My daughter is a walking miracle. By all rights she should have been dead at least twice over. And she has the scars stretching across her abdomen to prove it.
It’s been six months since her body last tried to die, three months since the last time she was admitted to the hospital, and today she’s one of the top swimmers for her team and a straight A student.
I had a friend ask me how I was doing.
I should be fine. But I’m not. Continue reading “Not Yet—Finding Hope and Trying to Keep It”
One of the best things about gray days is the way colors pop against the gloom.
I think there’s probably a lesson in there somewhere, but this season has been long enough that my brain can’t put it together.
This weekend we brought my girl to the other side of the state to the ER there (after being released from the local kids hospital on Wednesday). They gave us different pain meds that actually work and have given us hope that we might get on top of this thing.
We’ve missed so much about summer already. I have a hard time looking at other people’s pictures of vacations and beaches and road trips.
My girl has been laid up for two summers now. I miss days without pain. I miss exploring with my girl. I miss my kids playing together. I miss our life.
I don’t want to miss any more.
I’m trying. Don’t miss what’s in front of you.
And so I try to take my own advice. If you know anything about me, you know how much I love color, nature in general, and flowers in particular.
I think that’s why I’m so grateful for my window boxes this year. (That’s where the photo is from.) I don’t have to go far to get a breath of classic beauty to give me strength to slog through this season where beauty is anything but pretty.
A little more than 2 weeks ago, I left the hospital with my daughter where she’d nearly died a second time in two months.
Last night we celebrated her 13th birthday with a few of her friends out on Lake Michigan. And I’m in awe, slightly scared, fighting off tears (because that would be “totally embarrassing, mom!”). Continue reading “Restore—Rivers in the Dry Wasteland”
My daughter’s room was entombed in an unnatural twilight. The only light leaked from the monitors hanging from the IV poles and the enormous screen bearing her weak vital signs. Enormous curtains draped the windows, which, instead of revealing the living city, opened to the hallway and the nurses’ station.
Fitting I suppose. Life is a very fragile thing in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit—something to be tucked away and protected, outside the reach of the infection ravaging the limp body of the girl on the bed. This place was no place for a 12-year-old girl who 3 weeks before swam in one of the most elite meets in the state. Continue reading “Healing in the Intensive Care Unit”
I’d gone into the doctor’s office for a persistent irritating rash under my eyes and on my neck. I expected to hear eczema or some other small, albeit annoying, diagnosis.
The doctor walked in, took one look at me and sank to a seat. She paraded through all the diagnosis I’d hoped to hear, but she knocked down each one.
She was so calm it was unnerving. Just like the eye of the hurricane. Continue reading “Diagnosis: When it Isn’t What You Hoped”
Sam climbed the ladder, his sore back muscles protesting each hand hold. It was the last peach tree to trim out and he’d be done. Well, at least for this season.
Down the hill, he could hear Charlotte Anne calling the cow in for the night and groaned at the gathering darkness as if he were Moses and the Almighty himself might just stop the sun in the sky.
Farm chores couldn’t compare to conquering an entire Philistine army. But they were as necessary as drawing breath…least that’s what Pa always said.
Sam hacked at an overlapping limb and corrected himself—would have always said. It’s something Pa would have said. Continue reading “Work: A Short Story”
It’s 3 am. And I’m awake…again. The darkness sits heavy on my chest as the sound of the air flicking on echoes hard.
It’s 3:30 am. And I’m too exhausted to function. My kids will be up in a few short hours. Ready for the day when I’m anything but.
It’s 4 am. And I’m brittle, fragile, pieces chipping off as each minute ticks away. Continue reading “When You’re Desperate and Afraid”
He stood, flanked by metal bars that stretched long in front of him. The sweat of his hands threatened to break his grip, spill him pell-mell onto the floor. This, the first time he’d been out of a chair or bed since the accident, and he was destined to make a fool of himself in front of every single person in the room.
“You can do this, sir.”
Sir. Everyone here called him sir…as if his long ago rank was still settled in stripes on his shoulder. Continue reading “First Steps—A Short Story”
I am, at my core, a storyteller. So it shouldn’t be surprising that I think we all have a story. We all have a family of origin. We all have some blend of disappointments and accomplishments, loves and hates, comforts and discomforts.
It explains why I still sometimes cringe away from someone moving a quick hand and love the smell of orange-spiced tea. It might explain why the sound of moving water comforts or frightens you. Why the smell of cherry pipe smoke makes you smile or spikes your heart rate.
But that mishmash of singularities is only a sliver of who we are right now. Our stories certainly influence, mold, and shape, but we also all have a choice. Continue reading “Backstory, Life, and the Not-So-Bitter End”
For anyone new here or doesn’t follow me on Facebook, my daughter had surgery 2 weeks ago to rebuild the ACL in her knee. We went into surgery expecting her to be able to start walking without crutches 10 days post-surgery.
That all went sideways and she came out with the additional diagnosis of 2 meniscus tears, a brace that made it difficult for her to get out of a chair unassisted, and the news she wouldn’t be able to start therapy until after the 2-week mark.
Well, my girl had her 2-week check-up…and more not-fun news. Because of the tears in her meniscus, she can’t start physical therapy next week or the week after…for another 4 weeks. Which means crutches more time on crutches.
To recap, she injured her knee 2 months ago and we have 4 more weeks before we can start working on getting back to normal. Six weeks. Including the time she spent waiting for surgery, that’s a total of 12 weeks on crutches. Twelve weeks.