This is my second go at this post. I started recounting the events of the last few weeks but I changed my mind. Too much PTSD. But I will tell you this, the physical pain was so bad, I wanted to die.
I’ve tried over and over to make sense of it. How can our health care system be this screwed up that they (meaning Covenant ER) miss something SO major like me being septic. 8 hours post-op, coming in on the ambulance (and don’t get me even remotely started on on the EMS guy telling me I was having a panic attack) and you make me wait in the lobby screaming in pain for 8 more hours till I pass out from the pain. But I’m past that now I suppose. I’ll never go there again. I’ll forever trust UMC after 7 seizures, and their teams immediately taking care of me. That I can make sense of.
After years of having severe headaches and multiple surgeries for various reasons, nothing has compared to this experience. I made it out though. I’m back at work. My stomach looks like a roadmap but hey, I’m here. Am I pain free? No. All of that will get better. I did beat my personal best at not shampooing my hair 😂…12 days. Probably because the entire time I was Covenant no one offered to help me shower and I was to weak to even ask (then went home only to go back to the ER to be told to go home and wait it out, then the seizures started). I truly felt like Marie Antoinette at that point, there had to be a nest, a ship, a bird in my hair or something. Gross. Thank you UMC for telling me I stink. Just kidding.
“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.”
~Joan Didion
When I made it home that Thursday, it was the day after the terrible storm in Levelland. We live on the South side so we didn’t get it as bad as the North. That Friday morning I walked into the backyard not thinking, and looked at the Magnolia tree. I cried. You are probably scoffing at me for that, sheesh, people lost so much more than a damn tree. Well let me explain.
First, I hate summer. In particular July. But when summer rolls around I KNOW July 26th is coming and that means another year he will be gone. Another year he will still be 16 and I will be another year older. But this Magnolia tree blooms the most beautiful white flowers starting in May that smell so sweet. When we first moved in 5 years ago, she was tiny and wasn’t watered as she should have been. So we started to love her. She grew and grew and began to flourish. I named her Willoby. I gripe at her during her shedding stage because she likes to make a mess with her leaves. But she is ALWAYS alive and green. You would think we lived in North Carolina, not West Texas. This tree makes my backyard so gorgeous along with my daylillys, iris’s and calla lillies. I’m amazed at it’s beauty.
Back to me crying. The tree. She was hurt. So damaged. Every piece of Willoby was hit with hail. Then as I examined her closer I saw a bloom. Still trying to open up. I cried some more. This tree is so strong. All I could think about was Zane. Most of her leaves were either on the ground or still on the tree but tore up. Except a few blooms.
This is a reminder, that no matter the disaster, something beautiful is lurking. You just have to look. Things get injured but deep down, they’re still there. They might not be the same ever again but they can still be loved.
July 26th 