our new mother to be.  As I kneeled down by her whelping box and folded my arms on the side of her box, she was still looking at me just a little puzzled…but I ignored it as I was definitely not a stranger to her.  She reached over to me slowly as I figured she just wanted to sniff me and out of no where she just bore her teeth and latched on to the left side of my face.  At this point I felt her pulling me into the whelping box, dazed all I could think to do was reach around with my hands to try to open her muzzle and release my face from her grips.

The mind is a wonderful thing as I don’t remember any pain or the bite itself, thank the Lord for “Shock!”  I only think it took a few seconds but the damage was definitely done and I knew it was bad…”very bad!” I saw a paper towel laying on something “again my memory is a bit fuzzy” and I grabbed it to cover the blood that I knew had to be spilling out of my face at this point.  I layed down on the bed that had been converted by Raygen as she awaited the birth of these puppies, that just yesterday was Raygen kitchen table.  I remember crying and thinking that the damage must be horrible as I couldn’t feel anything on the left side of my face and my eye was almost swollen shut.  I removed the towel long enough for Scott to take a quick peak, he assured me that it was only a couple of puncture wounds and I would be just fine.  But as I was swallowing pints of blood, I knew that there was more damage than he could see at that moment.   We rushed to John C Lincoln Hospital where my throat continued to swell and breathing became extremely difficult.  My eye was almost swollen shut and my cheek felt like if it swelled anymore they were going to have to cut it open to relieve the pressure.  I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to think that I just been disfigured, but that darn visor just kept looming at me.  I knew there was a mirror on the other side of it, if I just wanted to flip it around.  Scott kept telling me to not look and that I would be just fine…again they were just puncture wounds.  My tongue was telling me a much different story however, I felt holes and gashes in my gums, I felt a huge tear in my lip.  My towel that was given to me by my daughter to replace the blood soaked paper towel was also now soaked in blood.  I just had to look, just one quick little peak…I would deal with whatever fate and that stupid dog had just dealt me.  “HOLY CRAP!” was all that came out of my mouth, my face was so swollen I hardly even recognized myself.  I had two big gashes across my cheek and 5 puncture wounds under my chin.  At this point the crying became much louder and the breathing became much more difficult, as Scott turned to see what was going on he flipped that mirror up and told me “I would still be beautiful no matter what!” Well, let me just say that, he did not calm me down any…cause that kind of spousal support might work on a guy but not on a girl!!!

As we swang into the Emergency entrance I was greeted by a nice young gentlemen who could tell I wasn’t there because I had a splinter in my finger.  He promptly escorted me to Triage where I was then promptly taken in a wheel chair to a bed! This gorgeous surgeon came in and seduced me with promises of morphine, warm blankets and a charming smile.  As I was pumped full of morphine, 20mg to be exact and 6mg of Adavan I came to the conclusion that pain relief was just not coming fast enough for me.  Apparently, I am immune to morphine as it provided no comfort at all for me…next were facial x-rays just to see if any bone fragments were floating around in my cheek.  Mr. McDreamy told me that I had tendon and nerve damage in my cheek and even though he had trained under a plastic surgeon my injuries were much more extensive than he felt comfortable sewing up.  So I was transported by ambulance to another John C Lincoln Hospital about 20 minutes south of where we were so an expert Plastic Surgeon could close the hole up in my cheek.  So into the hands of Dr. Vasif Sabeeh I went hoping he would make me whole again with his Plastic Surgeon hands.  I don’t remember much after this as I was finally given some wonderful drugs to put me in a twilight sleep while he sewed me back up again.

It has now been 8 days since my traumatic experience, my swelling is all mostly gone and I hardly even had any bruising.  I consider myself very lucky that my injuries were not any worse than they are.  The left side of my face is totally numb, I cant lift the corner of my upper lip up and my cheek has limited movement.

So every morning when I look in the mirror I look at my crooked smile and wonder if I am still beautiful?  Yesterday, I decided I didn’t want to go to Church because I didn’t  want anyone staring at me…but then about 3 hours later I came to the realization that beauty comes from the inside.  No matter what happens to us in life we always need to project our inner beauty. That is what defines us, it isn’t how we smile or what we look like.  When I die I don’t want people to say I was beautiful, I want people to think I was “A Beautiful Person!” So this injury has taught me that life is fragile and you never know when you are going to be given a “Crooked Smile!”  So with my “Crooked Smile” I shall go forth and enjoy life and I hope I will be more beautiful on the inside!

I am only showing these photos because I want you to see what I saw when I first looked at myself and possibly understand my emotional and physical trauma that I suffered just 8 short days ago.

Lisa 1 day post Surgery

Lisa after day 1 and day 6

I decided to only show a portion of my face as I felt the whole image was just to graphic.  Most of the damage was to the inside of my mouth and gums. I also received stitches in my upper lip and under my jaw. The nerve and muscle damage that was done to my face and gums could take up to 2 years to heal and then again depending upon the extent of the nerve damage to my jaw I might never get feeling back in my face.

But I will heal and I will be happy! I can’t wait to get back to my camera and feeling 100% again, so until then thanks for visiting and sharing a little piece of my world with me.

And this last photo is of Thrill…she doesn’t look harmful does she?  This image was captured about 10 minutes before she bit me.

Thrill