Tag Archives: writing

Chapter 2: I knew

20 Sep

Then…

1.

I’m driving on an unfamiliar road in the middle of the day.  The windows are rolled down, and I can feel the warm summer breeze blowing across my face.  Abruptly, something happens, and I can no longer see where I am going.  Darkness had obscured my vision, and I was suddenly plunged into a black abyss. Terrified, I cried out and tried to pull the car off the road and stop. I can’t see anything, and I panic. I know I will crash the car, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot make my eyes work.

 I am blind.

Suddenly, I’m ripped from sleep, wake up sweaty and breathing heavily.   A dream. Haha! It was a dream!  I wait for my sleepy eyes to adjust to the darkness and realize I can still see. I have not been suddenly struck by blindness.  It was only a dream. Vivid and unshakable, but only a dream.

 Strangely, I would continue to have that dream, off and on throughout the years, as it plagued me. For some reason, I was usually either driving or in some state of peril where I desperately needed my eyes to stay in control. I would always wake up at the last possible second, right before disaster struck before I crashed the car or unintentionally walked off a cliff.

Then, one hot, dry afternoon in May, in the gleaming desert brightness of Las Vegas, my dream merged with my reality.

A few major components separated my dream from my real life. I was not the one suddenly struck by blindness.

 And it was no longer a dream. It had become a nightmare because it happened to my daughter.

My beautiful baby girl Oliana had been born blind.

2.

“I just knew.”

I often heard mothers say, “I just knew he was sick. I just knew she was in trouble,” when talking about their children. I even heard it from my own mother. My mom seemed to know everything about me and what I was doing, sometimes before I even knew. I couldn’t get away with anything.

One story my mom loves to tell is from when I was in high school. My friend and I decided to skip school and go to the mall. This was the very first time I had ever thought about cutting class. It was a cold February morning in Iowa, and my friend had just gotten her driver’s license.

“We should skip school and go to the mall in O town today,” she told me as she lathered cream cheese onto her toasted bagel.

“Skip? Really? The mall?” I wasn’t a fan of the mall and preferred the local Goodwill. My friend, Maria, and I had been best friends for a few years. She had a rebellious streak, just like me. We wanted to fit in, yet tended to color just outside the lines. People often called us “weird” because we preferred 90’s grunge fashion and music. Our tiny Iowa country town was years behind in the latest clothing and music trends. We preferred grandpa’s cardigan-stripped sweaters and too-big, ripped corduroy from the local thrift store.

“I want to get my boyfriend a Valentine’s Day card and a gift from Spencer’s. They have the new Nirvana and Soundgarden posters. Besides, it’s not like we have any shopping options here. Where else would I go?” Maria said.

I couldn’t argue with her about that. In the tiny town we lived in, there wasn’t even a Walmart or Target, but O town was 40 minutes away.

“You don’t think we’ll run into someone we know, do you?” I hesitated. The thought of randomly running into my mother at the mall in the middle of a school day made my throat instantly dry. She would ground me for the rest of the school year, maybe for the rest of high school. My mom was lovely, but she had a zero-tolerance policy for rule breaking. If I was one minute past curfew, there were consequences. She didn’t mess around.

“No way,” Maria chirped back at me. “My mom’s at work at the hospital, and I don’t see your mom hitting up the mall in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. Besides, isn’t she working at her new bank job now?”

“Yeah, she started last week.” Both of my parents were working. I had a better chance of winning the lottery while simultaneously getting struck by lightning than seeing my dad at the mall, but my mom… well, that woman seemed to know my every breath. Even though I knew she was working, she made me nervous.

“Ok. Let’s do it,” I replied. We were driving to a whole different city, and really, what were the chances of getting caught?

Famous. Last. Words.

It turns out, the chances were exactly 100%.

We walked into Spencer’s and were looking at silly gag gifts and laughing at some obscenely inappropriate cards when I looked up and saw… my mom.

My mom just happened to have an urge to go to the mall on a Wednesday afternoon during her workday because she “had a feeling” that I was skipping school. I will repeat that I had NEVER cut class. Never. And I never would again. I didn’t do much for the rest of my sophomore year. I was grounded.

Years later, my mom revealed that she had exaggerated her “Momtuition” just a little. It turns out that what had actually happened was that she had received a call from my school asking her to confirm that I was at a doctor appointment. My friend and I had the brilliant wherewithal to drive to school before first period and turn in “doctor notes” to the office excusing us from class. Why two girls, who were best friends, would have two different doctor appointments on the same day at the same time didn’t seem suspicious to us? Teenagers.

My mom swears that after getting that phone call, she just knew I would be at the mall. Not only that, but she also walked directly to Spencer’s store. I must admit, I’ve always felt that was weird. We could have gone anywhere, so how did she know exactly where I was?

