Missing In Action: When it Rains

So, I have been MIA, but I have good reasons.

Family.

For starters, a few weeks ago, Jake's dad wasn't feeling well & long story short - he ended up in the hospital & underwent some test. The test came back showing he had some blockages in his heart.

The doctors are trying to treat it medically with medicine at the moment & my FIL is trying to make some lifestyle changes so that his heart can get better & he can be healthy, which will allow him to stay around longer.

My FIL has no history of heart trouble before this, so you can imagine how crazy it was for me (& Jake, for that matter) to be going through this yet again, merely weeks after losing dad. Still, through it all, I tried to stay focused & not worry until there was reason to do so.

And so, I went into crisis mode & stayed there for awhile until it was safe for me let my guard down. I am so at home in crisis mode, or shall I say - it is a place that feels all too familiar. For now, & hopefully a long time, FIL is doing well, & taking better care of himself.

Then there is Damon. Damon is my brother, 8 years my senior, 2 years Lea's Junior. I know I have never really went in depth about Damon on here before now. I guess this was simply bc I didn't want to just say some stuff about him without giving him & who he was the time & attention he deserved.

Damon is my older brother who has had paranoid schizophrenia since he was a teenager. He lives in one of the few state intuitions that our left in the country & has for going on 18 years or better.

Well, Saturday morning I got a call from my grand mom asking me if I heard from anybody about Damon. When I said no, she then told me that she got a call from a trauma nurse stating that Damon is about to undergo surgery for a badly broken leg.

We are still unsure of what happen & we are trying to piece together the truth from the many different stories we are hearing from multiple sources. All I know for sure is that my brother now has 8 pins in his leg & has an external fixation attached to his leg & is do for at least one more surgery.

This week has been long & tiring... all these weeks have. I feel like lately that is all I'm doing is going from crisis to crisis. People have said to me, when it rains, it pours, which, in all honesty, I'm sick of hearing.

This is just life, & sometimes it happens like this. I just gotta keep going - moving on, moving forward bc if I stop, I may get stuck. And I want to be anything but stuck.

Update: In The Storm

I thought it was about time that I do an update on this entry that I wrote about the current circumstance that my family is in.

My brother, Lea walked away without a scratch really & now days later there is really no pains from the accident. From what I'm being told by others, like my sister-in-law, it is truly a miracle. I am so very thankful that he wasn't hurt.

Dad on the other hand is doing not so good. A little after midnight this morning, he was transferred to another local hospital & will have heart surgery early Friday morning. His internal defibrillator is baffling them, they are not sure why it is malfunctioning, but they want to go in & change it as soon as they can*. Early yesterday, before they knew what they know now there was talk of his discharge. But, upon examination &, they fear that if he goes into heart failure, it will not do it's job, not have enough power, &/or malfunction & it will not restart his heart.

*At least that is what he was told until he called me about an hour ago. Now they don't want to change his defibrillator, but do an ablation, like they did before in August of 2009.

This is so frustrating. I want to know what's going on, first hand. I want to talk to the doctors & nurses & ask questions. Not get my information from an exhausted father, who is needs oxygen, is tired of talking & his heart beating fast. What's frustrating is I am stranded, inside bc there is an insane amount of snow outside. It is a state emergency. Only emergency vehicles allowed on the road. Not loving daughters* who have sick fathers in the hospital. Can you imagine being alone & having to wait for everything? For your love ones to show up? For the doctors to help you. To just feel better?

* Don't forget the added challenge of the battle between power chair & snow & ice.

I also got a call from my mom today. Having a serious case of cabin fever, it seems that yesterday before Round 2 of this blizzard fell upon us, she went out. Upon returning, as she was turning on to her street, she got rear ended by the car behind her that saw her blinker, tried to stop, but slid into the back of her. She is okay for now.

So, that's where I am right now. I'm trying hard not to feel overwhelmed & to just do anything I can, which is basically praying. Sometimes, no matter how much I may want to do more, praying is the only thing I can do.

Finding What Was Lost

The funny thing about loss is no matter how many times it occurs in my life, I never get used to it. There is nothing like loosing someone I deeply love and care about to make me reevaluate my life and look at life with fresh eyes, often more clearly than before.

The sad part is that in order to see things clearly, I must experience pain a deep - life altering way; in such a way that I never see things the same way again. Ever.

Time ticks on slowly and seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days, days turn to night then back to days again. I miss many people...

Lynne my cousin who died of cancer in January of 2008 and Pete, a dear friend of nearly 20 years, who died as result of a heart attack January 5, 2009 mostly. I find myself missing them in different ways at different times, yet it really does not seem that different at all when I think about it. Because when all is stripped away, I still feel the same.

Seems that some people don't like the changes I've made in my life recently. I am more to myself, not spending hours on the computer or phone. I am centered on God, myself and my family - just as it should be. I am no longer putting others first if they are not on that list.

I'm not saying others are not on the list, just that they don't come first. This is a change is one that I needed to make for a long time and looking back, I should have made it a long time ago. I guess you can say it was through loss that I gained - gained deeper understanding, deeper love, deeper meaning in life.

It's as if through loss I have found it... found a better me. The me I was supposed to be all along.