To the Edge of the Woods

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There is nothing like a crisis for making social media meaningful.

I mean, day in and day out, it’s just an information clearinghouse and news board. Then something huge happens and reading each and everyone’s comment of love and support means the world to me, when all I want to do is crawl into a hole and wake up with this all having been one horrible nightmare.

Dana had another surgery

They worked on patching up his innards, and fixing up his femur. The latter was infected and the former was probably causing his sepsis. So with both fixed, he should hopefully be out of the woods. Fingers crossed and laced in prayer.

I keep thinking we’re in Canada.

The hospital staff are so polite and friendly, it’s virtually un-American. I mean, everyone in this place is ridiculously nice. Example: I only had a large bill to pay for our lunch at the cafeteria – they didn’t have change, so the janitor paid for our lunch.

Then – my huge stroller was hogging up the aisle and an orderly wanted by and said “excuse me, I’m sorry” so many times, you would have thought he was the one inconvenience me. I was shocked.

There’s a level of kindness here that I have never experienced before in a hospital. It’s laughable comparing their sweet mottos and little slogan-signs of human-kindness (“being kind is good for you!”) with Oakland Kaiser’s “get well or die fast” vibe. I’m infinitely glad that Dana got this end of the stick. And infinitely glad that, by extension, we all did too.

I have never experienced the ICU before.

Despite the fact that Moxie and I both have disabilities, we are perfectly healthy and always have been (knock on wood). The rhythm of it is foreign to me, and the sway of emotions unfamiliar. The day begins with fresh shock – ‘oh shit, this is NOT a dream…’ and seeing Dana and the absolute sorrow over his pain, and over this stupid, senseless horrific event that will certainly change his life.

By the end of the day, peace is made with it all – and every tiny up-swing in his healing is celebrated and blown up until we all feel like everything is going to be just fine. We go to sleep. And wake up, and it all begins again.

 

You’d think my Mom would have dissolved over this. She lost both of her parents only months ago.

But she has risen to it like good cream in a cup of milk. She’s camping out in the waiting room and developing iron in her knees from kneeling on them in prayer. We are all so grateful to her, and to Yu Han, Dana’s eldest daughter.

Yu Han has taken over all of the phone calls, the nitty-gritty management of the details of insurance, of payments, of “regular life” that kind of rake over your brain and make your pores scream. And she’s doing all of this with her heart in agony over Dana lying in the ICU, working through his walk to the edge of the woods.

I have so much admiration for her.

The kids are still champs.

Oh sure, Moxie still does stuff like she did last night, where she takes off running while laughing hysterically at my scrambles to find her while paying for the wipes at the CVS register (because I’m trying to clean the ‘fix a flat’ explosion in the car from the 108 degree heat here). And sure, the kids seem to time their bathroom visits to where they stagger each other because I wasn’t really paying attention the first time around (and made them all go at the same time!), so I end up escorting them to the bathroom roughly 5 million times a day. And sure there have been some tantrums and Mack still takes about half an hour to decide on what he needs to wear every day (and is a total drama queen over each fold that I did not make over his pants or shirt), BUT OVERALL, the kids have been champs!

That’s the news for today. Over and out.

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