Momtuition, it turns out, it’s a real thing. More than 10 years later, I would discover that for myself. I often heard mothers say, “I just knew he was sick. I just knew she was in trouble,” when talking about their children. I even heard it from my own mother. My mom seemed to know everything about me and what I was doing, sometimes before I even knew. I couldn’t get away with anything.

One story my mom loves to tell is from when I was in high school. My friend and I decided to skip school and go to the mall. This was the very first time I had ever thought about cutting class. It was a cold February morning in Iowa, and my friend had just gotten her driver’s license.

“We should skip school and go to the mall in O town today,” she told me as she lathered cream cheese onto her toasted bagel.

“Skip? Really? The mall?” I wasn’t a fan of the mall and preferred the local Goodwill. My friend, Maria, and I had been best friends for a few years. She had a rebellious streak, just like me. We wanted to fit in, yet tended to color just outside the lines. People often called us “weird” because we preferred 90’s grunge fashion and music. Our tiny Iowa country town was years behind in the latest clothing and music trends. We preferred grandpa’s cardigan-stripped sweaters and too-big, ripped corduroy from the local thrift store.

“I want to get my boyfriend a Valentine’s Day card and a gift from Spencer’s. They have the new Nirvana and Soundgarden posters. Besides, it’s not like we have any shopping options here. Where else would I go?” Maria said.

I couldn’t argue with her about that. In the tiny town we lived in, there wasn’t even a Walmart or Target, but O town was 40 minutes away.

“You don’t think we’ll run into someone we know, do you?” I hesitated. The thought of randomly running into my mother at the mall in the middle of a school day made my throat instantly dry. She would ground me for the rest of the school year, maybe for the rest of high school. My mom was lovely, but she had a zero-tolerance policy for following her rules. If I was one minute past curfew, there were consequences. She didn’t mess around.

“No way,” Maria chirped back at me. “My mom’s at work at the hospital, and I don’t see your mom hitting up the mall in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. Besides, isn’t she working at her new bank job now?”

“Yeah, she started last week.” Both of my parents were working. I had a better chance of winning the lottery while simultaneously getting struck by lightning than seeing my dad at the mall, but my mom… well, that woman seemed to know my every breath. Even though I knew she was working, she made me nervous.

“Ok. Let’s do it,” I replied. We were driving to a whole different city, and really, what were the chances of getting caught?

Famous. Last. Words.

It turns out, the chances were exactly 100%.

We walked into Spencer’s and were looking at silly gag gifts and laughing at some obscenely inappropriate cards when I looked up and saw… my mom.

My mom just happened to have an urge to go to the mall on a Wednesday afternoon during her workday because she “had a feeling” that I was skipping school. I will repeat that I had NEVER cut class. Never. And I never would again. I didn’t do much for the rest of my sophomore year. I was grounded.

Years later, my mom revealed that she had exaggerated her “Momtuition” just a little. It turns out that what had actually happened was that she had received a call from my school asking her to confirm that I was at a doctor’s appointment. My friend and I had the brilliant idea to drive to school before first period and turn in “doctor notes” to the office excusing us from class. Why two girls, who were best friends, would have two different doctor appointments on the same day at the same time didn’t seem suspicious to us? Teenagers.

My mom swears that after getting that phone call, she just knew I would be at the mall. Not only that, but she also walked directly to Spencer’s store. I must admit, I’ve always felt that was weird. We could have gone anywhere, so how did she know exactly where I was?

Momtuition, it turns out, it’s a real thing. More than 10 years later, I would discover that for myself.

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“Something is wrong with Oli.” Part 1: The beginning

10 Feb

It’s been such a long time since I’ve taken the time to sit down and tried to get my thoughts down on a page. So much has changed in the last nine years since I’ve focused on this blog (which, my teenager tells me “Mom, nobody blogs anymore”). And it has certainly changed drastically in the last three months. Three months ago I was living in a world where, although it was chaotic, was very comfortable and predictable. For the most part, I knew where each day would begin and where it would end. On November 22, 2023 that comfortable, predictable life changed forever.

My kids were in Midland, TX visiting their dad for Thanksgiving break. This was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and they had been gone since the previous Friday. At 8:30am that morning I got a phone call from Oli’s dad. “Something is wrong with Oli.” were the first words out of his mouth.

