Rose #8 - My Kenzie

I haven't yet spoken much of Kenzie in this story. I started this blog for a school assignment and my aim was to try and move the story along from the time of the accident to where we ended up today within 10 blog posts. In doing so, I've neglected to mention much of what went on with my Kenzie because following our discharges the bulk of our physical difficulties rested with the extra medical care of myself and Jade. The nervous apprehension I felt about Jade's pending surgical procedure (she was set to go back and have her ileostomy reversed and closed up at the 3 month mark after her discharge) was enough to make me physically ill and did.

With that said, Kenzie's story deserves a spot of its own

My aunt-in-law Lynne took Kenzie in when she was discharged (5 days after the accident). Jason was still at his parents discharged before her with multiple broken ribs, cuts, contusions, and stitches in several places. Ironically, though Kenzie was the only one of us to have ended up in the ICU, she was somehow the first of us girls to be discharged.

The visits she made to the hospital in the ensuing weeks are so much of what pulled me and Jade through. Each time she came in she came smiling. Her bright face, and soft hugs gave us motivation to get better and get home so we could all be together again.

Once we got home though, things became difficult for Kenzie. Jade and I required a lot of help and though Kenzie had been discharged and granted a clean bill of physical health on her follow up, other things she dealt with were going unattended.

We were so sick with worry over the physical aspects of Jade's condition that I'm not sure any of us really stopped to ask Kenzie how she was dealing with it - if she was okay.

One medical issue ensued after another with Jade and me - she randomly ended up with a boil on her ear from an infected earring, I ended up with a skin infection on the palm of my hands, Jade's bag was causing a rash.

One doctor's appointment after another.

The topic of the day was how much my hands and Jade's rash hurt, how our incisions looked, and whether our physical therapy was doing the job.

Kenzie fell between these cracks.

She fell between them but refused to fall willingly.

Instead she decided to leave for a party she was forbidden to go to and refused to come back.

Informing me that "accidents happen all the time," she couldn't grasp why all we seemed to discuss was the accident.

She needed to get away from it. She'd spent almost a week in a hospital room with her sister, watching her get sicker and sicker, laying helpless beside her, trying to heal from injuries of her own. With the deepest degree of laceration to her spleen, an additional laceration to her lung, and a busted collar bone, sternum and sprained foot she was no stranger to pain - instead she was a stranger to the attention she should have received.

I remember how completely helpless I felt when she ran away. In the midst of all that was going on I couldn't believe she would be so thoughtless.

Didn't occur to me at the time that all she was doing was giving me a dose of my own medicine - even if not consciously doing so.

Not knowing what to do (the law in Maine dictates that at 16 years old you can leave home without legal repercussion), I let her go and tried to give her a bit of space.

All I could see was myself. How scared I was, how difficult it was to make peace with my new scars, how little I wanted to ride in cars.

It never occurred to me how scary it must have been for her to have to heal primarily alone because both adults in her life were unavailable. Jade at least had the comfort of her older sister, but Kenzie - she had her friends.

Deciding to try and get her to see where I was coming from I wrote to her. I figured trying to talk in person or over the phone might cause an argument, so I wrote.

What I got in response punched me in the gut. She wasn't mean - on the contrary, for the first time since everything happened she opened up.

She opened up and I realized that as grown as she is she's still my baby. She was scared too - but because she didn't have surgery resulting in ongoing physical ailments she didn't have the same need to continue to discuss this thing that scared and hurt us all - as a matter of fact it was keeping her from being able to move on from it.

Communication is key.

Thank goodness I had the type of mom to instill that truth - it brought my Kenzie home.

I love my Kenzie :)

Rose #4 - No Need to Roll

Still high off the family visit and steady drip of morphine pumping through my veins, I was starting to feel settled in. It had been three days since a surgeon I still can't recall the look of cut my belly in half and cauterized my liver and spleen; three days since my youngest daughter, Jade (my 10-year-old) survived the same cut as my own - straight down the belly. Unlike myself, however, she also survived a fractured vertebrae, the "theft" (as she sees it) of her appendix and sigmoid colon, and a cut to her side meant to repair the hernia that had popped through her hip muscles when she slammed against the seat belt she was thankfully wearing.

My oldest, Mackenzie (16-years-old at the time) was lucky in that she didn't end up going under the knife, though lucky I'm guessing isn't what she'd call it. Certainly not too lucky anyway; she'd broken her sternum against her knee when she instinctively lifted her leg to kick against the front seat on impact. The force also lacerated her spleen to the fifth degree, sprained her foot and broke her collar bone. It's a wonder she didn't break her leg.

The doctors thinking she might bleed out decided instead of opening her up to put her into Intensive Care to monitor her while her organs rested and regenerated.

Finding this information out while under a haze of intravenous pain killers was probably the best way to receive it since the very retelling of it now still shakes me to my mom core.

Either one of my girls could have been dead right then. If not for modern medical technology they would be. Actually, we all most likely would be. This is a thought I am happy to say was already beginning to brew on this third day, and let me tell you, there's nothing quite like gratitude to push you through fearful happenings.

This day though one of slight anxiety also prompted excitement in the journey of my healing - this was the day my surgeon would perform the second out of an estimated three more needed debris cleanings of my knee. This procedure though I knew would be painful was bringing me ever closer to getting the vacuum pump holding my knee together removed, which would finally enable my wound to be sewn shut.

*Hooray!

I wanted to walk to see my kids, I was sick of being rolled to them - though that, of course, didn't stop me. Couldn't have paid to stop me actually; seeing my kids was the absolute highlight of each day I spent in the hospital.

The only thing that could have made it sweeter would have been the presence of my husband and perhaps a racing flag attached to my wheelchair.

I remember waking up from my knee procedure hours later confused. Confused because the pain that was crawling up my leg from my knee was unfamiliar - and excruciating.

"Can I have some Morphine?"

"We already gave you as much as we can, Hun. Calling the Doctor now to see about a different cocktail."

Tears.

"How many more of these do I have to do?" I wailed,"I don't want any more."

"I can't imagine any, Hun, look at your knee. They closed you up."

A rose...