The art line (a memory)

I am laying on my left hip next to Eli in his hospital bed. My hip aches from always laying on that side so I can face him. We are in PICU. We have a blue quilt over our heads. There are no covers over our legs. After weeks of use, Eli's arterial line has gone bad in his ankle. It's in an artery and it continuously monitors his blood pressure. We have two choices. The doctor can try to rethread the catheter, which will not hurt but is not guaranteed to work. Or the doctor can place a new art line. For a number of reasons based on Eli's medications and his present health, he can have no pain medicine for a new art line placement. It's not like a regular IV; it has to go into a main artery.
We decide rethreading the catheter in the current art line is the best place to start. But you can cut the tension in the PICU room with a knife. This has to work, but there's a reasonable chance it doesn't. I crawl into bed next to Eli and put the covers over our heads. I tell him that the doctor is not going to hurt him but he is going to adjust the art line. At 4, Eli knows what that is. I tell Eli his job is to not move his legs at all. That the doctor and the nurse and mommy and daddy are trying to keep from doing any pokes on him. And then I create a little world under the covers just for us. The bed is being adjusted higher and higher so it is a nice comfortable height for the doctor to get to work. Every light in the room is on. A small tray of tools and equipment is set down on my legs, so now I don't move a millimeter either. I start singing to Eli and it's just the two of us under the covers. It feels like the bottom half of our bodies are detached from the upper half, where it's just the two of us. At least to me. I sing one song after another so that we have something to focus on besides what is happening outside of the covers. Eli lays perfectly still. He doesn't talk or join me in singing. But he cooperates. He doesn't move. We hear the doctor and the nurse communicating quietly as they work, trying desperately to retain this line. I sing every song that I have ever sung to Eli and I start back at the beginning because it's not over yet. I keep us in this world, calm and far away from what is happening at the other end of Eli's body. I don't care what my voice sounds like or who hears it. This is the most serious task of my life. If we want the best for Eli-and the best is to re-thread this line-then my only choice is to make him feel as safe as he has ever felt, while in this cave of a room hooked up to beeping machines with a doctor working on him.
Eventually I hear the sounds of success: The release of breaths no one knew they were holding, jubilant conversing, and a few chuckles of relief. It may have been five minutes or it may have been five light years. My only awareness of time in the world under the quilt was the amount of songs I sang.
The bed is lowered, the instruments and supplies are picked up and my legs are no longer a table. I slowly pull back the covers and Eli and I reenter into his room in PICU.
It was a nice world while it lasted. We have succeeded in providing the very best for Eli. It could have gone the other way. We could be facing a traumatic fully awake and aware procedure. Tonight we exchange smiles, congratulations, and handshakes. We will revel in this victory, at least until tomorrow.

the human brain: making sense of reality since the beginning of human history

On Friday Tyrell got a concussion during his football game. It was technically a clean hit, but my heart didn't feel that way when my baby went down. You know the law of physics that says, "an object in motion stays in motion until an equal or opposite force acts upon it"? That's pretty much what happened. Ty went down hard. But he got up and trotted off the field. Initially I thought he was okay. But shortly afterward I was summoned to the sideline and the athletic trainer started explaining the concussion tests she put Ty through, which parts he failed, and the protocol going forward. Ty finished the game sitting on the trainer's table with ice on the back of his neck for nausea.
On the way home he started feeling worse and was having sharp pains when he breathed. So we went to the ER to get him looked at. All the X-rays and scans came back perfect. A concussion doesn't show up in a ct scan, but the hospital did verify that Ty had no bleeding or fractures in his skull, and that he had no rib fractures or lung collapse. *Just* a concussion. A traumatic brain injury.
When your brain is injured it requires rest in order to heal. How does one rest a brain? Basically, sleep a lot and lay on the couch without doing anything. No screens- cell phones, tablets, TVs, video games, computers, etc. No reading or schoolwork. (Really!) No physical activity that raises the heart rate at all. Rest, rest, and rest some more. That is HARD for anyone, but especially an active and social teenager.
Tyrell woke up Saturday morning feeling and acting like himself. His chest was bruised, but otherwise he felt fine. He slept a lot of the day. By Sunday he was getting stir crazy. I felt bad that he couldn't watch any football at all. He decided to go fishing with a friend in the neighborhood ponds. I figured fishing was about as mindless of an activity as any. I did send him out with a hat and sunglasses to protect his eyes and brain from sunlight. I likely let him fish too long, but I was grateful that he was doing something he enjoyed and not moping at me that he couldn't have his phone.
On Sunday evening Ty heard me talking to my dad about hurricane Matthew and the imminent effects it would have on Haiti. He asked a couple questions, thought for a minute, and said, "I'm going to fish this week and for every fish I catch I'll donate $1 to help Haiti." What a kid. Then it was my turn to ask questions. I asked him to clarify his plan a bit and if he was interested in letting people know who might want to sponsor him. He agreed and I put it out on social media. So far if he catches 100 fish he'll raise over $850 for hurricane relief in Haiti*.
Stay tuned!
As I think through all of these events I am tempted to connect the concussion to the fishing sponsorships. Ty only went fishing (for the first time in many months) because he got concussed and had no other choices he liked. If he hadn't gone fishing, due to the concussion, he may never have thought about how he can help. The human brain wants so badly to say, "this is why this thing happened", to explain away and reason out reality, apply meaning to the meaningless. Just because our brains are inclined to do that doesn't make it true. Ty didn't get a concussion just so he would go fishing and then have a bright idea to use fishing as a motivation to help people. He got a concussion because he took a hard hit in his football game on Friday.
I will say this until I die: not everything happens for a reason.
There is a better way, though. Instead of attempting to pull reason out of unreasonable circumstances, we have the opportunity and the brain function to respond well when we are faced with hard things. We can fully acknowledge our disappointments and tragedies alike and say, "This will not end me. I will respond with grace and goodness." That's not easy and it doesn't make life's hard realities any less hard. It does make life worthwhile. It does make the world a better place. Whether or not you can tell in the trenches, it's a positive move.
The lessons, the personal changes, and the relationship changes are not the reasons that things happen. They are just our human responses to disappointments and crises.



*If you are moved to sponsor Ty as well, pick whatever formula or method works for you: a dollar a fish, a quarter a fish, a dime a fish, or a flat amount. I'll post on Sunday night with how many fish he caught and where he would like anyone to donate. It's the honor system around here. ;)