Invincible

I'm just going to warn you. This is the world's longest post. Sorry . . . I had a lot to say.

This weekend Jerry and I loaded up our 5 kids and drove to Boise, ID for a family reunion. (Hopefully I'll get some pictures posted eventually) We had a such a great time hanging out with all the cousins and Aunts and Uncles, and OF COURSE, with Nana and Papa. We spent two days in Boise at Boyd and Becky Ann's house and then on Saturday we drove down to Pocatello for a big Preston Family Reunion, then we ended up at Grandma Kent's house in Acequia ID for Saturday night. Crazy amount of driving and very busy, but we had so much fun!! Then, Sunday morning rolled around and the reunion was over. We all got up and some of the families got ready for church while the rest of us got ready for our various drives home. Sad to leave family when you only get to see them once a year or every other year or sometimes not for three years at a time. But, life at home was beckoning and we still had an 11 hour drive with five kids. So, reluctantly we hugged everyone goodbye and loaded up the kids. (Turns out the drive took us 15 1/2 hours start to finish and we didn't actually pull into our driveway until after midnight, but that's a story for another post).

A few hours into our drive we make our first stop and I realize that I have several missed calls on my cell phone (crummy cell service out in the wilds of Idaho/Nevada)from both my brothers and my mom. Dad hadn't been feeling too well over the course of the reunion, several weeks ago he fell from a horse and got a bad concussion and he was still having bad headaches and feeling very crummy. Evidently Sunday morning, after we had left, he continued to feel worse and worse until finally everyone started to get pretty worried. And, as my family is driving further away . . . oblivious to what's happening behind us, my brothers and mom decide it's time to drag a very reluctant dad into the ER. When he got there they determined that the problem was a subdural hematoma -- basically bleeding on the brain (evidently you're not supposed to jump and wrestle on the trampoline with your grandkids that soon after having a concussion). So, they determined that he needed to be life-flighted to Boise to a neural surgeon to have the excess fluid drained from his brain. By the time I finally saw all the missed calls and picked up my messages, Dad was already in Boise, Mom and Boyd were driving together and only about 45 minutes from Boise themselves, and Bryan, Curt, Becky Ann and the rest of their families were headed back to Boise too. And we were several hours away heading the WRONG direction.

When I was young it seemed like my parents were invincible. Nothing could hurt them or scare them. There was nothing they couldn't do, no problem they couldn't fix. Especially my dad . . . he could, after all, build tall buildings with his bare hands.

Then I got a little older and realized that my parents were just like everyone else -- in theory at least. In my brain I understand that they won't live forever, but it really hadn't occured to me that they might ever die, or get really sick, or even be disabled. Especially not Dad. He is over 60 years old, but he can still ride a horse all day, out-run, out-wrestle, and out-think his teenaged foster kids, and build a house from the ground-up. He's in amazing shape physically and mentally, and I've always been pretty sure he would outlive us all. And when Mom told me he'd been life-flighted and would have to have surgery my heart just stopped. Suddenly Dad isn't invincible anymore. He is painfully, obviously mortal and utterly fragile. I spent the next several hours of the drive trying to decide if we should just turn around and drive back, or if we should stop at the Reno airport and I would just fly back, and then when we passed Reno, there was still the Sacramento airport, and I could still fly out if I needed to. I wanted so badly to be there, to give my dad a big hug before the surgery, to hold my mom's hand and hear my practical, no-nonsense brother's explaining why I was overreacting and there was nothing to worry about, just to be surrounded by my family while we worried and waited together. Instead, we just kept on driving. Too far away to make it back in time for the surgery--we knew the only thing to do was keep driving and wait for the news. It took hours. Hours of waiting before they even began the surgery, then another very tense hour of waiting during the surgery. His heart rate and blood pressure were not looking very good by the time they finally started the surgery and we were all just plain scared. I just kept imagining all the worst scenarios--death, disability, lost mental capacity and on and on.

The surgery went well. They had to shave the whole back half of his head (very hard on Dad I'm sure since he has always been slightly vain about his perfectly combed, thick, black hair). But, they were able to drain two blood clots and put in two shunts to continue to releive pressure from his brain. And now, after a very rough couple of days they removed the shunts and dad and mom are on their way home to The Dalles now. Dad is back to his usual self. He is talking and joking and being stubborn and difficult. He still has a blood clot in the brain, but the doctor seems to think his body will take care of that within the month without surgery (if it doesn't, then he will have to go back in for a more invasive surgery to remove the last blood clot). But, overall very good news. He is alive . . . and well . . . and on his way back home!

Mentally, I know that's great news, and I'm celebrating, but emotionally I'm feeling very fragile and unsteady. I just wish I could have been there. I wish it had never happened. I wish I could go back to two days ago when I didn't ever have to worry about my parents because in my heart I still believed they were going to live forever.