The one where I almost lose my best friend, my love, my husband...

"How can you stand to just sit here and watch him breathe?" a tearful Lu asked me earlier this evening. Her father was lying in his hospital bed not a foot from where she sat, perched on my lap. His breathing was labored and shallow due to the lung that had been collapsed, the chest tube, and the broken ribs. The severe pain also hampered it. My only answer was "because I have to". How do I explain to her, my still so young daughter, that it's my sacred duty. How to describe for her the vigilance that's based on the absurd thought that by sheer force of will, I can keep him breathing? The fear that if I look away for just a minute, his chest will fail to rise and the monitors will begin that ceaseless bleating.

As I sat alone last night, in the post midnight quiet, it all overcame me. The phone call from the neighbor telling me about the accident, the mad rush to the hospital, the countless phone calls to family and friends, the illegal rush into an ER trauma room, the agonizing hours he was in surgery, and the relief that he came through alright, the calm demeanor that had held me through those things dissolved. And silent tears ran down my cheeks as I held my husband's hand and thanked whatever powers that be that he was still with me. I watched the rise and fall of his chest. Kept a close eye on the monitor where the data from a myriad of tubes and cuffs and wires printed out. And it occurred to me that this same scene was being played out in countless hospital rooms across the globe. I was not alone in my vigil. Not alone in my hope, fears, or irrational phobias. And again, I counted my blessings that we had been so lucky. That while he was still in danger of infection or pneumonia, he was whole and in one piece (give or take a spleen and some skin). And he will recover and I will get to spend the rest of our life together letting him know how much he means to me.

You see, that's what popped into my head on the way to the hospital. Why am I so mean? Why is the garbage that big of a deal? Or the fact that he forgets to do tasks I ask of him. Really? In the grand scheme of things, what more are these than minor annoyances? Why should I let them color our lives so? When faced with the all too real prospect of losing my best friend, they seem so small and petty. And I fervently hope, that after this reminder, I will never let it play so much a part of our lives again. And we will honor the rule we made a long time ago, that you never leave the house in anger or after harsh words are spoken. Because you never know. And I know how relieved I was that the last words I'd said before he left were "Drive safe. I love you."


***For those of you who don't know...my husband left our house Friday evening to make a trip to Lowe's in town. As he slowed to make a right hand turn off the blacktop, another pick up truck, travelling at a high rate of speed, ignored (? missed? blew through?) the stop sign and slammed into his drivers side door. My husband's truck was propelled headfirst into a telephone pole, then impacted once more near the back of the bed. The other truck rolled several times. As it happened on a country blacktop, there were no witnesses, no one around. The impact was heard for miles. Everyone (or so I hear) with houses near the intersection and the nearby town headed to the scene. My husband was trapped in his truck while rescue workers tried to get him free. He was then helicoptered to the nearest city. A neighbor called and told me there had been an accident and they were taking him to the hospital. I have never been so scared in my entire life. I made a mad dash to the hospital, phoning family on the way.

When I finally arrived at the ER, husband's mother, stepfather, sisters, brother and Lu were already there. They were in a family room because the hospital wouldn't let them in the trauma room. I made an illegal dash through the doors, nearly mowed down a priest, and got to his side. It was gruesome. I only got to tell him I was there and that I loved him before they whisked him away to CT scan. I was literally shaking from head to toe. After CT, emergency surgery was performed. Another agonizing three hour wait. He had a collapsed lung, three broken ribs, a completely demolished spleen, internal bleeding and severe and numerous lacerations. They put a chest tube in his lung to re inflate and keep it re inflated. The spleen was removed, the bleeding stopped and over a hundred stitches put in his left arm. He was given two units of blood. No bones were broken.

Today, he is still in ICU. He's in a major amount of pain. He runs a risk of infection and pneumonia. He is battered and bruised. But I have seen the pictures of his truck. He is lucky to be alive at all. It took hours for them to clean up the scene of the accident. The only part of his truck that still looks undamaged is the passenger door, the one they had to finally take him out through. The other driver was not so lucky. He was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from his vehicle. He did not survive.

We have had an overwhelming wave of support, offers of everything, prayers, food, cards sent our way by family, friends and people we don't even know well. My husband apparently impacts way more lives than he knows. And even the kids have been overwhelmed with friend's and acquaintance's outpouring of love and sympathy. We thank everyone so much for everything they've done and for reaching out to us. Please spare some prayers for the other driver's family. He was at fault, but paid a high price and I sympathize with his family.

If you guys could send us positive thoughts, him to heal quickly and well, me strength to keep my vigil and my sanity, it would be greatly appreciated.

from the wrong side of midnight,
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And sometimes bad things happen...

So this last week has been rough. I say rough instead of sucked the proverbial monkey balls because things could have been worse. The feeling at my house is "if the police didn't come and nobody died" it really wasn't that bad. Being sick has sucked but it's not that unusual for me. I wasn't life or death sick, just sick enough to be listless and irritable. Then on Thursday, Sean had an accident on his way to his Civil Air Patrol meeting.

