13 September 2010
Part of the reason it’s taken me a few days to write this post is because it’s really long, but I thought it would provide an interesting perspective on the entire experience. It’s also very personal to me and deeply moves me as well to remember — and relive — these moments. Those of you who have stayed in the hospital due to traumatic injury will certainly relate, but I write this more for those of you who haven’t been in the situation before to help you better understand just how taxing and tedious it can be.
I was in the car a few days back with my mom, who completely without provocation started telling me her point of view on my hospitalization (I had brought up an old position I’d held the summer of 2003). It was moving for me to hear her take on the entire experience, and I thought it would provide some insight to everyone on how disability acquisition and traumatic injury can affect family members.
So I’m putting into English the words she said to me that day (and where more detail is required, added that, too). Eventually her story leads into my own words as well, to emphasize certain points, but I think it’s really important to get the gist of how a mother’s heart will break and go out to her daughter in time of severe crisis. There is nothing more beautiful than a mother’s love for her child, and I hope I’ve done it justice here.
Whenever Pamela mentions the summer job she had in 2003, I get upset. I remember she was constantly booked up with appointments (she was an independent contractor), and on the night of 6 July, 2003, we had stayed up late into the night talking, even though she had to wake up early the next morning to attend a work conference. I was so impressed with the way she was growing and maturing that our talk just went on into the wee hours of morning.
Then, on 7 July, around one in the afternoon, I got a call at my office from my husband telling me Pamela had been taken to South Suburban hospital and was unconscious. I felt instantly guilty because I thought it had to have been due to exhaustion — and caused by the sleep deprivation I’d been partly guilty of the previous night. Of course, since she’d always been healthy with no medical problems in the past, I wasn’t too worried.
At about three, I received another call from my husband, who was on the road. Our daughter had been transferred to the University of Chicago Hospitals, and apparently was on her way to the operating room!
How did passing out from sleep deprivation turn into a hospital transfer and surgery? My husband had no answers. Of course by this point I was too distracted to focus on my office work, and one of my kind coworkers told me I should take the rest of the day off, that she knew the way to the hospital and would drive me since it wouldn’t be safe for me to drive myself in such a worried state.
