Laughter and Love: the two best things in life

A story I did for my Reporting 1 course, spring term 2012.

The 7th floor RiverBend hospital room in Springfield, Oregon, is chaos. Nurses, doctors, and specialists constantly come and go throughout the day. The patient needs his blood tested. He needs to take his medications. He needs to be examined by the doctor. He’s pushed the help button to make his hundredth request.

“Put that pillow under my head so it looks like the feathers are on me.”

“Get me a wet washcloth. Half warm, half hot.”

“Get this pillow out from under my head.”

“Look at my ring.”

“Get me some clothes.”

“Are you coming to my birthday party?”

The list goes on.

Brad Woodruff, Glenwood resident of almost 15 years, has been in and out of the hospital for the last month fighting lymphoma. This particular visit was not only for his cancer, but also for pneumonia and a blood infection. Woodruff was constantly begging to go home, sometimes angrily. At times he would call hospital staff foul names, blaming them for imprisoning him in his room. He called friends several times saying the doctors released him; get his chair ready, he’ll be home that day; bring him his bird; bring him clothes. He even made a call to RideSource to come and pick him up and hospital staff had to intervene.

After a week, Woodruff was able to go home. But no more than three days later he was re-admitted for concern over his safety. A close friend says it’s possible he won’t be leaving this time. He has fired all of his caregivers and his friends and family members don’t have the capacity to care for him.

Woodruff hasn’t always been in the place he is now, mentally or physically. Friends suspect it’s possible the cancer has moved to his brain, or that the levels of his medications are altering his personality. Since the discovery and initial treatment of Woodruff’s cancer he has become sporadically hostile, forgetful, overly trusting, and unreasonable. “This is definitely not the Brad that I know,” says Scott Gauderman, Woodruff’s good friend of eight years. In his moments of lucidity, Woodruff is a fun-loving man who has a passion for his neighbors, family, antiques, and, above all, his community. These moments, friends say, are a short insight into who Woodruff was, and who they hope to see him become again.

Woodruff says he has always loved the life of adventure, holding to the philosophy of “working hard in the week to play harder on the weekend.” In 1999, Woodruff moved from California to Oregon, settling in Glenwood with his second wife. Ten months after his move, he says, he was diving off of some rocks under Dexter Dam with some friends and family. On his last dive he hit the water in a way that broke his neck.

Brad Woodruff in his backyard. 

The event put the once tall, strong, independent Woodruff in a wheelchair as a full quadriplegic. He spent 6 months in the hospital and says he spent that time thinking about ways he could make people laugh. “Laughter is the best medicine and I swear by that,” he says.

Since his accident, Woodruff has been divorced and his family has been dispersed. “I had a brash of bad things happen,” he says. He was in another accident that re-injured his neck, contracted an infection in his spine putting him on bed-rest for a period of time, his wheelchair accessible van was crushed by a tree branch, his wheelchair ramp was stolen, he’s been diagnosed with large T-cell lymphoma, and friends say he has been financially taken advantage of many times in the last month.

Losing his independence was the most difficult thing for Woodruff. It was hard for him to begin relying on others to do things for him. “Self reliance is key to life,” he says. “But you’ve got to make the best out of any bad situation.” Before his accident, Woodruff was a carpenter. He can no longer build anything himself, but instead he shares his knowledge with others. He’s helped neighbors build fences, window frames, and retaining walls by sitting back and giving direction.

Woodruff recognizes that his accident has changed his life in ways that would cause many to become withdrawn and depressed. But, instead, he has embraced his lot. Since he couldn’t work, Woodruff turned his focus on his neighborhood. “Brad is more plugged in to everybody around here than I ever have been,” says Gauderman. “I mean, he takes his chair down to the depths of Glenwood and knows everybody. The traffic in his house is ridiculous at times.” Seeking out adventure and community, Gauderman says Woodruff would take his wheelchair down streets he himself wouldn’t dare go down.

Neighbors say Woodruff would be out wheeling the neighborhood almost five times a week. He would stop and say hi to anybody who was outside. His passion for his neighborhood was visible to anyone who saw him. “He will always say good things about Glenwood, will stick up for Glenwood, and will stick up for the people in Glenwood,” Gauderman says.

“His heart’s bigger than he is and there isn’t nothing the man wouldn’t do for you,” says neighbor Sandra Tuttle. “Whether he’s in the wheelchair or not, if he can’t do it then he can find somebody to help you, one way or another.”

"Put my fingers this way," said Woodruff.
"Do you know what this means?
This means 'love.' I love you."

Woodruff would often hire people from the streets of Glenwood to do small tasks on his property, be it lawn care, washing windows, or cleaning out debris. “I want the whole world to be happy,” says Woodruff. Even with his illness taking over his body and confining him to his bed, Gauderman says Woodruff would instead ask his care providers to find someone who needs help so he can give them work to do.

