It Is What It Is

I know you've heard me use that phrase before...when all the negative stuff is happening to me or the kids...I always say...it is what it is...because it is out-of-my-control and letting it consume me won't change things.

I am smack in the middle of another one of those situations.

Thursday around 2:00AM or so my Elijah was hurt pretty badly. He was where he should not have been doing things he wasn't allowed to do without my knowledge because he was supposed to be under the supervision of the adults of another home. Without going in to all those details I will tell you this...he was riding a motorcycle when he ran into a cable across a driveway. The cable close-lined him (hit his neck) and he slammed back to the ground and fractured his head on something very sharp and pointy.

I received a call from the troopers about his injuries and met him at the hospital. Due to the lack of neurosurgeons in Fairbanks plans were made for him to be medivaced to Anchorage via LifeMed. Of course, I went with him. Homer made sure I had some different shoes, a phone charger and my wallet...all brought to me by our neighbor. Around 5:30 we left the hospital by ambulance, boarded a Lear jet, landed in Anchorage and were at Providence Hospital by 8:00AM.

There were x-rays and MRI's and then the wait for an open operating room. At noon Elijah went in for a 3 hour surgery and at 3:30 I was taken to recovery. He wouldn't wake up for the nurses, but did so with the sound of my voice...enough they let him go back to the room. Naturally, he was wiped out from not sleeping all night and day.

He suffered a pretty major head trauma. The fractured bone was pushing significantly into the brain. The miracle is that when the surgeon pulled the bone out the membrane wasn't ruptured. He dodged that bullet as well as the first one....keeping his head attached in the first place.

Of course, my husband would have been here before he even went into surgery, but I asked him not to. I wanted him to stay and get the house and other children in order. I am a strong woman and deal with stressful situations quite well if I don't have to deal with other people.

It is a little after 11PM on Sunday night. We are 56 hours from surgery and my son has kept me very busy. (Only now did I just learn I could hop on the nurses computer in his room).

I scratch, roll, tuck, cover, hydrate, feed, soothe pretty much non-stop. I had 1.5 hours of sleep Thursday night, 4 hours Friday, none last night and a 2 hour nap today. But enough about me....

Elijah has a long way to go to recovery. He is suffering massive head aches from the swelling, but that swelling should start to go down in another 16 hours or so. He has partial paralysis on his right side (left side brain injury). He can move his right arm, but it feels very heavy. The gross motor skills are shaky and the fine motor skills aren't there. While laying in bed he can lift his right leg up a little and can feel faint touching to the skin, but he has zero movement from the ankle down. When we get him up to stand the right side of his body is a useless weight. The prognosis is unknown as it is too early. We have to manage his pain and wait for the swelling to go down. He has PT come once a day and then throughout the day when I am not tending to all his other needs I work on stretching and moving the "dead" side. It is pretty much full-time around the clock care as he doesn't sleep much with the pain.

I'm going to get this posted and try to get a little sleep. I'll post some updates when I have time. I need to set up mobile blogging in order to post photos so I guess you'll just have to use your imagination. My husband Homer brought my son Nick down today. They got the house situated. Grandma Debbi has the little ones and Emily is with her dad so I could no longer keep him away. We've got a long road ahead of us, but this is what us mom's do...we accept that it is what it is and do what we need to do for the love of our children.