Tidings of Comfort and Joy

It's been a painful year, a painful season, a painful holiday. The one thing I can say is that we were blessed with one gift of comfort and joy. Our first baby boy arriving on December first was a timely and much needed blessing in the midst of unending sorrow. As hard a year as 2008 will always be in my memory I am thankful that there was one good thing that arrived. Hopefully 2009 will be full of more joy and less sorrow, though I'll admit I struggle to imagine that. At least I can say thank God for my beautiful, healthy baby boy... and my two beautiful girls.

Doctor Depressing

Today my dad and I had our second meeting with my mom's team of doctors. They come around the ward doing rounds and reports every 2 or 4 weeks depending on the patient. Family members are invited to come and hear the report and then ask any question they wish. It didn't help that I had one day's notice to find someone to watch my three kids, including a four-week old, but to make it worse they were an hour and ten minutes late showing up...thanks for asking us what time we wanted to do this! Why did they bother? The worst part, by far though, is that I walked out of that meeting and out of the hospital wanting to scream, yell and throw things. Their diagnosis and prognosis is increasingly discouraging and while that may be reality and not their fault, they just come across as plain depressing. After a talk with them my mom's situation seems completely hopeless with no chance of anything ever improving. I leave the meetings feeling devoid of happiness, feeling like the weight of despair will never lift. It is one thing to hear these reports second hand, quite another to be one of the people sitting there hearing directly from the doctors. The head doctor even went as far as to say it was unlikely he would be in favor of the experimental treatment that our family has read about as being not widely used, but somewhat successful in treating patients with brain injuries. (FYI hyperbaric chamber...high pressure, high oxygen) Thanks for nixing our suggestion before even researching it...though he did say he would look it up.

Driving home after the meeting this morning, I was completely discouraged. I feel like there is no hope of things ever improving and I wonder at all the people who keep telling me to have hope. Do these people (some of you all) really believe that my mom is going to miraculously wake up, or are they just saying these things to try and encourage me? Am I feeling more hopeless because I'm in the heart of the matter and hearing the discouraging reports or am I just a pessimistic person? I don't know any more. I used to think I was an optimist, but more and more I feel like I'm looking at the glass half empty, at least in this situation. My more balanced view of things used to be expect the worst, but hope for the best. Now I feel like I've forgotten how to hope.

Leaving my baby

Tomorrow I have to leave my 4 week old baby boy with someone other than my husband for the first time. He's my third child so it isn't as hard as it was with the first child, but it's hard in other ways. My mom was always the one to watch the girls when they were very little. There was something very comforting about knowing that if my husband and I both had to be away from our infant that it was my mom who was looking after them. After all, she's my mom and she raised me so I knew she could take care of a baby. The woman I am leaving the baby and the other kids with is a dear, sweet lady and a good friend of my mom's whom I completely trust and have known for many years, but still, it just isn't the same. It should have been my mom...but then if it was my mom I wouldn't be leaving them in the first place since it's for a team meeting with all of mom's doctors. This is just one of those examples of the small aches I experience on a daily basis.

Two months

Yesterday was two months since my mom's accident. Today is the two-month anniversary of the worst day of my life.  Sometimes I ask myself whether it really was the worst day. The timing was certainly terrible, three days after my grandfather passed away and four days before my brother's wedding. I was also 8 months pregnant and stranded in a hotel with two small children in an unfamiliar town several states away from home. Can it get much worse? Probably, but I shudder to think how and would rather not go there. I think the thing that makes it the worst though, beyond the trauma of the actual day, is the long term effects and results of the day. Had the outcome been different, had things turned out better, more positive for the long run, it might not have been as bad as I perceived it to be.

To be perfectly honest I try not to think back on that day. When I first arrived home it helped to talk to a very selective few, to tell my story, to explain what happened. It was part of the healing process for me. Today, however, I don't like to talk about it more than I have to. I prefer to put the story behind me and focus on what I have to do to survive each day now. Putting one foot in front of the other is far more important to my survival than rehashing old wounds. That's why I prefer not to talk about the past details. They can't be changed and having to think or speak about them only dredges up a painful past I can't do anything about. I have to focus on the here and now, and on making a new future. Please don't ask me to tell my story again. I will tell you only when and if I need to do so.

Because you need to know, and I need to tell...

I am starting this blog for a number of reasons. The first is that my mom's page on CarePages allows us to express the facts, but not the emotions behind everything we are experiencing. It is also a page for my mother, not a forum for me to talk about me or my feelings. I need a place to explain how things are for those of us caught up in this firey ordeal, or at the very least for me. People are free to read or not read read this as they choose, but I intend to be completely honest about how I'm feeling and how I'm dealing with everything. I'm also hoping that readers who may also have a relative in a comotose state may be attracted to this site as a means of encouragement and support.