As an educator, I pride myself on eloquence and clarity. In the case of 2016, clarity takes precedence: this year has sucked ass. Like, big hairy ass, too. I've lost my stepdad to a 5+ year battle with cancer; experienced relationship issues because...y'know, life; lost, found, and lost old friends again...and then shit got real. (Don't you just feel the classy eloquence in my words?!) But the problems of the last two weeks have reinforced something I've always known:
I got a phone call just after 1pm on Friday, August 12. It was my mom, asking that I take her to the ER because she had a nasty case of food poisoning. Hearing - something - in her voice, I went to her right away...even though she told me (in typical fashion) that I could wait until evening to get her. Turns out, I couldn't have waited and, in fact, I should have gone to her sooner. Mom has a rare, impossibly perfect-storm condition of necrotizing fasciitis, or what the media so delicately refers to as "flesh-eating bacteria." The name really isn't accurate, but it's close enough for simplification purposes. Hours later, I left the ER as my mom was taken by helicopter to a hospital specializing in skin and tissue care. Her surgeon very clearly let me know that she might have as much as a 20% chance of survival. My mom; that's my mom he was talking about...
So the past two weeks have been an eternity, a cruel waiting game of moment-to-moment because "we just don't know." This past week has been one of action. My mom had her left foot amputated on Tuesday; the right foot followed on Wednesday. Today came another long-awaited (within two weeks) moment: Mom was taken off the respirator and is now breathing on her own. Oh. Hell. Yeah. My momma is a tough bird.
True, Momma, so very true. You are the toughest...and the best, ever. And despite any other challenges I've encountered in my life, the past two weeks have been the most difficult. But today, with a burst of positivity in self-sufficient breathing, Mom managed to bring us our greatest joy from the last month.
I want to end with a moral, a lesson, a burst of great revelation; I can't do that because I don't have one. None of this makes sense to me. What I do have is a tentative optimism, a cautious hope for the future my family and I have with Mom. One of the best days of this past summer was strolling Hershey Gardens with Gracie and Mom...and I can't wait to wander through with you next summer, my sweet girls.
