Sappy Stuff

This afternoon I was typing a few e-mails trying to let people know what was going on.  While doing that I heard that Cindy had shown up out of the blue! (at least it was completely unexpected to me - I'm sure I'm going to get some of these details wrong, but I hope I at least get the over-all picture close enough) She teaches at SUU, this week is finals week, and in all the years she's been teaching there she has never given a scan-tron final.  For some reason a few weeks ago, she wrote up a scan-tron final and had her assistant print it up and make all the arrangements.  She was supposed to read a few names at graduation, but she found someone else to do that for her and she showed up at our house!  I'm not entirely sure what prompted her to change the way she did her final this year, but I have a pretty good guess :)

Honestly, I have been overly humbled to watch as all sorts of pieces from a totally random collection of 'pies' all fit together to make things happen these last two days that I never could have imagined happening.  I remember reading my cousin Laurie's blog (razzzberries.blogspot.com) about this same sort of thing, and wondering what that would feel like.  I had never had anything remotely close to an experience like the ones she seemed to describe almost daily, but for the first time I think I am starting to get it.

I have vivid memories of driving down the road with Mark in the car.  He's totally out of it - no clue what's going on, his parents were out of town, my phone was dying and all I could think was 'now what?  I have no one left to call, I am going to have to face this alone - at least for a little while, and maybe for a long while.'  It was a crushing thought to feel so totally alone.  Thankfully, that didn't last too long.  I wasn't given time to dwell on it - I had to focus on driving safely and getting us to the hospital alive and on making sure Mark was ok.

Then came the first call.

Then the second.

Then back-up arrived.  Julibeth has been awesome through this.  She was my lifesaver in so many ways on Monday.  I'm not sure I'll ever be able to express how much having her there meant to me.  She brought me stuff I hadn't even thought about needing, she called everyone so I didn't have to, arranged for Mark to have a blessing, thought of things I wouldn't have considered and overall was basically a perfect person to have there during those early moments.

It wasn't long before I had heard from people I never expected to hear from, and was offered help in more ways and from more people than was possible to accept.  Mark is on the prayer roll of many temples (one of my friends in FL even offered to start calling all the temples she could find online - and then I found out that some of his cousins had been doing that exact thing!  He's could easily be on a few of them several times over).  Much of his family have been fasting for him today, and many, many more than that have been praying for him.

We have had a shocking number of visitors (the nursing staff even commented at how many people we had in his room this afternoon/evening - maybe they'll give us a bigger room for the second half of his stay... :) ).  Family and friends whom I haven't seen in a while, some I've seen just this month, some just this week.  It has been awesome to witness the outpouring of support.



For the first while of all this going on, I was completely unable to process what was happening in any kind of a normal way.  Apparently when most people heard 'growth in the brain' their first reaction was 'that's not good'.  Mine was 'ok... what does that mean?  what do we do next?  what am I dealing with?'  I think some of the beginning reactions were due to shock a little bit - although my complete inability to grasp that what was going on could even be a bad thing makes me wonder if it was shock or denial or something else all together (it is possible shock from the stroke symptoms had kicked in already).  I wasn't shocked by the news.  The news didn't mean anything to me.  Literally, nothing.  It was as if the doctors were telling me that he had a cold and needed to take some decongestants before going to bed - both pieces of news would have had the same effect on me at that point. (well, one would have prompted me to take him home, and this one had me following an ambulance through town to meet him at another hospital... but mentally both were equally good or bad at that point).

I'm sure some people are watching me through this and are shocked that I'm not reacting more.  I've been telling people I'm still in a bit of shock because otherwise they look at me funny, but I'm pretty sure that's not true anymore (it certainly was at first, but I think that has largely worn off).  I am actually making an effort to not think about things that aren't right in front of me.  Speculating about some possible future (any kind of future at all - good or bad) has been something I have tried not to allow myself to think about.  Yet.  I am dealing with the here and now, and that is about as much mental/emotional energy as I have.  I will deal with the future either when the future becomes the present or when the present doesn't take up so much energy and I have some to spare to give to the future again.  Giving over much needed energy to something I have no control over, and can't really do anything to change, only robs the present of the energy I need now.  Once this settles down, I'll probably sit down and have a super good cry (instead of the small bursts that I'm getting now whenever I can't stop the future from sneaking into my thoughts).  But by then, I expect that the future will be clearer and there will be less uncertainty to add to my list of things to cry about. :)