This has been an odd week. Not blood sugar or prescription wise--as if acknowledging that I'm almost to finals and don't have the time or patience to deal (I know, diabetes is never convenient). I'm getting enough exercise and I probably should check if Im going the right direction, weight wise. I was a bit high yesterday, but nothing in panic regions--just went to bed at 120.
And there has been good news, too. Monday, I got the email that I'll be a TA next semester, which will involve a lot of work, but I think will go well. Tuesday was less friendly. I banged my hand walking down the stairs and have a bone deep bruise that keeps on making itself felt as I randomly jar that hand throughout my day. Dad bombed the house for bugs, so I had to wash all my bedding and underwear and probably should wash everything else. I'll do that if I have time.
When we went to turn back on the computer I use to get on the internet, it died with a vast smell of ozone. With it died the beginnings of my 20-25 page paper on Henry James that's due on the 24th. I didn't have much done, yet. Dad and I were going to move my computer that I can only use for word processing into the other room, hook it up to the printer, and let me go at it yesterday.
Then came yesterday. It began well. At about 10:30 Mom talked to me at work and said Dad had picked up my sister's children because she was going to have the baby. I got off at noon, and we went to meet them, then I would go home and babysit with Dad. But while we were at the fast food place, waiting for the kids to get their food, we got bad news.
My sister had the baby. It was stillborn. They were trying to bring him back, but chances were dim. We couldn't tell the kids. I called my siblings to ask for prayers, but didn't give any details because I didn't know, and I didn't have permission as yet.
All day, I was at home, watching the kids and not hearing anything. Finally, at about seven, Mom and Dad came home, with the news that he was alive. He had a hearbeat. He had brain function, although it was considered abnormal. He wasn't breathing, they were doing it for him. He was on some kind of seventy-two hour hypothermic therapy that was intended to halt further brain deteriation.
That was the first time I had heard that he was alive. I honestly thought most of the day that he was dead.
My sister was doing better emotionally than her husband. But she had been standing in the NICU all day. They came to get the kids at about nine, and I watched him try to explain to the kids that their brother was still in the hospital, they could meet him tomorrow.
They haven't named him yet. I wish they would, but they have always waited to name their children until after they were born.
I get to meet him today, I think. My mother tells me he is a beautiful baby, with a shock of dark hair and healthy skin. But he's in the NICU, so he's hooked up to monitors and more monitors and doesn't move at all.
I think that the worst is that as support staff, I can't break down at all. That would have frightened the kids, or would have set my mother off again. Instead, I was the strong one. And today I'm in classes, waiting for a phone call to tell me any news.
He's not out of the woods, of course. And if he lives, my sister's path is going to be difficult. She has a five-year-old and a two-year-old and now a little boy with special needs.
I'm sorry. I feel like I'm dumping. I had a nightmare last night where I spilled a bunch of syringes and pens and I had to pick them up without getting poked.
It's just been a long day.
