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...