What a Day, What a Day.

So today was supposed to be a quick and easy day.

Did you ever wish, at the end of the day of this sort, that someone wouldn't have told you that it was going to be an easy day?

Today was not easy.

Everything was great until Amelie came out of the anesthesia.  I'm not sure if it was a different type of anesthesia, but everything was different.

In all previous times she's been put under, (doesn't it sound like we're seasoned veterans after 2 weeks?) when we've been called back to recovery she's been crying bloody murder.  As soon as we show up, she calms down.  We get her in a good space, and she's back to being ship-shape in 10 minutes or so.  She's smiling at people, saying hi, and asking when she can eat.

Today?  We go back and she was stoned.  Looking off towards the wall, not focusing on much.  We both were trying to interact, but she wasn't herself.  She asked for food, a good sign, and we gave her some juice and then a popsicle.  They moved us out of the critical area of recovery and into a more private area.

Once we got down there, she lost it.  Lost everything she had.  She screamed for 60 minutes straight.   Nothing consoled her.  We tried everything in the book...but nothing stopped her from arching her back, pushing us, trying to climb off Shel (she was trying to rock her) and throwing anything she could get her hands on. It was like someone had swapped out our happy little girl with a robot version of herself, hell bent on punishing everyone around her for what was going on.

They eventually gave her morphine, and she fell asleep.  2 hours straight laying on Shel's front.

She woke up, and BOOM...Amelie was back.  She asked for a cracker. She smiled, she cuddled.  Then we left.

This was her when she "came back".  Can you see how sweatsoaked her hair is?  Sheesh.

But that hour completely drained us.

My sister said, when I was talking to her afterwards on the drive home, that her son Charlie had a similar experience...I'm going to need to talk to Anesthesiology if she goes under again.

I think it was Shelley who introduced me to the idea of the bucket, as far as energy and spirit goes.  Imagine that we all have a bucket, and it's being emptied and refilled at various speeds.  When we do things that we enjoy, we're filling our bucket.  When we're doing things that are a struggle for us, the bucket is emptied.

This experience today really drained our buckets...and it's my job to get Shelley's refilled, and quick.  This whole experience falls so much heavier on her than I, for so many reasons.

Back to the bucket filling stuff.  Several things happened today, after all of this, that I wanted to chat about for a second, or 300.

1.  Indian Food:  I know many of you are not adventurous eaters like we are.  Some of you have been yanked into our eating excursions and regretted it.  Shelley loves Indian food....above all else.  She loves loves loves it.  She got a double burst of it today.  We had heard reviews of a new Indian restaurant in north Ann Arbor called CurryUp, and went there after the hospital.  It was really good, and we totally enjoyed.  We got home, and had a FB message from our friend Iman who just returned from several months in India, offering to make us meals.  Shelley's bucket is totally getting refilled.

2.  Music: I've been sitting up after I put the girls in bed and playing new music like mad lately.  I'm currently listening to the new album by Mumford and Sons.  They were on SNL over the weekend.  The passion and energy that these guys channel is just....bucket filling, to overuse the analogy.

3.  The bracelets:  A former student of mine asked for permission to sell bracelets as a fundraiser to pay for all the future costs of this whole thing, which we haven't even researched/considered.  (I'm totally not saying this to solicit anything)  I was in the middle of the maelstrom of this whole thing, and I said "yeah, sure"...not really knowing what would happen to the whole thing.  The response to it has been beyond anything Shel and I could have ever imagined.  Really and truly.  We don't even know what to say.  All of it being organized by an 18 year old girl in her first semester at the University of Michigan.  If you want to feel some inspiration, some hope for the future...  just look at that.

So there ya go.  I started off depressing the heck out of you, and hopefully ended up filling your bucket a bit.

ps.  For all the uber-geeks out there, doesn't the picture of Amelie above remind you of Tony Stark?  i keep expecting a light blue glow to begin emitting from her bandage.  Where's Pepper Potts when we need her?