Wednesday, May 09, 2012

For the ones always looking for bad things to happen

(I worked on this last summer and early fall not able to share it at the time)
This is for those of you that come here to read all the bad things that happen in my life.  Over the last few years I've tried so very hard to stay positive, to thank God daily and try to remember that things will get better soon.  Over the last 2 weeks this has been so very hard.  Bob and I had planned a beautiful, fun vacation for our family in Myrtle Beach.  We worked very hard to put together a vacation with a condo on the ocean front, days of fun filled activities for a week long vacation we have not had in many years.

Everything was coming together so smoothly we just knew this was going to be the best vacation we had ever had.  Our drive down was peaceful with a stop at South of the Border.  We had tons of fun trying on hats.  






We continued our drive to our MB condo, unpacked and enjoyed a nice evening walk along the beach with Brandon. The following morning was Brandon's birthday.  We had him pick a restaurant for the breakfast of his choice.  He picked an awesome pancake house where he had a huge stack of banana pancakes  ( just had to add Jack Johnson in on that topic) at the

 Golden Griddle Pancake house.

We returned to our condo to open up Brandon's birthday gifts, a Wii with a boat load of new games.


Bob and I left for Barefoot Landing to find Bob some sunglasses.  We had just found a pair when I received a phone call from Linda that she thinks she broke Nickie's left leg.  Now I'm thinking to myself this can't be, she couldn't have done that, there has to be a mistake.  Bob and I drive back to the condo and I take a look at Nickie's leg and though it looked bad I kept praying it was not broken.  We drove the 13 miles to the Grand Strand Hospital (this took nearly 40 minutes).  Fortunately we were seen quickly, unfortunately the x-rays showed a left femur fracture.  This required surgery that this hospital could not perform.  It was suggested we transport Nickie to the Medical University of South Carolina, a level one trauma unit, 90 miles away.  Nickie was transported via ambulance with Linda as a passenger.  Bob, Brandon and I had to return to the condo to pack up, it was late when we were done and with the suggestion from one of the hospital staff that we should wait till morning to make the 2.5 hour drive because some of the areas were questionable during daylight hours it was not advisable to drive at night.

After Nickie's arrival, Linda called to say her surgery would take place the following morning.  Her surgery was postponed for several days and to my surprise the reason was due to having 90 percent of the surgical staff away at a conference.  Had this information been shared with us prior to transport we would have chosen to transport Nickie back to Richmond where her orthopedist could perform the much needed surgery.  After several talks with the chief of orthopedic surgery we were finally able to have the surgery performed on Wed.  The very special hardware that was necessary for this surgical repair had to be shipped from Colorado.  Nickie was able to be discharged to home on Friday.  It was a very long 9 hour drive home due to the need to stop frequently to provide pain management, position changes, etc.  We finally made it home and in a couple of days Nickie runs a temp of 102 degrees.  We had her assessed and found out she had an infection in the incision.  It was determined that she would have to have another surgery to remove the infection.  All I could think was Nickie has gone through so much why was this happening?  She spends several days at the PICU at St. Mary's Hospital and has a PICC line inserted to battle the infection.  She is discharged and goes home with the PICC line for many doses of IV antibiotics for several weeks.  My baby girl suffers tremendously trying to fight this infection.  Weeks turn into months before the infection is cleared and the Picc line removed.  She has made a full recovery and praise God has returned to her old self!  I must admit I lost my way and began to doubt in God during this time. Thanks to some wonderful friends with encouraging words I found my way back.

No comments: