Wow. Alright, take a breath Megan.
Now on a normal day that frantic phone call would have been a kick in the stomach but to really explain just how hard it hit me I would have to tell you about the weeks and months before this phone call.
My son had just turned 7 months old 2 days prior. In those 7 months I had been struggling (and at times, losing) to postpardum depression. It took me months before I even realized my level of depression wasn't alright. The problem is that everyone tells you that your feelings of doubt, of regret, of occasional dislike of your perfect, newborn child are normal. Maybe they are normal, but most people are so quick to tell you they had the same feelings with their kids they don't stop and ask the questions. How suffocating are these feelings? Do you cry everytime you're alone with your child? Maybe the feelings are "normal" (whatever that even means) but I can tell you the frequency and intensity of my feelings weren't alright and it took months of struggling with the thought of "if this so "normal" why can't I handle this?".
In early August I had a wake up call. I won't go into details here, because things are still raw, but I had a moment where my stomach dropped and I realized suddenly that my feelings may be normal, in moderation, but my depression was dangerous and I had to turn things around. I will tell you that I never harmed my son. My problem was with how I was treating myself.
So, recently realized postpartum depression - check.
Then on August 30th my mother in law is in a bicycle accident training for an IronMan competition while my good friend is staying at our house. She has a skull fracture and ends up having brain surgery. My husband, good friend, and infant son move into her house for the weekend to take care of his younger siblings. His mother bounces back quickly and is home early September although she has lots of restrictions on things she can do she's surrounded by love and support from a huge community of friends and family. Some other family drama happens during this time, but it would be rude of me to air that here.
Husband a mess with his family in turmoil? Check.
So all of this is already piled ontop of me when my sister calls to tell me about my mom.
Okay, breathe.
Mom was hit by a car. I call my husband, tell him we may have to drive to Kansas. ( did I mention I'm in Tennessee? Because that's where I live. )
Then my sister calls again, she's being airlifted to a different hospital because her broken bones are more serious than can be handled by that hospital, specifically her pelvis.
Now I know I need to be in KS, like, an hour ago. My husband and I make some frantic calls and Jackson (my 7 month old son) and myself board a flight to Kansas City at 8:40pm the same night it happened. My good friend, who has just been in TN during my mother in law's fiasco picks us up from the airport and drives us straight to the hospital.
My son, Jackson, 7 months old, during his first flight. He didn't fuss once and mostly cuddled up on my lap and slept.
At the hospital there is chaos because they say my mother isn't admitted there, though the original hospital tells us her transfer was confirmed and my father even received a call that she was currently in surgery there! Come to find out, trama patients like my mother, are first admitted under false names incase they were victims of intentional violence. Security eventually let's us into the building and our family sits and waits.
My mother's fake identity on a sticker they used to label her dentures. 113 year old Zac Russiazac.
The air is strange while we wait during her first surgery. My sister had visited me in July but my mother and father haven't seen me since February. There is excitement to see me and especially Jackson, even though the mood is also somber, given the circumstances. We are all in shock and a bit of denial as we wait for news.
Around 1am (I think) we finally hear from the surgeon. Surgery went alright, all they did was clean the compound fracture of her ulna (just under her elbow) and put the bone back inside and closed things with a drain. They haven't fixed the break, the orthopedic surgeon will do that later. They've also put 4 staples in her head.
We get to see her briefly in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. She's heavily drugged and still groggy from anesthesia. She has no idea who I am.
Jackson, my friend, and I go to her house and sleep. My father stays overnight next to her bed.
The next day she opens her eyes once and knows who I am. "Meggie Moo, my baby" is what she calls me. This is the only time I'll get to hear my mother's voice for at least a week.
The next morning she pulls out her IV lines. Slaps a nurse and lands herself intubated and restrained. She's developed pneumonia in her lungs, one of which is collapsed, her white cell count is climbing, and the enzyme they look for in heart attacks is present in her blood.
