9:16 a.m. - 2018-11-24
Nov 16th, a summary.
So I got into a habit and then servers went down and I immediately fell out of the habit.
I actually wrote something in wordpad and was going to upload it and totally forgot. I deleted it this morning because, really, it's been months who cares.
The reason I came here was to make a cryptic update about recent super shittiness that's happened, but apparently i'm going to waffle on about it for a bit.
I think it's because no friends came over... they asked, and I said no, because I always say no and Im incapable of.. okay lets start where the beginning sort of is,
So I had a dream, a real nightmare of a dream that had me outside of my body and just floating over things. My anxiety likes to latch on to these dreams real goddamn hard and they stick with me for a long while, which is why I remember this one so well.
My kiddos go to seperate schools, because middle school is a thing here now, and they are 3 years apart. I've been trying to figure out ways of getting them home safely that doesn't involve me driving to 2 schools because it's a major pain in the ass and also they arent learning any confidence in themselves or independence or whatever the fuck Im supposed to be teaching them so they dont have panic attacks like i do.
So my dream depicted this horrific scene of my kiddos walking to the city bus terminal and Youngest getting hit by a car in front of Eldest. and my out of body dream self freaking out because there is no one with them in this situation and how the fuck am I going to prepare for this? There's no way to prepare for this, I can't even tell the kiddos beyond "Watch for cars!!" which I tell them every fucking day anyways,.
So I wake up from the dream sobbing, and panicking and reaffirm to myself that because of the craziness of downtown streets and the lack of crossing gaurds anyfuckingwhere important, the kiddos will have to be driven until they are 16 and 13.
A week after this dream/nightmare happens, I get a call from my mom while I'm at work. (The one shift where I have to work over the after school hour). And my Youngest has been hit by a car.
So I throw the food I was eating (A&W poutine) out the window of the work car (I had parked behind a hotel so I could eat for ten minutes without someone calling the store about lazy delivery drivers) and FLEW back to work. Managed to catch the other driver at the store, told him my kid has been hit by a car, handed him my float and papers and speedwalked towards my car, which was parked at the farthest end of the parking lot, but I needed the time to breathe and hold my shit together so I could drive to the hospital.
I drove faster and with more hyper awareness than I ever have in my life, screaming the whole way. I beat the ambulance to the hospital.
I nearly lost my shit reception at ER, only because she tried to walk away fromthe desk when I flew in. I only started losing it when I saw Youngest being wheeled in on the stretcher.
There was a jesus freak in the waiting room that decided now would be a good time to pray over me and put her arm around me and that's probably the only reason I didn't fall into a blubbering mess, because this rando was talking about thanking god that he was awake and thanking god that he was here with all these great people and it's been so long since I was prayed over my whole brain just ........wtf.
Christians are insane. Do you not understand that I would have knocked you out if I had interpreted the arm on my shoulder as holding me back in any way? And you were talking out of your ass, you didnt know if he was awake, you didnt know if he would ever walk again, you didnt know shit and you were thanking a god that I have a very shitty relationship with to begin with since if he does exist I'm likely destined for hell for eternity.
Anyway after that short tangent, i got in to be beside youngest, who was on the stretcher, gurney, and hes crying but he's calm, says he hurts in a couple places and his face is bleeding and theres blood allll over the front of his coat he's wearing a neckbrace collar thing that's too small because they are treating him with peds stuff but he's actually the size of a small adult. so. that's a thing that happened for the next twelve hours because I didn't know how much he weighed and GROSSLY underestimated because he's only 8 but he's got the Dutch blood running strong in his veins and will likely be 6feet tall someday soon.
nurses bring those warm sheet things over and cover his legs, and I'm being talked to by nurses and the ER docs and the doctor intern person, and a cop in uniform and a cop from the station who isnt in uniform and he pulls me aside for a moment and I don't want to go i dont want to leave Youngest for a second so theres a nurse who says she will stay beside Youngest while I go and find him a room/bed.
Cop not in uniform tells me it was a taxi that hit Youngest, and they don't have all the details yet and Im absorbing the information but I DONT CARE ABOUT ANY OF THIS i just want to know how bad Youngest is hurt and this isn't delaying the docs or nurses so I allow it but I really dont fucking care about the particulars.
I don;t know if I want to type this all out, lets see if I can pick out the main bits, so when i reread this hope fully it's not double the trauma/anxiety ? i dont know how any of this works.
