Remember in my last post how I "mentioned" I was going to Hawaii? Well I actually did go, and it was utterly amazing. I climbed muddy rainforest trails, saw the sun rise above the clouds at 10,000 feet on top of a volcano, drove the road to Hana, snorkeled, rested, ate out and ate in, re-met my cousin whom I had last seen when he was 6 months old (he's a grown up now:) took a helicopter ride around two islands some of which are not possible to navigate on foot, etc etc...I could go on and on because it was easily the most beautiful place in the world. I will throw in the fact that 85* and relatively no humidity adds tremendously to my opinion of its beauty. I would post pictures but my computer is completely full and nowhere to upload them to the hard drive so they are trapped in the camera for the moment, right next to the San Francisco ones with the kids..Anyhow as I languished in the sun, Marina was nearly 4 thousand miles away quietly developing a bladder infection, probably from incessant bubble baths that she LOVES so much. The symptoms started out being that she kept wetting her pants, but never complained. So there was the thought process that maybe she was upset that I had left. Finally it was clear that an antibiotic and trip to the doctor was in order. By the time I got home, got back into a routine and life began to rotate around in a circle again, the holiday weekend came this past weekend and it was evident from her high fever that this had all traveled into her kidneys and she was pretty sick. So sick that she was admitted to the hospital on wednesday afternoon this past week. This was one of those really hard journeys if you have to know the truth. It has never crossed my mind that we would be beside this child in any hospital anywhere. But there we were, the same size bed, the same angle on the tv, the same little cars that go by down below, when the world is not the same. The IV pump made the same beep and Marina had the same scared look part of the time she was there. She even had the same hospital pattern little kid gown that is open in the back. Tully went through most of her admission work and her iv placement but it was me who walked into the hospital room after work and realized that her vein had blown and the medicine had infiltrated her hand, blowing it up huge and getting cut off with the hospital band that HAD been a bracelet but was now damming up everything in her purple fat little fingers and HUGE hand. I probably over reacted like a mama bear but it didn't have much longer to go before that was going to turn into the primary problem rather than the secondary....foregoing all my memories of how to win friends and influence the medical staff, I walked in and began releasing that tension of reality meets history...Honestly the hospital was like crossing a forbidden line in the sand. That was then and this is now, and never the two shall meet. But over a simple bladder infection gone amuck, the past and present collided on what I thought was either holy ground or the doorstep to hell. It totally freaked me out. I have not slept for 4 days unless you count minutes rather than hours as sleep. Marina carried the weight of the world in this new environment. She braved 4 separate iv attempts and finally gave up and took the shot in the leg to stop the e-coli that was causing her so much pain. Marina was funny at times and sweet all the time and charming in between those times. Who might that remind me of? It was as if she had been schooled by the champ of all hospital visitors. I will stop here but the similarities between going to the hospital with Marina and going to the hospital with Caylyn were way too similar. I took the night shift and Tully and Evan headed home, Evan bawling because he NEVER gets to stay in the hospital.
We were released yesterday late afternoon and headed home singing our little heads off in the car. Leaving a hospital on a beautiful sunny day just has that effect I suppose especially since Marina was on the edge of too happy since she was released. I was tired and looking forward to going to bed early but Marina's fever was heading back up the Fahrenheit pole again. We fell into bed way later than I meant to and she was tired and restless. At two a.m. she woke up and started to cry a little. Then she began to cry alot. She was crying out something that sounded like Adonai over and over, and she was getting louder and louder, to the point of sobbing for nearly an hour.(Adonai is one of the Jewish names for God but I can't recall the significance of that particular name right now, though I do not think Marina speaks Hebrew you really never know with these kids). My heart was breaking and I was afraid she was still sick. Finally she put her little hands under her chin and balled them up and shook them saying in sign, that she was scared. Then she said SCARED!!! I scooped her so close, hugging her and pleaded with her not to be afraid. I do not know if she was afraid due to a dream or a memory of somewhere she has been before, or just the hospital in general, and I will likely never know. We walked to the living room and the dog was all around her checking on her...so Marina smiled at Kiki and made Kiki lay on the couch with her, and the scared went away. That was at 3:30 am. At 4:30 am the alarm went off for me to go to work. Its a wonder they did not send me home for being a total doofus all day but I got through work and all I know is that I will probably never get any better at the hospital visit thing, even though everyone was amazing at Mary Black Hospital and treated us over the top like royalty. I am going to artificially remove the grey hair from my root system now which grew probably an inch since tuesday as Evan asked 5000 questions in the last 48 hours regarding the difference of where Marina was in the hospital and the hospital where you go to die. Tully too, probably needs a bit of therapy as well, though as usual his hair looks fine. There is no other way to make this clear, it was very very scary, and I do Not want to go through ANY hospital stuff with any of my kids ever again. I love them entirely too much. Entirely. Usually writing in this blog makes me feel better, but maybe I will need a little more time to go past this. Thanks for letting me cyber-yak....and Marina is wonderful today. Evan is great too. God is gracious even when He tests us and I believe everything happens for a reason. I am thankful that He is real and ultimately in control of the whole shebang.
Please pray for everyone effected by 9-11, then and now. I was 6 months pregnant with Caylyn when that happened. Where were you? How has it changed us all? How much has changed in ten years. How very very much.
