ER, RSV, PTSD (aka The Acronym Update)

I think I've discovered another one of my lifestyle cycles. It goes something like this: 

1. Observe life events. Say relatively little about it.
2. Ponder said life events. Say relatively little about it.
3. Find meaning in aforementioned life events. Have WAY too much to say about it.

This doesn't make for very consistent or concise blogging. But hey, at least I acknowledge it? On my Facebook page you'll find a cute video and news article about our arrival back to Utah. I smile every time I think about. What would the human experience be without delightful little moments to discover each other's goodness? My heart finds rest in the goodness I observe in so many of you. 

As for the two weeks before our epic Breeze flight, we were thrilled with Hyrum's almost flawless 2nd infusion. Only one week in the hospital! No brain bleed! No regression of speech, diet, or motor skills! It's a miracle I honestly didn't expect. Michael spent a lot of his hospital time playing bedside volleyball with Hyrum, who was hoisting himself up in the bed and standing on that poofy mattress every chance he got. 

Meanwhile, Emily started coughing. I packed our stuff from the Ronald McDonald House and moved us to my aunt's place. Sunday was Hyrum's discharge day, but instead of being together, Michael took Caleb back to the RMH apartment while I kept Hyrum and Emily at the Daines. We were hoping he wouldn't catch what Emily had? But sure enough, the next morning at 6:00 a.m. Michael was in the ER with Caleb. Another breathing attack, another dose of steroids to keep him alive. That boy's lungs... man, they're messed up. A nurse called later and told me Caleb had RSV and rhino virus. 

Have I mentioned that Caleb already had RSV? That his tiny newborn body turned gray, and we followed him into an ambulance, and then a helicopter, and then through 10 days at Primary Children's hospital while a VDR ventilator shook his tiny lungs free from the mucus that almost killed him? 

Yeah.

It was our first health crisis, and it rocked me. I spent months recovering from post-partum depression and repairing a huge schism in my relationship with God. It was also, however, the birthplace of everything that has helped me survive Hyrum's DIPG. This time, seeing Caleb hacking and wheezing, eyes and nose red and running for a week straight... I felt hounded. Hunted. Not only are we staggering under the weight of Hyrum's terminal cancer, but the RSV beast found us again and struck when we were most vulnerable. 

I felt so very dark.

I've had three *panic attacks* in my life. (Do I know if they even classify as that? Nope. And though the phrase "panic attack" feels rough and unfamiliar in my mouth, I can't decide if it's ignorance, pride, or my minimization of my own experience that would prevent me from calling it that... So I'm just gonna go with it.) One was right after Hyrum's diagnosis. Another was after we left Oklahoma. The third was the night of Caleb's encore RSV. I sat in the bathroom, shaking, fingers tingling, sobbing, struggling to breathe. Michael talked with me on the phone. My aunt and uncle embraced me, sandwiching me between them while I sobbed. I asked my uncle for a priesthood blessing, and as he put his hands on my head I felt like I could breathe again.

But still, the questions. How can I go on if the disasters never cease? What point is there to living if it breaks me every day? I slept, I woke, wiped noses, waiting for some spark again. Two days later, I drove a winding stretch of a forested neighborhood road. (I should describe it, but California forests are perversely indescribable and I know when I'm beat.) The point is: I saw so much beauty and felt so much raw, existential power in that teeming forest scene that it shook my very soul. Faced with so much vibrant living, I remembered how to breathe. The next day, in that forest bend, I knelt and prayed to God. It was a careful, measured prayer, much more pre-vocal wrestle than a spoken offering. 

I can't describe what happened there (again, for lack of words), but when I walked away all of my darkness was dispelled. I was transformed, reborn, made something more than what I'd been. For days, I searched for words that could describe this massive shift. The hopelessness I'd felt- and then that blinding burst of light?  I still feel vaguely mystified, like "What just happened there?" 

I still don't know. But suddenly, I'm lighter than before. I'm hearing things and seeing things I thought I never would. The burden that I've carried since that fateful April 4, each day shrunk down and stored within, is nowhere to be seen. It's like my mind's five million lenses, always vigilant, patrolled the past and peeked ahead, on lookout for disasters and for meaning, purpose, love. Those million mental lenses merged, and now I've only one. One central, current, present lens that sees my life today. Reality, with all its mess, is breathtaking and raw. The past allows my labels, for it has no lips to speak. The future draws my eye, but it is formless, indistinct. Today is so complex that I refused to see it all, until the weight of all those lenses made me dead inside. I can't bear all my past. I can't endure all that might be. 

I can, however, live today. Have I said that before? This time I feel it differently - I finally have the skills. A younger me, on painful days, looked everywhere but there. By now I've learned to answer pain, forgive myself my flaws. I grew beyond my need to be productive all day long. I met a God of moments, one who's with me in it all. He's been with me in sadness. In my anger. In the dark. I think what I am feeling now is trust... I trust today. I trust that I can face it, trust that God will meet me there. I think I can maintain this, too, by waking up with God. "It's in your morning habits", was the whisper that I felt. That's never been my strong suit, but I'm ready now to try.