A rough day.

September 17 was a tough day. My mom had a 14 hour surgery to remove as much of a brain tumor as possible. It had been scheduled for 6-12 hours, but went even longer. Apparently the anesthetic started to wear off part way through – it had gone much longer than the surgeon had anticipated. I only found that out several days later. I had to teach that day, and was on pins and needles all day as I waited for news, but just kept getting texts that said “not done yet”. I had managed to sort things out so that I could go be with her the following day without cancelling any classes, but teaching on the 17^th was hard. I was very glad I was giving a very familiar lecture, albeit with adjustments, as my ability to spend time prepping while still awaiting news about my mom’s surgery late that night was pretty much non-existent. So I gave as good a lecture as possible under the circumstances, spent a few hours sorting out a few last minute things for my other class that someone was covering for me, and went to the airport.

As I waited to board, my brother texted me to see what time I was arriving and when I would be at the hospital. I was on a 5 pm flight, which after luggage retrieval and getting the rental car, meant I had intended to just head to where I was staying while in Calgary, not heading to the hospital until the next morning. But he and my mother’s husband needed some relief, so it was decided that I would head in for a night shift. I was not ready for this. I was mentally prepared to see her the next day, not that night. My tears welled up. I had been holding in so much worry and emotion, trying to not upset my son, and not cry in my classes, but it was going to need to come out. But the gangway was not the place, so I choked the tears back in and resolved to think about the fact that she made it through the surgery, not the fact that it could have gone the other way. I distracted myself with bad TV on the plane as much as possible and managed to mostly not cry the whole flight. I got off the plane, gathered my bag, got my car (its own adventure as it’s from an off airport location that seems a little shaky), and headed south to where I was staying. As I drove, I was on the verge of tears, steeling myself for my evening. I couldn’t be bothered to move off of the pre-set top 40 style radio station. About 20 minutes into my drive a song that always makes me cry and think of my mom came on the radio. It was from our playlist from the hospital when my son was born. My mom had come down to California for the birth. She arrived at the hospital at a particularly bad moment, things were going south for the first time. They stabilized us (mostly me) for a bit, but in the end, I had an emergency c-section. Only one person was allowed in the OR at a time, so my husband came in for the actual birth. We had hastily arranged for my mom to come in when he left with the baby. There was a mix up and some nurse wouldn’t let her in at the last minute. I was left alone, no baby, no husband, and no mom, and a song that had been a favorite came on over the sound system (the anesthesiologist hooked our ipod up to their sound system for the section) “Are we human or are we dancer” by the Killers, as I was awash in intense loneliness.  I didn’t know she hadn’t been allowed in, but I did know she wouldn’t have abandoned me. Now that song always makes my heart ache, although we sometimes have family dance parties to it because it is a song very much associated with my son’s birth. Anyway, it came on the radio, quite different  from the other music they were playing, and I lost it. I just cried out to my mom that I was on my way. I would be there for her. I made it to my friends’ place shortly after that, spend an hour and a bit catching up with them and making arrangements for my comings and goings, grabbed a spare throw blanket from them, and headed back north to the hospital.

I hate Calgary, or more correctly, I hate getting around Calgary. But as it turns out, the easiest route to the hospital was one that I had made us take 2.5 weeks previous while we were on an end of summer road trip to Alberta. Someone I follow on twitter had recommended a local tri-shop, and we did a slight detour to get there. It took us along the 1, which merges with a local city street for quite a while (unbeknownst to me when I requested the route change). DH was none too happy about crawling along on what should have been a highway, especially since in the end I didn’t end up buying anything at the store (they didn’t have my size in the things I liked). But a customer and the staff at the store had directed us to a great little café close by where we had stopped for lunch. Anyway, turns out the shop and the café were right near the hospital. So not only was I comfortable driving the route to the hospital, I am familiar with the local roads nearby, and knew a great little café to grab breakfast or lunch. My little unsuccessful shopping detour had prepared me perfectly for this visit to Calgary.

The night wasn’t too bad. I was glad I had my blanket as I was cold, mostly from being tired and stressed and not having eaten enough during the day. The beeping of all the monitors was unpleasant, but I thought back to something an amazing friend of mine, let’s call her Althea*, wrote. has a child who was born with a heart defect and now lives because of a heart donation. She is in the process of writing a book about her family’s emotional and psychological journey called ‘Love Lemons’. It’s amazing and you all should buy it when you can. Anyway, she has a term she invented ‘posilution’ that basically is the act of finding something positive in everything, no matter how awful it may seem at the time. She posiluted about the machines – they were keeping her baby alive. The machines hooked up to my mother weren’t necessarily doing that, but they were allowing people to monitor her, and more than once that night, alarms went off and she needed to be checked. So the machines did their job. So I channeled Althea and loved those machines.  And I loved the fact that I have a 5 year old son who has only rarely slept through the night. I have gone from being a very sound sleeper to someone who wakes up at the slightest sound, and who can deal just fine with constantly interrupted sleep. Last night, I needed to be able to respond when my mom needed some help moving, or getting her water cup, or the dish for her to be able to throw up into. And by respond I mean, wake up and jump to it. So it seems that my previous unsuccessful shopping attempt and my very poor sleeper of a child had prepared me well.

It almost seemed like fate. But when I was out for a run this afternoon I had an insight. I am not at all religious, and to me, that extends to not believing in any sort of force in the universe that is responsible for things. But then how do you explain fate. Fate is just our brains findings patterns. Out of the totality of any human being’s experiences, a subset of them will have some relationship, however tenuous, to any other situation. And the more open you are to seeing positive in even bad events and circumstances, the more likely that you will see the hand of fate at work. So I am choosing to be positive about how my past experiences made and are making this visit easier. No guiding hand at work, just a brain that sees patterns and a heart that is open to seeing things in a more positive light. But you can call it fate if you want to. Since if it hadn’t been for a series of things that lead to my developing a friendship with Althea, I wouldn’t be thinking like this at all.

*Althea is not her real name. She writes under a pen name but I’m not sure what it is, and I don’t want to use her real name to protect her family’s privacy. I chose Althea for a reason though. It’s meaning is very appropriate for her. And not just with respect to her daughter.