Hotel Hospital

The drive back to the hospital was very similar to the first drive, except there was more music involved. A song by For King And Country had just become popular and came on the radio shortly after I fired the truck up and got moving back toward Cook Children’s.

It’s Not Over Yet

“They are inside your head
You got a voice that says
You won’t get past this one
You won’t win your freedom

It’s like a constant war
And you want to settle that score
But you’re bruised and beaten
And you feel defeated

This goes out to the heaviest heart

[Chorus:]
Oh, to everyone who’s hit their limit
It’s not over yet
It’s not over ye-et
And even when you think you’re finished
It’s not over yet
It’s not over ye-et

Keep on fighting
Out of the dark
Into the light
It’s not over
Hope is rising
Never give in
Never give up
It’s not over

Yea-et-et, woah
Yea-et-et, woah

Oh, game set match
It’s time to put it in your past, oh
Feel the winter leavin’
It’s redemption season
Long live the young at heart (Here we are)
Cheers to a brand new start (Here we are)
We’re revived and breathing
To live a life of freedom

[Chorus:]
Oh, to everyone who’s hit their limit
It’s not over yet
It’s not over ye-et
And even when you think you’re finished
It’s not over yet
It’s not over ye-et

Life is a race we run
So run till the race is won
Don’t you ever give up (Here we are)
Oh no never give up (Here we are)
Life is a race we run
So run till the race is won
Don’t you ever give up (Here we are)
We will never give up (Here we are)

[Chorus:]
Oh, to everyone who’s hit their limit
And even when you think you’re finished
It’s not over yet
Oh, to everyone who’s hit their limit
It’s not over yet
It’s not over ye-et
And even when you think you’re finished
It’s not over yet
It’s not over ye-et

Keep on fighting
Out of the dark
Into the light
It’s not over
Hope is rising
Never give in
Never give up
It’s not over

Yea-et-et, woah
Yea-et-et, woah
Yea-et-et, woah
Yea-et-et, woah”

It was something I needed to hear, and yes, I did tear up again, something else I needed to do. I later found out the song had been written for the band member’s sister, who is battling Lyme disease, something a good friend of ours is also battling. It’s a good song for expressing both the feeling of loss (and I mean more like the loss you feel after you lose the Superbowl for the 4th time in row, poor Buffalo, and not as much the feeling of loss when you lose someone dear to you) and the feeling of hope that can come from accepting a new path and moving forward on that path . So many things were different now. So many preliminary plans about the next year, about the remainder of the current year. About what I, and My wife, and our daughter, and our newborn son were going to do and accomplish. The travel, the visits to grandparents and great grandparents. All suspect now. And what about all the money I was now missing. I was supposed to work the next month straight…crappy hours for sure, but excellent for the pocketbook and amazing for trying to get out from under student loan and mortgage debt. Gone now, and double gone because instead we were now going to be inundated with medical costs. How about going home, being with the whole family in the same room at the same time. Not today…or tomorrow either.  Where was Maria going to live? With Grandma and Grandpa, sure that was a blessing, but it was without us. She was already super unhappy about the two days she spent without us. What was she in for now…a month…maybe more…What about long term? There would be more surgeries, more hospital. I just felt beat. Like Life had pulled out the monkey wrench from the tool bag and slammed it across my face in an upward arc. I was reeling…so many things were different now.

But it wasn’t over yet, never give up, never give in. We could do this. Yeah, there were a lot of doors that were closing. Let them close, maybe come back to them later when we knew more. For now, give me my daily bread, and let’s do what we can. My son needed my wife and I. My wife needed me. We could do this. Between us and our family and our friends we could deal with these challenges. New life happens, when it happens, accept, deal, and move forward. I know, harder done than said, but ultimately it is what needed to be done. Normal was different now, and different from how we were expecting it to be. But the stuff that mattered, that truly mattered, was still there. My wife and I loved each other, we loved our daughter, we loved our son, our parents loved us, our friends loved us. We loved them. That’s what was important. Come what may, all you need is love.

And I was back. They were still working on Micah and we were still just sitting around the waiting room. We waited. We talked with my wife’s parents about the plan going forward. They were going to keep Maria and the dogs for as long as they needed to, Grandma and Maria would come up to the hospital the next day. Which was good. At least we would be able to see Maria for some amount of time during the day, and the hospital had a playground and other stuff for her to do. I checked Facebook, and was overwhelmed by the loving and prayerful response we had received. I teared up whenever I looked through all the messages of hope and love and support we were getting. We felt, and still feel, very loved.

Then they were done and we were back in the room with our night nurse Dan, who was awesome. Micah was hooked up to a lot of machines, he had a lot of tubes in and out of him, a lot of pumps pumping things, a lot of monitors showing a lot of stuff. Dan took us through all of it, what it all did, how it worked, what was important about it. Every question we asked he answered. It was a good feeling knowing as much as we could about what was happening, made things seem more handle-able. Micah for his part was sedated and doing okay. We spent the rest of the evening in the room with him. I read the bible on my phone and updated Facebook and then the exhaustion hit and my wife and I fell asleep. That first night we tried to share the couch-bed. It didn’t really go well, given my size, but ultimately we got some sleep. And that was our first night of what would become two months in the hospital.