How We Spent Our Summer

 It’s been quite a summer; I’ve meant to write about it since late June, and you can see all the good that intention has accomplished. In mid-June a good friend lost his job in rather spectacular fashion, a week later my mother-in-law suffered a stroke serious enough for the doctor to recommend she stay in a hospital, and then our Edie girl fractured a bone in her foot when she got hit by a truck.

My mother-in-law spent a week or so in the hospital then a couple weeks in a rehab facility, through early July. It might be fair to describe her as an independent spirit. But those weeks in rehab showed a compliant side I hadn’t seen before – she was ready to go along with anything so long as it advanced her goal of getting home.

When we visited she spoke of having to go to appointments all day long, physical therapy,  classes on memory development, nutrition, on and on.  She was tired out but so long as this was her ticket out of there, she was game to keep trying.

At one point I took her for a walk down the hall; she was ready to turn around one door away, and on the way back she had difficulty navigating around some hospital furniture and equipment. She held on to my arm, but was having trouble getting a foot forward. “Move your foot up there,” I suggested. “I’m telling it to, but it won’t go,” she replied, and that gives you a sense of where we’re at.

She is 88, has good days and bad, and has achieved her goal of getting home. Even though she might prefer to spend most of her time watching TV, her health care provider is sending therapists around regularly and they keep her on her toes, or as close thereto as she can get. She’s already shown a preference for the therapists who don’t work her so hard – which is enough to show that her feistiness is coming back.

Which brings me to the next medical emergency. Having her Mom in the hospital was hard on the Missus, I think she was a bit distracted.

Our Ernie boy—ten years old this July—is in the habit of rousting us between 2 and 5 a.m. to relieve himself. (The wee hours, literally.) Edie always goes along for the adventure of a trip outside in the darkness, and around 4 a.m. this June 28th my wife led the two of them downstairs and out the front door.

Unfortunately, Edie sensed something across the street and bolted. Usually, there is no traffic, but this became a horribly unusual morning. I was half-asleep, semi-aware that they had gotten up, but seeking unconsciousness when through the open bedroom window I heard the thud, yelp, and screech of brakes. My first dim thought was that some nighttime creature had been hit, then realized my family wasn’t upstairs with me.

I came fully awake pulling on the bathrobe and flying downstairs—I was fully dreading the worst. I found the Missus at the corner holding onto Edie who was trembling, and the pickup truck had pulled over. In the dark I couldn’t tell how bad she was hit, but I was just grateful she was upright and alive, although clearly aware she couldn’t walk; doubtless stunned and wondering why not.

I carried her to the car as my wife got the keys; once in the car she managed to crawl to a back corner. It was a very surreal predawn, including calling the emergency pet hospital (“drive carefully” they cautioned; good advice) and sitting in a waiting room around the time I should have been getting ready for work.

We could hear the whines and yelps of pets beyond the closed doors; another couple in the cubicle next to us spoke anxiously in a Slavic language, then negotiated cost with the vet staff; they couldn’t afford the full cost.

Luckily, all of Edie’s immediate signs were good—her lungs were clear. Ultrasound showed that she had a tear in her abdominal wall and a blood clot in her bladder; x-rays showed a fractured foot.

The projected cost was between $5,000 and $7,000; until that time we could hear the yelps from beyond the door, at that point I was ready to yelp some myself.

We went home at one point to get ready for work—such an oddly normal activity at a time when we knew our poor dear girl was in a cage in a strange place. When we visited her before going to work, we petted her and told her to be a good girl, to stay, to wait there—she knew those words, at any rate, and I’d like to think she understood that she was to remain and we would return. At any rate, she was in no condition to leave.

On the drive, NPR was broadcasting the news of the Supreme Court’s decision on health care reform.  Good news for the progress of insuring the health of our nation, and yet the tiniest of ironies that we were about to get hit so hard so unexpectedly out of pocket—which was by far the weaker blow our family suffered that morning.

We’re all healing now. Our summer travel plans have been put on hold, but the good news is my mother-in-law is home blaring the volume on her TV again, and our Edie girl is limp/running as well as she can, now with a smaller cast on her foot.