Cool and All

Wow, this week got me good.  I was totally ready for it to zig and it zagged.  I was set for it to go to the right and it hung a wicked left.  I was here where I thought it was all going on but it was there.  I never, ever would have thought it would go the way it did.

But it's cool and all.

So Sidekick Sister was supposed to start the first round of lengthening her short femur starting last Tuesday.  We were all supposed to be in Baltimore for 3 months after that doing PT.  Two hours into the operation the doctor wanted to talk to us.  He told us he thought he could save her hip.  For two years this doctor and his colleague had been trying to game plan Sidekick Sister's hip.  Here's how the two years went:

"I think we can work with her hip.  But let's do one more x-ray."

My heart glows.

"Oops, we probably can't work with it...but let's do one more x-ray."

My heart sinks.

"Ah-ha-ha we can work with it, so after we do one more x-ray we'll schedule the day to fix it up."

My heart rejoices.

"Oh darn-diddly-do, that hip's a definite no-go.  Let's just lengthen."

My heart plummets to the tips of my toes and then steels itself to the cold-hard facts.

For whatever reason, when it came time to do surgery on Tuesday it never occurred to me that the doctors might change their minds one more time.

Despite the fact that my heart really was pleased as punch, my brain was like, "Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!," as it will do, because we had just rented an expensive apartment for three months with the idea that insurance would reimburse us.  We had bought a plane ticket for a nice girl who had set aside two and a half months of her life to nanny for us.  My parents had used their airline points to come out and help us the week between when spouse-the-fearless-wage-earner went back to work and when my super-cute nanny could get out to help.  We had lots of folks invested in a now bankrupt plan.  My money-gripping soul was forced to watch dollars upon dollars swirl and whirl down, down, down to the sewer and beyond.

But still it was cool and all.

Our drive back to our home after Sidekick Sister got discharged out of the hospital Saturday morning was the perfect metaphor for it all.  Sidekick Sister who is now in a cast that goes around her waist and down both of her legs had to lay in the backseat of our mini-van with a rad little harness that got hooked into a seat belt.  This left little room for the other five of us.  Captain Kindergarten got to go put his Captain-cy skills to work as co-captain for Spouse-behind-the-wheel, while Baby Girl and the Little Linebacker filled the remaining seats in the car.  That left the short Momma to fend for herself and her backside wherever they could carve out some space between wheel-chairs, clothes and all other accouterments that could support a family of 6 for three months. 

Me and my backside were a tad uncomfortable.

We spent a chuck of time on the curvy, swervy roads of West Virginia.  I had my head buried in Sidekick Sister's seat with my bottom on the bumpy car floor and my legs bent all skitty-wampus around seats and bed pans with a feeling in my stomach that reminded me of driving up river roads to go camping in Colorado when I was growing up as a kid.  It turned my grumpy on to a very serious decible.

Sidekick Sister had to use the bed-pan.  I got it under her and out from under her in our curvy, swervy car.  But then I had to make home-focused-Spouse pull over and empty it into the bushes.  We got going again - stopping here for food, stopping there for pottys.  Then a couple hours in I fed Baby Girl a bottle.  Five minutes later the bottle came back up.  Ten minutes later I gave an orange to the Little Linebacker who is in the habit of swallowing all that he sees whole.  I don't know how long the kid was choking on that slice of orange, but after I noticed I was still able to say Spouse-who-endures-my-panic's name three or four times and get Little Linebacker completely unbuckled from his car seat and beaten over the back a few times before he pulled the orange from the middle of his throat.  My grumpiness could hardly tolerate such a scare.

And then not too long after that the Little Linebacker upchucked his chocolate milk and apples from a McDonalds stop all over himself and his car seat in two or three amazing hurls.  My grumpy self was astounded.

And then Sidekick Sister needed the bedpan again.  And the curvy, swervy, pukey feeling grew and magnified within my heart and mind.  And I wondered, is this all worth it?  Should we have just moved our lives to Baltimore and never left?

But the road straightened out.  My belly settled.  Sidekick Sister was drained.  The little ones had no more food in their bellys to give back.  And we made it home.

And here's where the hip thing and the drive thing cohere.  They both brought me home.  I do love being home in my house with my five people that make my life exactly what I want it to be.

Yeah, so my life right now, it's cool and all.