how I feel

I thought I would use my platform today to talk about what happened, and how I feel. I know the family wants to know... I've been getting your messages, just not up to talking on the phone. So.

Thursday, I had just settled in with my Kleenex Price Chopper Tissue and my book and I was getting ready for a long grumpy day on the couch... I was just sitting down when the phone rang. It was Richy's teacher, and he was having a seizure at school.

The thing is, even when you know it might be coming, you're never ready for it.

So I texted Richy while I was putting on real pants and finding shoes and throwing snotty shoeless babies in their carseats... he met us at the school with Daniel, who stayed with the babies. So we went in and he was laying on the gurney with an oxygen mask, paramedics and firemen all around. Really. Firemen? Anyways.

Once the crisis has begun, I am very calm. I feel almost no emotion until several hours after we're "safe". Richy and I joke with the EMTs, make a plan, follow the ambulance to the hospital. At the hospital, he is only breathing 4 times a minute. I absorb this and feel nothing. I just wait. They intubate him and finally we're allowed in... he is unconscious, as always after a seizure... they have him heavily sedated. I wait in the corner and answer stupid questions like do I feel safe in my home and I wait.

I am given a bag of his clothes. The first emotion I feel is a sick sadness that they have cut his blue sweater in half.

Once he's stable, we're transferred up to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. We aren't allowed in for a long time, so we use the computer in the waiting area to update my blog and our twitters and facebooks. I don't answer my phone. I don't know what's happening and I don't have any answers.

Once we get in, he is waking up and we are trying to get them to knock him out one more time before he realizes he's intubated and panics. We're too late. He wakes up while we're standing there and the room floods with nurses trying to hold him down until they can get authorization to take out the breathing tube. He gets one free hand and yanks out the tube in his nose. They are surprised at how strong he is. I'm not. Finally he is extubated and he falls asleep for a minute, then wakes up and cries.

I am sick and sad and almost angry... and helpless.

Once the tube is out, he starts recovering. So we'll fast forward through another day of trying to make sure he's recovering and waiting and waiting until finally we are sick of it and I silence his monitors and unhook him from everything. He scrambles off the bed for the first time since we got there, and wobbles out into the hall to look at the Christmas tree we could see through his window. Evidently, it had been on his mind for a while when he was tethered. We are spotted and all the nurses think it's funny that I cut him loose. They bring the discharge paperwork right over.

Over the weekend, we all tried to recover. Lot of naps and temper tantrums for him, and I cried a few times... when it's all over and you know you dodged another bullet, it can get so heavy.

So, how do I feel now? Frustrated and relieved and a little sad and thankful. Okay. I am okay.