This Winnie the Pooh thought was shared with us by Amy’s cousin who is battling Cancer herself. We read it the day we returned to the hospital when we only made it to Randolph before Lane became so sick we had to go immediately to Evanston Memorial Hospital receive Antibiotics and be transferred back to Primary Children’s Hospital.
- Broken, Take 1
- When you leave a hospital elated at 4 PM and then walk past your old hospital room around midnight to your new hospital room it does something to your spirits. Once I had Amy and Lane settled in I walked back to our old hospital room and retrieved a few drinks from the community fridge and moved it to our new community fridge. It isn’t often that you see pity on the faces of the nurses on the oncology floor, but they couldn’t hold it back at this time. I don’t blame them, nobody can keep their guard up all the time. They knew how excited we were to go home.
- The next morning I got up and started running back and forth from the Ronald McDonald room doing laundry that we though we would do in our own home. And that is when I broke. I didn’t want to smile at other people any more. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to be broken that day, pick up the pieces the next day and try again. So I did. Amy handled all the phone calls and was the strong one. Lane slept the whole day and received all the help he needed from the nurses and Amy. The next day I was able to shake it off and go again.
- Broken again, take two.
- On Monday the 15th of January Amy told me the water heater was making weird noises. When we went to bed at 10 PM I finally heard the noises and investigated. We decided to drain the water heater, thinking that since it was replaced in 2019 we only had sediment build up that needed to be flushed out. I put on my snow clothes and trudged out to the house trailer for some short hoses to drain the hot water heater, stayed up till midnight and then just let it drain the rest of the night. In the morning I flushed it one last time and noticed the pressure relief valve just kept leaking. I put a pitcher under the relief valve tube and we monitored how much came out for the next 24 hours. Only a cup and a half. No big deal.
- Tuesday night we prayed as a family and counseled together about all of us going to Utah with Lane for his Dr. Appointment and Lumbar puncture. We felt it was the right thing to do. It was going to be Amy’s last chance to travel with baby Sarah’s due date approaching. We packed up and left Wednesday @ 12:30. The pitcher only had a few drops in it. When we came home Friday afternoon, Abby went upstairs and reported to the rest of us that the carpet was wet. We sprang into action, stopped the leak, and used our carpet cleaner to suck up as much as we could. The carpet was wet in the hallway just outside the water heater closet. The full extent of wet carpet was into our room one to two feet and down the hallway about 6 feet, and into Abby’s room. I replaced the pressure relief valve and stopped the leak. We set up box fans and dried out the carpet.
- The oncology team at Primary Children’s repeatedly stressed to us that we shouldn’t expose Lane to mold with his lowered immune system. We knew we couldn’t lift the carpet up and dry it that way and we thought we were doing enough. Saturday night we thought the carpet felt dry so at 7:30 when we put the kids to bed we shut off 2 out of 3 of the fans we had running. When Amy and I went to bed at 10 we noticed the carpet once again felt damp and had a musty smell. We sprayed Lysol on it, researched it and prayed about it and felt with the Lysol on it we could wait to deal with it in the morning. When we woke up the carpet was damp and smelly. We decided to get Lane out of the environment and then deal with it. So we packed bags and came down to my parent’s house.
- As we packed and tried to get the kids into the car instead of going to church I couldn’t keep from crying. I am an UGLY crier. When I would carry Lane he would kiss my bald head, because he could tell I was sad and wanted to help. I felt like I had tried to do everything right and I was still failing. I was trying to follow the oncology of no renovation but I was painted into a corner. I wanted to be in my own home while not in Utah and I couldn’t be. (Preach Dorothy, Preach, “There ‘s no place like home, there ‘s no place like home.”) I spent some time on my parent’s back steps broken. Nursing a Dr. Pepper and some cashews I had raided from their treats since I hadn’t eaten yet for the day.
- I had to let go and call professionals. Disaster Response and Construction has been wonderful. They left their Sunday meetings and obligations and came and helped fix my problem physically, spiritually and emotionally. The Townsends are good quality people.