Waiting

Waiting

Written Apr 20, 2012 3:02pm by Amber Gannon Medina

It's always gone like this and so surprises don't surprise me anymore. I also have started to consider what some people would call back steps to instead be blessings. If you want to be cynical about it, you could say my bar has been set so low that sometimes its too easy for me to see the silver lining in the clouds.

Mira had been inching along. A few days ago she started to look a lot better. A lot. People even got a little excited. I felt relieved that the urgency to do a cath or even an echo died down because she was looking so much better. Out of the woods.

Then she slept. We chalked it up to being tired from not sleeping for 36 hours. yesterday she slept some more. Today her doctors felt she was too sedated and cold turkey stopped her sedation medication.

It all sounds straightforward but there is a lot of standing outside of bedroom and discussing. Her primary nurse mentioned to me she didn't think she looked quite like herself. I notice that her oxygen sats don't look as good. And of course I chide myself for taking that sigh of relief because it will never be straightforward with Mira, never a linear line. I've found myself knocking on wood everyone I think or say something hopeful about her progress.

John and I have a day. One that we somehow thought about together without discussing it. May 21st. May 21st she will come home? Yes, that's what the day was in our minds. 3 weeks ago we both blurted out we thought we would bring her home then. So maybe we should start a pool, bets....

Days like this come out of nowhere for me. Days like this I feel like a raw piece of meat. Not pretty or very nice. I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind and have little energy to explain myself if what I say comes out too harsh. I find myself pacing and having a difficult time enjoying Mira. Most days I feel like this I wonder if it's a coincidence that I wake up with a migraine and that it doesn't go away. Which causes which-does the migraine cause the rawness or the raw feeling cause the migraine? 

Every once in awhile someone mentions something about doing something (a therapy or medicine they give Mira) and I perk up when I hear them connect it to her going home. I don't know if it's positive thinking in their part or people really do see the light at the end of the tunnel....it's still a strange nether-region to exist in. During her last recuperation everything was leading up to this surgery and that was a different kind of feeling. This one feels like I have to make myself a hare instead of a turtle. Slow and steady wins the race. I am constantly checking my expectations.

Life is still the hospital. Life revolves around hearing good news and bad. Of coming out of a sterile white washed space, only to realize it had been a beautiful day outside. Most of all it involves waiting waiting waiting. Waiting is harder than I imagined.