Looking back

I was looking back at the last year or two and realized that I had been blogging for a good amount of time. I remember when I was first going to start blogging, I was nervous and didn’t know what to do and wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. Then my sister got sick and I didn’t post much at all because I was completely wrapped up in her care. I found that when I couldn’t talk about her condition to people, I could write it down. I never wrote much about it on the blog though… just a little. I would post notices outside my office at work about her progress.

That was a wild time for me. I was working full time and going to the hospital at least three times a day, every day. She had gotten sick and didn’t call me and let me know that she was going to go to the hospital. After she went to the emergency room, she crashed. Her roommate called me to let me know that she was in bad shape – a DAY LATER! She almost died and I didn’t even know she was in the hospital until more than a day later. One of her lungs had collapsed, her heart stopped and she had gone into a coma. I went to the hospital immediately and waited to talk to a doctor.

That whole time frame is a blur, but I think it was a Saturday morning.

I remember they wouldn’t tell me anything positive. Everything they said was “if she makes it till tomorrow…” or “if we see some response…”. They asked about who would make her medical decisions. I knew she wouldn’t want our father making those decisions, we had talked about it in the past. It took a lot of time and searching, but I went through some of her binders and finally found her ‘medical directive’. She has never had good health, so this is something she had thought about. I gave that to the hospital staff.

But it was such a punch in the stomach every time I talked to a doctor. They were NEVER positive.

I remember the doctor saying at one point “When it becomes time to make the decision of stopping treatment…”. Not “IF”, but “When”. You know how you can be in a blur of emotion and trauma and you will hear specific things? That was one of those things for me.

Everyday was more bad news.
Every single day.

In the first few weeks, there was not ONE time that I was told good news.

She had double pneumonia.

She cannot breathe on her own.

One of her lungs has collapsed.

The other lung has collapsed.

One tube in each lung isn’t enough, we have to have more. At one point she had five tubes in her lungs, three in one side and two in the other.

She had to have a tracheostomy because they couldn’t keep the tube in her mouth for her breathing.

She had to be fed through a tube.

When she wasn’t severely medicated, they had to medicate her so she wouldn’t thrash and hurt herself or the tubing that was in place.

When she started to come out of the coma, they had to medically induce a coma in order to keep her still.

They had to tie her down to the bed anyway.

I would get phone calls in the middle of the night that she had crashed again.

Then she got another infection. The pneumonia had progressed to a deeper infection.

Then she got a staph infection as well. This infection started to spread through her body.

Her blood became septic, and her organs began to shut down.

The doctors told me to prepare myself, now it was only a matter of time.

I would still go everyday before work, at lunch and after work to see her. I would talk to her and brush her hair. I would sing to her and put her hair up so that she wouldn’t get any bald spots. I would massage her limbs and rearrange how she was laying so that she wouldn’t get bed sores and her circulation would stay ok. I would pray and just hold her hand. I would watch all the monitors and wonder what her mind was going through. I could tell after a while which nurses she liked and which ones she didn’t by the patterns of her machines.

I would beg her to wake up and talk to me.
I would beg God to make her well.

I would drive home at night and fall into bed.

Navy wife was living with us at the time with Sea Tot and when I got to see them – (if the baby was still awake) that made it all bearable. I knew that Navy wife was making sure that everyone at home got fed. I knew that she was there for Betty Boop. The Big Texan never fussed at me. He supported me and made sure that I ate and slept.

I didn’t go to church during that time – I went to the hospital. I didn’t even knit during that time. I would carry it with me, but I wouldn’t knit. Then when she got MRSA, I had to suit up every time I went in her room and I couldn’t bring in my knitting.

I still had to work and I had to go on business trips. The Big Texan would PROMISE me that he would go by the hospital and see her. I would land at the airport and immediately drive to the hospital to check on her. I would only stay a short time, but I HAD to go by.

One night she crashed again and they told me the next morning that even IF she ever woke up, she probably wouldn’t have all her brain function, but they couldn’t say for sure. They weren’t sure how long her brain had been without measurable oxygen and they didn’t know if she would be normal or not. They didn’t know if she would be able to care for herself.