Youngest is conscious, he stays conscious the whole time. They cut off his grey shirt with the yellow and green and blue on it and I never see that shirt again, They check vitals, they do checks with their hands of his extremities and his torso and his back, slowly and carefully because he's not screaming in pain, so that rules out alot, unless he's lost feeling, but they continually check his hands and tickle his feet and make him wiggle his toes.
They do ultrasounds, multiple, over a couple hours. There's shadow/dark line that might be bleeding. Uniformed cop comes in with a lion stuffy that is eventually named Slick. The shadow isn't growing or shrinking.
The worst, absolute worst bit, is the intravenous. Youngest has veins like mine that when there's pain present the veins shrivel up to nothing in the arms and legs and alllllll blood is kept in the torso/head. Which makes it practically impossibly for an intravenous to be started.
They needle him so many times I lose count because he screams and screams and screams each time and cries and wants it to be over but there's a shadow on his liver that might be bleeding and they need to get a straw into his vein so he can go directly into surgery in London, if he needs to.
They give him a spray of something up his nose to calm him down, but he's started shaking, and the terror of more needles has pushed him into shock. They give him a shot of somethjing in his leg and that stops the screaming but he's still crying and begging for it to be over.
They call a OB nurse to come down and help with the intra, she brings a teddy bear with her that is eventually named Thunder. She get one very flimsy intra started in his foot.
they call peds trauma and they want youngest asap, which means we're going in an ambulance to a bigger hospital with an actual peds department
The Anesthesiologist Doctor finally gets out of surgery and comes down to help and he just barely gets one in Youngest's arm (forearm, we were literally running out of bits of limbs to stab, as there was a blow out on almost every typical spot)
At this point, I start feeling sick, and my blood pressure crashes and I end up not completely passing out but I absolutely sit carefully as I can on the floor and then lay on the floor. In the ER, while my child is getting poked and prodded with needles again for the 10000 time and it's cold and I cant hang on to youngests hand and he cant see me but there's an inky blackness just outside my vision and I Cannot Go There, so I don't. I lie on the floor for 5 minutes. I sit up. I drink orange juice from a styrofoam cup and the nurse says that I should have warned them I was a fainter.
We've been at the ER for 4 hours.
they medical tape youngest within an inch of his life, because both intra spots are touchy and he's about to be put in an ambulance for 30 min
Mom and Eldest have been here a while, but there;s been no room by Youngests bed with all the nurses and doctors and people discussing and milling around in case his vitals take a turn or something else happens..
They are short staffed so they ask the OB nurse to come with us. I think her name was Stephanie.
Theres room for me in the ambulance, the same EMTs that picked Youngest off the road earlier this aft come in to take him to the peds hospital. Hes still on the board, hes still got the collar, they tuck in his two stuffies and wrap him in sheets. They switch over everything from the ER gurney to the ambulance gurney so theres no loss of tracking his vitals, he wears a blood pressure cuff underneath everything and is told to try to rest. they strap him in. Hes just thankful theres no more needles and is so exhausted from the terror of being poked so many times by so many different people.
It's dark when we get loaded into the ambulance. I'm told where to sit, I almost don't fit through the door because Im tired and my brain can't compute with how to get my body into this vehicle that's unlike any I've ever been in. But I do. And I tell myself I'm going to get skinnier, as if that would really make it easier to get into an ambulance but who knows maybe it would.
Martha is the EMT's name who was in the back with us and she's the only person who's name I fully remember.
Riding in an ambulance that's doing a 45 min run in 20 min is like the moment when a plane first lands and you feel the wheels touch, and it's bumpy as hell and you can't see where you're going and you know you are going stupidly fast, and theres a lot of adrenaline pumping but it's useless because you are absolutely out of control. A metal box flying down the highway.
There's one window, but it's dark. I counted 4 tim hortons signs.
We get out, Im completely disoriented, I've never been to ER at that hospital, so Im just following wherever they take Youngest.
there's a woman there who isn't a nurse but who specializes in explaining everything in simple clear language so that we all know what is happening and what is going to happen. She explains everything. She gets a popsicle for Eldest.
They re-do allllll of the checks that were done at the original hospital. The ultrasound results havent changed. So the black line is still there. They order CT scans and Xrays and they are trying to line it up so Youngest can go for both at the same time and doesnt have to go back and forth from ER.
We wait. Youngest cries because he's had the collar on for 6 hours and he's so tired of not being able to see anything but the ceiling and not be able to move his head and hes so frustrated and scared. He hangs on to his stuffies and doesnt want anyone to touch him. He sleeps a little.