It's an hour's drive from our house to where the meetings are held. He stops in the town half an hour away to either meet or ride with his friends. Sometimes the one guys dad drives, or the guy drives, sometimes Sean drives. Well, this time Sean was driving. And he was driving my car because it gets better gas mileage than his truck. The exit he takes comes down into a double left turn lane. He pulled into the farthest left lane and stopped at the light. A semi driver, with a double trailer, pulled into the lane next to him. He was on his cell phone. The semi driver changed lanes in the middle of the intersection. Sean managed to slow, but was forced into oncoming traffic. Luckily, he didn't collide with the oncoming traffic. However, the last set of tires on the last trailer of the semi clipped the front of my car. The semi driver did not even get out of his cab or get off his phone. He yelled and asked if Sean and the other boy were alright. Then he drove off!! It being Sean's first accident, he wasn't thinking clearly enough to get the guys license plate number or name of the trucking company. Or insist that they call the police. But luckily, he and his friend were unharmed and the car is driveable. There is some body damage though. But all in all, it could have been way worse. And the damage to my kid would have been far worse than any damage to my vehicle.

The second bit of not-good-ness happened Sunday/Monday. Sean has been my company/getter of everything I need while I've been ill. He's watched a massive amount of weird TV shows with me. Made many many glasses of something to drink. Fetched everything from my book, to tissues, to my favorite blanket. He started coughing Sunday. At first, I thought it was just his asthma acting up because he forgot to get one of his meds refilled. Yesterday, he woke up with a fever and a headache and a worse cough. Did I mention he gets pneumonia at least as often as I do? Luckily, because I went to the doctor already (oh yeah, the dr. says I have pneumonia, color me surprised!) and because of his history with it, they just went ahead and called his meds in so we don't have to go back. So now we're sickies together. Talk about your quality time...it's a wonder we haven't killed each other yet...

But all of this is small beans compared to what comes next. On Friday night I got a call from my aunt. She said that grandma had been admitted to the hospital because her red blood count was low and they were giving her transfusions. She gave me some values for the count but that was really all she knew. She hadn't been able to get ahold of my folks. So I said I would call them. They were at Hildi's in Ohio. I called and talked to my dad. I said that the values she gave me didn't make sense for your red blood count (I'm familiar with blood count values thanks to Lu's disorder). But my aunt has untreated fibromyalgia and can be a little spacey. My mom called my uncle, but well, mom can be kind of spacey too and all she got out of the conversation was that grandma was in stable condition. The next morning I called my SIL, who's an RN. She said that they must mean her hemoglobin was low and yes, they would transfuse at that value. Now the doctors would have to find out where she was losing the blood from or what was causing the drop. Grandma had been diagnosed with chronic leukemia several months ago and so we thought maybe it had to do with that. My SIL gave me strict orders not to visit the hospital with my pneumonia and if I was running a temp bc my grandma's immunity is shot. So I stayed home.

My folks hightailed it home from Hildi's on Saturday. They said they would be at the hospital on Sunday. I asked them to call me from there and let me know what was up. I was still running a fever. All I got Sunday was a text from my mom saying that grandma looked pretty much the same as she had been and they didn't have any new info. I relaxed. Yesterday, Hildi texted me and asked if I knew where the heck Mom & Dad were. She'd called their house and gotten no answer and they weren't answering their phones. None of that is unusual. I said no, but I was a little miffed that I couldn't get a phone call from them the day before while they were at the hospital. She said she'd requested one as well. She didn't even get the text. We were texting back and forth when she stopped texting. Again, not unusual because she has small children. Then the phone rang and I saw my Dad's cell number. I thought he was calling to check on me. (Selfish, no?) But the tone of my Dad's voice put me on instant alert. They were at the hospital. They'd found tumors in my grandmother's pancreas, gallbladder and liver. She is not a candidate for surgery due to health concerns. They are doing a liver biopsy (needle) today to be absolutely certain, but they are 95% sure the type and aggressiveness of the cancer. The recommendation is hospice care. No prolonging measures. The prognosis is for weeks, maybe months. But the goal is only to make her comfortable and pain free.

This is my mother's mother. My father's mother passed away when I was thirteen. Breast cancer. But my father and mother have been married for 43 years. He loves my grandmother like he did his own. He was in tears. I've only seen my big strong Daddy cry twice. Once, when his mother died. And the night my sister got married. (Of course, he was way drunk then). I cried too. My grandmother and I have been very close. I was the first grandchild. But I immediately asked if he talked to Hildi yet. He had. But she was home alone with the kids, her hubby at work. I called her immediately. She was doing okay. She'd called her hubby and he came home from work. The girls were patting her back and stroking her hair. But she was frantically trying to figure out whether she should come right away or wait. And if she came, how would she manage it. Her oldest daughter can't miss any more school. What would she do with the youngest if she brought her? We figured most of it out, but she's waiting for the needle biopsy results that we'll have on Wednesday to make a final decision. My father implored me to stay home one more day and give my meds time to work. So I won't be going to the hospital until tomorrow.

The only bright spot in all of this, is that my grandma has dementia. She's not really lucid a lot of the time and I have to think this is a blessing. She doesn't comprehend that she's got cancer. She continually asks why she's in the hospital. And so she doesn't know what she's in for. I can't help that think that's a good thing. You can't fear the reaper if you don't know he's coming.

I'm sorry this has been such a downer post. But it's been a downer week...

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