They painted a very bleak picture. Everyday I would walk into her hospital room and see her attached to all those machines and she her so helpless and fragile.

Everyday I got bad news from the doctors.

Every single day.


Then one day, I didn’t get bad news. There was no good news, but there was NO BAD news! I was elated.


It seems silly now, but I was so happy to have a day that there was NO BAD news. It was the first day that there wasn’t a new infection or a problem with some tubing or an allergic reaction to a medication or SOMETHING.

For me, I took it as a positive step. I took it as she was stabilizing. She was getting better because she WASN’T getting worse. She went more than two days with NO BAD news. Then three.

Then the real miracle happened.

She began to get better. She was still hooked up to a trillion machines and she was still in a coma, but her body was healing. The doctors were able to remove a drainage tube from her lung, then another, then another. I remember one day I walked into the room and got very frightened because one of the machines that her lung tube was hooked up to wasn’t working and I ran for a nurse! They came in and showed me – it was ok, it wasn’t hooked up to her anymore.
They were able to stop medicating her to keep her in a coma, but she didn’t wake up. The doctors said there was no reason for her to still be asleep, but she didn’t wake up. I continued to talk to her, sing to her and brush her hair. I would walk in, put on the gown and the gloves, and stay as long as I could. I would see the nurses change shifts and let them know if some information wasn’t passed along from one shift to another.

One weekend I walked in and the nurse told me that something had changed. The doctors thought she may be trying to wake up. Her heart rhythms were different. I saw her eyes open for a few moments and then just a quickly she would drift away. But she had opened her eyes! I would come in a watch for signs of movement, of consciousness. I wanted her to be awake for her birthday. I remember that being a goal. I would talk to her and tell her that she had to wake up – I was waiting for her!

And one day, she was awake. Just like that. No fanfare, no movie music.

She was awake and confused. She didn’t realize how long she had been asleep. She didn’t realize how much time had passed. She couldn’t talk because she still had a breathing tube. She didn’t understand why she was strapped in the bed. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t get up or even move. I had a new task. I would come in and talk to her, and tell her how long she had been there and what had happened.
Every time I came in.
three times a day.
I told her over and over.
Everyone thought that she had some brain damage.

But I didn’t.

I knew she was just confused and needed to hear it again. She just couldn’t get her mind around what had happened.

They began to teach her how to breathe on her own, they would unhook her from the machine for short periods so she could try to breathe. They turned the machines down so that she was working harder to breathe. They began to teach her how to talk with the hole in her throat. They realized that she didn’t have brain damage and she was recovering!

It was a very slow road, she was in the hospital a couple more weeks before she was moved to a rehab facility. After the rehab facility, she moved in with me because she couldn’t live on her own. Then later, she moved back in with her roommate.

But she did recover, she did leave the hospital, she did get well.

This is the woman that everyone said was going to die. This is the same woman that I was told to consider WHEN I would want to pull the plug.

She has been alive and well for the last two years.

I was able to begin knitting again when she woke up. I knit her a pair of socks and gave them to her for her birthday. Yes, she was awake for her birthday – she made it by only a couple of days.

She wore them all the time. She took them with her when she went to the rehab facility. One day, after they came and took the laundry, one was missing. We never found it.
I had made the “Shadow of Love” socks for her.


She wanted a new sock and I couldn’t make it again. Every time I tried to cast one on, all those emotions would come flooding back and I couldn’t handle it. I told her that I wasn’t going to make her any more socks because she couldn’t keep track of them.

I didn’t want her to know that it hurt too much.


Why do I bring this up now? Well, I got a phone call on Saturday morning. She has pneumonia and is in the hospital. But now she doesn’t live 30 minutes away. She lives 4 hours away. She isn’t as sick, but all the memories and emotions came flooding back to me in a wave when I got the news.

I know now why I didn’t frog the Pink Granite socks. I know now why they are too small (just a bit) for me, even though I knit them over and over and fixed the stitch count. They aren’t my socks. They are destined for her.

I hope I can go this weekend and see her. I will take her the socks and let her know that I am here for her.

She doesn’t have a computer and she will never see this blog, but it doesn’t matter.



Sissy, I love you.