The Glenwood community looks to Woodruff as an inspiration. Neighbor Dave Carvo speaks of Woodruff with great awe. “[I love] the joy in his voice,” he says. “You could hear him laughing all the way down the street. Just happy. He can’t move, he can’t wipe his own b***, but the guy just loves life. Doesn’t get much more inspirational than that.”

Woodruff says, even while laying in his hospital bed, “Laughter and happiness is the best thing in the world for anybody.” He may be unaware, but his own happiness has left a great impact on the area. “He shows people not to give up,” says neighbor Charles Davis. “He has a super strong character and has a super strong will.” Neighbors say that when things get hard they only need to think of Woodruff and all that he has been through.


The community has noticed Woodruff’s absence with concern. “Brad is part of the community,” says Davis. “Just him wheeling down the street is part of the community.” Currently, a piece of the community is missing. And the people wait for that piece to return so they can hear his laughter once again.

Tattoo - A story written for Reporting 1

Diane Gruver has been employed by Tattoo by Design for the last 17 years and has been tattooing for the last 10½. In the world of tattoo, every artist has his or her own technique that is held close to the heart and not easily shared. It’s like a family recipe passed down from artist to artist.

Gruver’s work begins when a client contacts her for her services and provides a picture of the tattoo he wants. She runs the client’s picture through a Thermofax, an old photocopy machine, to create a stencil that can be transferred onto her client’s skin. Before she begins work on her client, Gruver cleans her station and her hands. When she is sure that everything has been thoroughly sanitized, Gruver can then take out her needles and pour her pigment and rinsing water. Once her station is prepped, she calls her client over and readies his skin.

First, Gruver preps her client’s skin with a soap spray, a shave, and some rubbing alcohol. She applies deodorant, which helps the stencil stick. After rubbing the stencil on she asks the client to check and make sure it is placed to his liking. If he wants, she can wash it off and reapply.

A professional tattoo artist generally uses a tattoo machine which the artist controls by pushing a pedal on the floor, much like a sewing machine. As Gruver pushes the pedal with her foot the current opens, turning the machine on. When turned on, the needles set in the machine vigorously move up and down, recreating the old traditional way of hand tattooing by tap-tap-tapping the needles into the skin. Each tap into the client’s flesh creates a scratch. The vibration of the needles then shakes the ink, or pigment, into the scratch, planting it between the top two layers of skin. Gruver places the needles in the machine very carefully, using a jeweler’s loupe, to make sure it scratches to the right depth.

Guver begins her work of art by carefully following the outline provided by the stencil. She starts in an area that can be easily re-done in case her client twitches at the first touch of the needles. After he proves himself motionless, she moves on.

Comparing the motion to a sewing technique, she pulls the skin taut and brushes, or more literally, scrapes the pigment across the client’s skin to create a solid line. As she runs her needles across her client’s flesh, pigment and blood pool along the lines. “You have to learn to see though the mess,” she says as she wipes away the color and blood with a paper towel. She says that each skin type has a different grain to follow and she needs to adjust how she directs her machine in order to place the pigment where she wants it. “Skin is hard to work with,” she says.

Employees prepare and sterilize tattoo needles in advance. The most common types of needles are called “liners” and “shaders,” however that doesn’t mean they are only used for their names. ”Different types of needles have different shapes, sizes, and configurations," Gruver says. "A tattoo artist picks the appropriate needles for the particular tattoo, just as a painter picks particular brushes to get different effects.”

Gruver frequently dips the needles into her pigment, then the water, wipes a little test on her paper towel to make sure she has the right mix, then goes back to her work. When she finishes her outline, she changes her needles and starts filling in different levels of black and grey. Her speed and stroke styles change depending on the effect she’s looking for. “Think of it like a vacuum cleaner,” she says: The faster she moves, the more spotty her covering will be. When she moves slower, her filling will be more dense.

After about 2½ hours, Gruver finally completes her piece. She has the client examine it to make sure he likes it. After he confirms his approval, she give him specific, stern directions on how to care for his tattoo: Don’t expose it to the sun, make sure to keep it clean, use lotion, don’t let it dry up. If the client follows Gruver’s directions, his tattoo will maintain its quality. If not, she warns, it will fade and become cloudy.

When the client leaves, Gruver turns her focus to cleaning. She stresses the importance of sanitation to avoid illness and infection. Gruver never reuses needles so as to avoid infection. She puts them in a sharps container for biohazard disposal. She throws out all of the stained paper towels, gloves, pads, and rubber bands used for tension on the tattoo machine. She then wipes down her station with what is called tuberculocidal which is a chemical strong enough to kill tuberculosis in 10 minutes. The tools she reuses are put in an autoclave, a machine that subjects the equipment to heat and extremely high pressure, killing all life left that the tuberculicidal missed, including hepatitis. Everything is stored meticulously to avoid contamination.