Surgery is canceled because she's not stable enough.
So far, this is my worst day. The slip backwards is terrifying for all of us. Emotionally I've completely lost it. I spend chunks of the day sitting near a large window I found, talking to my husband on the phone and sobbing. Monday I knew things were bad but the realization my mom really might not make it through this hits me like a brick wall. I had to face it head on, because if I didn't, and she did? I would have been lost. So I spent the day staring straight at my mother's death and come to terms with it.
I've started to stay at the hospital by this point. My family is rotating around my son's care. My sister has him at night and if my sister is coming to the hospital my Grandmother watches him. We all agree this isn't a safe place for him to visit. They do come up and have dinner with me one night. Even with postpardum depression I miss him like crazy.
During our dinner date, I'm so in love with this little man. I had never been away from him for so long.
On Thursday we take a baby step forward. Our white cell count is decreasing, our lung is inflated again, they believe that her pneumonia was caused from aspiration into her lungs during the seizure she had directly after her accident. They decide on a single antibiotic to use and we wait through the day. By evening she's on the surgery schedule for the next day to begin repairs on her pelvis.
Friday is another tense day of waiting at the hospital. It's my parents 33rd wedding anniversary and my father has always given my mom yellow roses, though they're not allowed in the SICU. Instead he buys her fake ones and places them on her bed and sings to her before surgery. We all talk to the surgeon and I wait with her until they wheel her from her room to go back.
Anesthesia nurses wheeling her back for her surgery on Friday 9/12, my parents 33rd wedding anniversary.
My father's flowers - her nurses have made sure they've stayed at her side.
We decide to go have lunch out of the hospital because her surgery would be a minimum of 2 hours. When we get back, I sleep on the waiting room floor. My sister hears that surgery is going well and they have an hour left about two hours in. After awhile the doctor comes out and gives us the news we wanted to hear. Surgery went well. He was able to repair her pelvis with 5 small incisions, she had minimal blood loss, there are now two plates held onto her pelvis with pins, and three screws holding it all together. It's stable though and he's pleased with how it went. We are all hopeful her next surgery will be Monday to begin repairs to her shoulder and elbow, both on her left arm.
Her new pelvis. She's going to love metal detectors after this.
I promise my father I will stay at the hospital until she's extubated and coherent. This is a terrifying promise because I have no idea how long that will take but my family aggrees that I'm the best person to be here for her.
Today is now Saturday, the day after her second surgery and it's been a quiet day. She's still on a ventilator to breath. There are still lots of fractures that need to be fixed in surgery and countless more that will have to heal on their own time. I hear her chest tube may get to come out today and her vital signs have all been good. She is tentatively on the surgery schedule for Monday morning, we just have to see how the weekend goes.
I love my mom and maybe I haven't told her that enough, I guess it doesn't matter now. I want to see her dumb smile and let her see her only grandson so badly. I want to listen to her bitch and complain about being in the hospital, or that rehab is hard. I want to be exhausted in the months to come helping to take care of her while still taking care of my son and helping with my Granny and Father. I realize that inconvience should almost be treasured because it means your loved ones are there to cause it. Things will not be easy but I got my stubborn, pain in the ass attitude from one of my favorite women in the world, my mom.
A bag of blood hung for one of my mom's transfusions, we are both O-.
Her ventilator tubing to help her breathe through her lung infection.
The view from the chair I'm sleeping in. The amount of tubes and wires connected to her is overwhelming at times.
Her restraint is scary but needed because she tries to rip off her IVs and tubing anytime she stirs from her sedation. It's hard to see.
A chest tube, suction from her stomach and lungs, as well as a urinary cathedar are among the tubing attached to her.
An old photo of me and her while my sister was trying on wedding dresses. When I made her Facebook (as I was moving to TN so she could keep up with me and the pictures I post) I used this as her profile picture, she's never changed it. (Probably because she wouldn't have a clue how to, but we will pretend it's because my awesome face is in the pic.)
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