So, my blog has been on hold. It wasn’t intentional. I had asked my sweet husband if he would write for a while. I had gotten us to the point of the morning of surgery…it seemed like a good time for him to take over. After all, I sort of kind of wasn’t there. But he was.
I then said to my friend Caren (who by the way, did NOT like my description of her as a pit bull in a Chihuahua size body –they are her two least favorite types of dogs!) if she would write about our time together in the hospital. Caren ran the night shift for me. God love her.
However, Will hasn’t written as of yet, which holds Caren up, which holds me up. Not terribly efficient but in the name of “it’s deeply personal, emotional and I am a little hesitant…and I don’t write the way you do”… of course I cut him some slack. Plus, it’s hard. My husband is a beautiful writer. I have amazing cards, notes and letters accumulated over our 15 years together. Many of our friends are recipients of his lovely thank you notes. He is a gifted writer. But he is intensely private. To say this was pushing him out of his comfort zone is the understatement of the year.
So I am writing now without knowing what Will wrote or will write, or Caren…but I need to get a movin’ on this blog. So I am planning my next few entries to get the train back on track so to speak. My mom and dad would say, “Proper planning and practice prevents piss poor performance”. So I am doing my planning. It’s all about prevention!
Speaking of planning and prevention of my entire life being shut down temporarily as I recovered… that would have been impossible.
I am home from surgery. My friends were taking over – quite literally.
Command Central was Julie’s house…with about 20 women ready to go. Alicia, who is the most spectacular spreadsheet creator I have ever met, had my life planned out on paper.
None of us knew what I would need. I wasn’t invited to the meeting. All I know is if the ship is ever going down…grab these ladies and they will set the sail straight. They had plans for people to make my kids lunch, then send it home with another mom who would empty it and make the new fresh lunch for the following day…and so on and so forth. I mean, it was insane. Insanely amazing. They are all amazing. I can’t repeat it here but I think my sister in law brought the house down at the end of the meeting. Sylvia. She is a funny woman. It’s amazing when a friend since college becomes your sister in law. Little gets by her. She knows my past and she definitely knows my present.
There was a whole host of other friends, whom already have kids graduated from college and living in the real world. Experience, wisdom, unconditional support and love. They surrounded me, visited me, sat quietly with me…and not a day went bye that they asked “can we take the kids for you”.
So after all these women using their precious time to help, to “be the village for my kids and my husband”…we didn’t need it. We did, and we do, but not to the extent any of us believed. How the heck was this possible?
I admit, I hardly remember leaving the hospital and I hardly remember the first few days after I got home. I remember my mom remarking “the day I came back” -she said, “Bethie…we were afraid you had a stroke!” No stroke. Just coming down from the surgery, the drugs, the pain etc.… Took a few days after I returned home.
I felt pretty darn good within a week. I wouldn’t say NORMAL…but way better than I, or anyone else ever expected. I looked normal. That helped. No shaved head…just a massive scar with staples across my head.
What did make me crazy was the popping in my head. I asked the doctor night two what was going on. No one mentioned that inside my head post surgery, that I would hear these weird pops. Pouring milk over Rice Krispies was the sound I heard nonstop for days. Snap, Crackle Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop…it would not stop it. I could not quiet it. There was no pattern; some pops were louder than the others.
I could not predict the intensity or find a way to stop it. I would bob my head to one side to see if I could move it around in the hopes that perhaps it would dump out from one end and stop. About four days after surgery the popping stopped. My doctor said that the popping was in fact, still going on. However, my brain had absorbed the noise into its own ecosystem so I could no longer decipher and hear its presence.
The brain is absolutely remarkable.
About those bells. I used the bell a few times PURELY because my kids were so excited about the bell. So in reality it was used for hugs and cuddles, kisses and telling me about their day.
PROPER PLANNING
So my surgery took place two days before my kid’s school went on Spring Break. The timing was perfect. I would recover with fewer friends and well-wishers wanting to come to say hello. (Yes, this is a ridiculously embarrassing “nice problem” to have). But I needed for my kids to have something to do, as most of their friends would be gone.
Enter Kate. Kate was our Friday babysitter once our nanny Sue (more about her later…just lets say – I love her, she was at my wedding, she was at my dads funeral, she has always been there for me), started to work for two additional families since I didn’t require assistance during the day. So Kate became a really sweet, wonderful addition to our family. We all love Kate.
Kate is this amazing, athletic, beautiful, kind and compassionate young woman, wise and gracious beyond her years. She graduated from the most prestigious school in Seattle…. and she didn’t go to school her entire last semester due to a concussion. Yet she still graduated, and got into a big time IVY league school –Princeton, early admission. She knew where she was going to college by December of 2016.
However, Kate suffered from a horrible concussion, or series of them and was not able to start college in August of 2017. HUGE upset.
So, Kate was available whenever we needed her. She was taking a year off to heal her brain. She is a force. And she was our Girl Friday. Amazing. My kids loved her enthusiasm, her creativity, her ability to find the very very best hiding spaces in our house during a game of Hide and Go Seek.
So planning. We planned to have Kate at our house, every day…from 10am until 2pm to play with the kids during their Spring Break. To take them on an adventure…the zoo, the museums, crazy parks they had never been too…it was amazing. She created a week that was so special my kids had no idea what was going on. What was going on was Mom needing to rest, needing quiet, and needing to let her brain heal. But what Mom and Dad didn’t want was to have the kids be scared or nervous or think something wasn’t right. So I, along with my husband and mom, were all up with the kids until Kate arrived…and then I headed back upstairs until 3pm…she was done usually at 2pm…but that was what Nana was for. She then had my kids for an hour for cuddles, snack time and watching a show together.
Our psychiatrist who was helping us with the planning said it was very important for the kids to be able to see me everyday. Don’t send them away with friends…don’t have your husband take them on a trip. They need to see with their own eyes, that their mommy is okay. Every day. And then you need to distract them.
This was the plan and I think we did a really good job. Kids were with us for slow to rise mornings, no fire drills to get ready for school. Breakfast was leisurely and it was just the five of us – my mom and my own family. It was lovely. Then “fun Kate” would arrive at 10 to whisk them off together. No other kids. Just the two of them. That was really important as well. Do they get what has happened? Sally had been reticent to go to the hospital…she was scared. Now I was home. They saw me…but we knew they were scared…we all were. It was sort of a very intimate and sacred time. I needed them to know that if they wanted to talk about it…they could without any fear –because no one else was with them other than Kate. And we trusted that anything Kate would say to our kids, given how delicate the situation, would be spot on.
Now that is a luxury beyond anything I could imagine.
Why Not Me 