We get the CT scans and Xrays done. I stand outside the CT room and sob. Youngest is so scared and cries but softly enough they get good pictures from the donut camara
xrays are harder only because it;s a room full of people and I can see the results immediately and I don't know what Im looking for and Im exhausted.
Youngest has turned to rage over the collar and just wants it off, he hits it and pulls at it and I spend the majority of an hour trying to talk him out of doing that..
my phone is going crazy with notifications, some asshole has posted on facebook about Youngest being hit and people have pieced together that it's my kid. Mom volunteers to contact people while we're waiting for results from the Doc.
Youngest's Dad is driving towards the hospital we are currently at and has left me to deal with his entire family because hes not answering his phone for anyone but me. I explain to him that I can't keep an eye on my phone and stay with Youngest, and I'm not choosing his family over my son's well being.
I stuff my phone in my purse and don't look at it until after we get the results. Everything is normal, there's no further evidence of bleeding on the liver, there's no breaks or anything.
I pull out my phone and theres 17 missed calls from Youngest' uncle (one of the ones youngest's dad was ignoring) who has also been hit by a car and was in waaaaay worse shape, and I call him back (if youngest's dad finds out I called his brother first Im sure i will be in shit, i wasnt thinking clearly and just trying to stop the emotional bleeding as quickly as I could)
We talk for ten minutes, 8 of which is him sobbing into the phone and asking to talk to Youngest. and Eldest, and me, and crying again.
I call the kiddos Dad, he answers while driving (bluetooth) and asks to talk to Youngest, then wants to talk to Eldest and immediately begins interrogating her about what she said to the cop at the scene.... I cut the phone call short and tell him we have to go.
Most of that last part is in the wrong order, i think we called Uncle and Dad before we had gotten results because they had taken off the collar by that point and Youngest had sat up on his own, and there was light at the end of the tunnell so i could handle someone elses feelings a bit by then.
im trying not to use names or places, but i feel like that's just making it more confusing.
Anyway. I was alone on Saturday and sunday except for the kiddos Dad's family, and that was fucking exhausting, dealing with that many people who have no idea how to handle any kind of trauma.
There were several times in the 11ish hours of being in hospitals where Youngest had his eyes mostly closed and his hands and feet felt cold and it was exactly like Ava and I wont ever ever forget that. the ambulance ride was the worst, the bumps interrupted the vital machine beeps and he was so so still.
I kept finding his blood on my clothes and I dont even know how thats possible. he wasnt bleeding.
I dont know how Im supposed to let them walk anywhere ever again without freaking out. Both kiddos went back to school on Monday right after it happened. Eldest walked from her school to Youngests that day. and one other day this week.
She was late on Friday and I was panicking, because I was waiting for her at Youngests school and it took her 40 minutes to walk a 15 min route, but it's because there was so much traffic and she didnt want to step out into the street.
so i asked her to use the stop lights, so at least there's a clear crosswalk and signals. not that people dont get hit at crosswalks but.. youngest got hit where there wasnt a cross walk and Im clinging to anything here.
There have been so many times this week when I started typing a text or email or message of some kind and just deleted it. But I've been so alone. and I don't know how to ask for company. So I just stay at home, alone and play warcraft, because at least then it feels like Im not alone.
Also, what the fuck is "If you guys need anything, let me know", why is that useless goddamn phrase a part of our vocabulary, how the fuck is anyone supposed to ask for anything when what I really need is this amorpheus sense of community or sense of being cared for in any way shape or form?
I dont know how to put to words what the last week has been like, how the fuck am I supposed to be coherant enough to figure out that I need something and then put that into words to actually ask someone for that something?
Ive been typign for two hours and I dont really feel better. maybe later i will.
this afternoon is a D&D session with my brothers and tomorrow is Christmas at my Dad's place.
I need a coffee.
EDIT: DId i just fucking forget to mention that youngest is totally fine? His road rash on his face is healed and that was pretty much the extent of his injuries. he had a slight black eye and a minuscule bruise on his hip. after being hit by a car, flying three feet vertically and ten feet horizontally. Which might be why my anxiety is stil maxed out and Im running around at a 10 constantly, because my logical brain doesnt understand. and im super fucking grateful dont misunderstand me, but after every one coming to me with their story about the person they knew that was killed by a car, Im fucking jittery.