I had just sat down at my computer to start working. Back in 2020 I began working for an Organ Procurement Organization called Texas Organ Sharing Alliance. I was hired as an Organ Recovery Coordinator (ORC) and took care of people and family members of people, who made the incredibly selfless decision to become organ donors. I worked with the donors from the time they were declared brain dead and their organ donation registry went into effect or when families decided to withdraw care on their loved ones and made the decision to give the gift of donation, until we finished in the operating room and the procured organs were on their way to the transplant hospitals and the recipients. Working as an ORC changed my life. The world of organ donation is such a different world and completely different from the type of nursing that I was used to doing. Although we take great care of our donors and they are our main focus as our patients’, we also have other people to think about as we make some difficult decisions on how to manage their care. We also have to think about the potentially eight other people who may receive this person’s organs. It’s also a different side of healthcare. Even though I was working as a nurse in an ICU, I was not an employee of the hospital. I was a member of the hospital’s healthcare team for this person, I was also not, because I was a third party. I got to speak extensively with the families of these patients and really got to know about their experience during this extremely tragic time. I also spoke extensively with the hospital care team and heard a lot about their interpretations of the family dynamics. I say “interpretations” because that’s really all they are. They are viewing that situation through their doctor and nurse lenses, not as a friend or family or confidant, but strictly though the eyes of a professional. I did not know how cloudy those lenses can be. Working as an ORC I got to see the vast discrepancies in these family members experiences and how they are viewed by the healthcare team. What a doctor or nurse may view as controlling, bossy and unreasonable, can really just be a family member who is just trying to manage the situation and juggle all of the healthcare balls that are up in the air of a person lying in an ICU. Trust me, I learned that there are many, many balls to juggle. (I will explain more in detail later.) Although I had all of these past experiences from working as an ORC, on that day, November 22, 2023, I still was not fully prepared to juggle them with the grace and confidence that would be required.

So on that morning I was sitting at my computer on a Teams meeting. I had transitioned out of being an organ recovery coordinator and began working remotely in the quality department about 2 years ago when my mom fell and broke her hip. The fact that I was not working onsite, in the hospital as a nurse full time, was such a blessing. Two years ago when I had to leave the ORC role, I was so disappointed and sad. I loved working as a coordinator. It was fun and so rewarding and I worked with such a great group of people. Little did I know then, this role change would save me. I believe that God puts us in the exact spot that we need to be in and when we need to be there. If I had not had a remote job, if I had not had that job for the length of time that I did, if I did not have the experience that I did, I would not have been able to do what needed to be done for the following months after that Thanksgiving morning.

This was my last picture of Oli before Thanksgiving. Pictured from left to right: Ginger (Oli’s little, not so little anymore, sister), Oli, and Me.

“Something is wrong with Oli”. Although looking back at it now with the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, I want to tell you that my stomach immediately dropped and I just instinctively knew that it was something very, very wrong. That’s not what happened.

“Does she have a sore throat? Ginger and Keely just got over a virus where their throats were really sore.” was my initial response.

He said he didn’t know but he thought it might be serious. Her dad told me that she had not been eating the last two days and had been making strange movements with her mouth. She also had not slept at all the night before and had lain awake, periodically yelling in her bed. He also felt like she was breathing really fast and her heart rate and blood pressure were high. He wanted to know if I thought he should take her to the ER. The ER? I was still confused and didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation. I still just thought we were dealing with some kind of virus and sore throat. Why would her blood pressure and heart rate be high? Was their machine broken? Alarm bells still were not going off. I think it’s probably a reaction that a lot of people would have with a 16 year old child who never had any serious health problems. However, I still feel shame when I think of that moment.

I should have known.

Oli and I have such an incredible connection. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, even when I can’t audibly hear her on the baby monitor, and go downstairs to find her lying awake. It’s like I just know when she needs something. This connection would serve us well in the following months, but I did not seem to be able to tap into this super power on that particular morning.

She’s breathing fast?

“Facetime me so I can look at her breathing” I told him.

We started the video and finally the alarm bells began to ring. She looked horrible. Her color was off and she looked like she was barely conscious.

“Lift up her shirt. I want to see her breathing” I demanded.

When he lifted up her shirt those alarm bells turned into blaring, deafening sirens. Her stomach was absolutely huge. It was way bigger than I’ve ever seen it. Oli does suffer from constipation so I thought maybe she was just having a bad case of constipation. Although it shouldn’t cause the color change. And why did she look so bad, like she couldn’t stay awake? Maybe she was just finally drifting off after being awake for 24hrs. The questions were spinning through my mind followed up swiftly by logical explanations. This couldn’t be serious. Oli’s so healthy. I’m sure there is an easy, non emergency explanation for what is happening here. Serious stuff doesn’t happen to my girl. She’s invincible. I was not panicking. She was going to be fine.

“Yes. I think you should go to the ER. Just to be safe.” 

He hurriedly ended the call, telling me that he would call me as soon as he had any news. He had a way more clear and serious grasp of the situation in that moment.

This is the next picture I would see of my indestructible girl.

To be continued….

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