My neighbor with the heart condition died. He was a nice man with a family that loved him. Yes, he was old, but he is still missed. His absence creates a huge hole in the lives of his wife, children, grands, and great grands I'm sure.
Jason's baby niece died. She was born with left-side hypoplastic syndrome, basically the left side of her heart was malformed. The internet says most kids with this condition have a 75% survival rate. She went through 8 surgical, spent her entire life in a intensive care unit, and died. She was a beautiful, happy looking infant.
My dad needs two surgeries. A shoulder surgery and a neural surgery on his neck and spine. The shoulder surgery will happen soon, but he has to wait for the ok from his insurance company and then get it scheduled. He will try to put off the other one, but a crushed vertebra in his neck is causing him to have numbness and loss of function in his hands, I can't see how that's a good thing. He's not a young guy anymore. I don't like to think of him as becoming frail or medically fragile, but it seems to be happening. Bad things can happen during surgery.
And then there is my cousin, Nick. He's a few years younger than me. He and my brothers have always been the terrible threesome, getting each other into trouble since they were in the crib. This morning he was in a horrible car accident. He managed to flip the car end over end at least three times, was ejected. They flew him to Freeman in Joplin mo. He's got broken ribs, brain swelling, a C-1 spinal fracture, and they had to sew his face and scalp back together. Right now he's sedated and on a ventelator. I have a cold feeling that he wont ever get off. But the family will know more when the swelling in his head goes down and when they can get better images of his neck. (A displaced C-1 fracture means he'll be a quadrapalegic for the rest of his life, if he lives).
I've seen the pictures of the car. I want him to live and be fine. He's like a little brother to me. He has a son and he had his issues with drugs and alcohol, but he's got a decent spirit that has always struggled to shine through the issues. I don't want his son to be without a dad and I don't want to bury him, we buried his dad less than a year ago.
But I don't think he'll ever be ok again, and I'm not sure he'd want to be a so severely crippled his whole life. I've been torn all day between waiting to see and packing up the kids and driving to Joplin.
Then there's Noah. He was feverish Friday and I kept him home from school. Figured he has a virus, had him rest all weekend, sent him back Monday even though he still seemed a little off. Monday evening after school he fell asleep playing. This in and of itself isn't unusual for him. He plays hard and conks out. He also has a bad habit of sitting up at night (he inherited it from me) so he ends up tired during the day.
Anyway
When he woke up he was hysterical. Screaming that his leg hurt and he couldn't walk. I carried him downstairs and had him show me what hurt, he pointed to his inner thing near his groin. I though he had a hernia, or a hydrocele, or referred pain from appenticitis. Took him to the emergency room (had to carry him to the car and from the car to the emergency room)
Doctor looked him over, not any of my guesses. He has a cat scratch on the top of his foot that had healed over the top but abcessed internally. This caused swelling and lymphatic fluid retention in his leg, which lead to pain in his groin. He's on high powered antibiotics and I feel like an idiot.
What kind of mom doesn't notice her son has an infected foot? He stayed home today and I had him rest and keep the foot elevated. He napped for several hours and woke up a lot perkier than he has been. Still running a low grade fever though and still not tolerating anything touching his foot. I'm keeping him home again tomorrow, I could probably get away with sending him to school or daycare, but he's not 100% better and I was so off about why he was sick I feel like I need to watch him closer.
So, I count four horrible things. Four. They started distant, the niece I've never met of my boyfriend I don't see often enough, the neighbor I make small talk with over his back fence, my dad in TN, my cousin, my son.
Bad luck? Curse? Over analysis run amok?
I don't have the answer to that. I do know that it wears a person down. I do know that I'm praying hard for my cousin and his family, for my dad and his doctors, for my son, for the baby's parents, for my neighbor's wife and family. But I don't know if my prayers are enough to keep the tragedy away.
And its gotten super cold all of a sudden. I don't know why that seems significant, but it does.
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