Am I Going To Live?
I’ve been quiet for a while now. It hasn’t felt right to publish anything and quite frankly, I haven’t had the emotional space to sit and put my feelings into writing. But today I do. Two weeks ago, today, I found out that my nephew had been to the ER for what appeared to be Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF). Duke University Hospital sent him home with antibiotics. Four days later, he was laying in the ER with his dad on Father’s Day. It took them the better part of the day to diagnose Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis, which is very, very serious.
I am one of five children, and this was my brother Goob (Dustin’s) son, Dusty, his youngest of three boys. For reference, this is the brother that I wanted to marry when I was younger. I followed him everywhere (literally) and still would follow him around if he didn’t live in North Carolina! We both have three boys, we love the outdoors, we have been sober for twenty years, and we have a very deep connection.
I woke up Monday am to the text messages letting us know what was happening. My mind went to the worst-case scenario. Even as I write this, I feel myself holding my breath. Before surgery that morning (to relieve the blood clot behind his eye and clean out the infection in his nose), they got confirmation that he did indeed have RMSF. I could feel myself wanting to cry. I kept trying to imagine my brother, sitting by his bedside since the day before, waiting to find out what was wrong and then realizing the severity of what was going on. I tried to imagine if it were my baby or any of my boys. I had to go for a run. I couldn’t deal with the energy building inside of me.
While I was running my mom sent a text and asked that we do a silent prayer vigil for Dusty as soon as they took him for surgery. We all agreed. A few minutes later they texted and said, “they are taking him back now.” I was already running at this point and my heart was pounding so fast. I stopped. I was standing in the middle of a major intersection and I just cried. I didn’t care. It had to come out. I closed my eyes. I prayed over and over and over again. The pressure released from my chest and a peace came over me. I looked up to the sky and I felt a sense of peace.
Later that day, I wrote to my sister-in-law and asked how she was doing (really). She said she was trying her best but that she was glad she let my brother stay with her baby the night before because she would have cracked when he asked his dad, “Am I going to live?” I felt it right in my gut. I couldn’t imagine hearing my baby ask me that question.
The surgery was a reported success. He was fine for a day after and then he woke up with a fever and throbbing headache again. More tests revealed that he was fighting two different kind of staph infections, too. It was all just too much. Infectious Disease had to monitor his antibiotics because they were so strong. How much more could his body take?
We all sat tethered to our phones and waiting for the updates that they were so gracious in sending in every few hours. My whole family was on pins and needles. I just wanted to be there. Be with them. Talk to them. Tell them it was going to be ok. But was it? I mean, was it really going to be ok? Because in situations like this, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do except wait. And after a pandemic and season of waiting (and waiting….and waiting….) it felt like a cruel joke. But we had no choice. We just sat and waited and prayed. For thirteen long days and nights.
He showed very slow improvement and many ups and downs. After what felt like surely it must already be 2021, Dusty, our little warrior, was released to go home on Friday evening of last week. He will be on IV antibiotics and shots of blood thinners for at least the foreseeable future. They are on a “wait and see” if he will recover eyesight in his eye. He will continue to recover, it’s just a matter of how long and what the long-term effects will be.
As with any trauma, there is a point at which (once you know you are somewhat out of immediate danger) you start reflecting on the hell you have just been through. I know that my brother and his wife will be doing this for the long foreseeable future. For me, the reflection continues to come from the question he asked that fateful night in the ER with his dad. “Am I going to live?”
This little warrior didn’t want to know if he was going to die, he wanted to know if he was going to live. I can’t get it out of my head. It has been twirling around for two weeks. A 12-year-old asking this question is just preposterous. It’s gut wrenching. It’s unfair. It must have broken my brother in the moment but maybe, just maybe he sees what I’m starting to grasp. Is it preposterous? Or did his little soul know he needed the answer in order to get right with the fight that was coming?
The more I ponder it, the more I feel the weight of this question. At one point or another, in all of our lives, we have been faced or will be faced with an impossible challenge. A death, a divorce, a loss of friendship, hitting rock-bottom with an addiction or any other massive emotional challenge. There is the place of rock bottom, and then there is the reckoning. At the very bottom of rock bottom there is a tiny space that opens up. This space is the question of “where am I going to go from here” or for argument’s sake, “Am I going to live or am I going to die?”
From personal and professional experience, how we answer that question determines how we survive, thrive, or die in response to life’s major downturns.
I think about January of 2014 when the depression of my marriage weighed me down so much, I thought I would never get out of bed. I stood at the edge and had to make the impossible choice of raising my boys part time instead of full time and not tucking them into bed every night. Today, I coach people who are in transitions in their lives that are painful and help them find their way to the other side. Yes, I am going to live.
I think of my best friend on the planet, Sarah, losing her dad in 2005. She walked through his lung cancer, going back and forth between Durham and D.C. to make sure she saw every bit of him she could. She held his hand as he said goodbye and his heart stopped. Part of her died that day. In 2011, she and her husband walked through the death of his sister, Sidney, who left behind three kids due to a brain tumor. The grief of this family could have broken her. But, instead, she trained and has become the BEST grief therapist that the world has to offer. Yes, I am going to live.
I think of Nimi, my best friend in Texas. How she tried and tried to have a baby. Each attempt throwing her further into a place of darkness. Then getting pregnant only to lose the baby to miscarriage. How much she wanted to give up. To give in. Then bravely deciding seven years later to try again. And it worked. She got pregnant. Then she literally almost died giving birth to that child. Her husband watched as she lost consciousness and coded right in her very hospital room. They spent hours keeping her alive, and somewhere deep inside of her, once again, through her long and painful journey, she made up her mind, yes, she was going to live.
I think about a woman I knew from Kenosha, WI. One of the first mom friends I met at a boot camp class at the gym, Lyndsay. We would dump our babies in the daycare and chit chat before and after class. She was a mom to three boys, which I would eventually become too. In May 2018, her oldest son, Cameron, was involved in a car accident on his way to school and died. Being a mom of three boys, this story has haunted me, and touched me so deeply. I have watched, almost obsessively at how this woman has publicly unveiled her pain and suffering and continued to be an incredible mom to her other two sons. At some deep level, and I’m not privy to her private thoughts or life, she decided that despite all the pain, that yes, she was going to live.
I think about my friend Lauren whom I’ve been so lucky to grow in friendship with here in Texas. She’s one of the cool moms. The ones who train for Iron Men and make having four boys look like a walk in the park! One night during our sons’ football game I asked her if she was the mom that wanted all boys or did she wish for a little girl? She said, “I actually had a daughter and she died.” I couldn’t breathe. My eyes filled with tears. She tried to comfort ME! Are you kidding me? You are still standing upright and you lost a baby? She bravely told me the story of how her sitter laid her precious seven-month-old E’lynn to nap one day and the sweet angel suffocated in her sleep. I think inside, how does one come back from that? How do you wake up and actually get out of bed? She had two other boys at the time and unbeknownst to her, was pregnant with her fourth already. At a very deep level, despite what none of us can actually imagine, she decided that yes, I am going to live.
This question. This damn question. I felt broken by it when my sister in law told me Dusty had asked his dad in the dark of the night. It felt cruel and unfair that my brother had to hear his 12-year-old ask this question on Father’s Day of all days.
Yet, the weight and burden of this question, after careful thought, has transformed in my mind. Looking at all of my people that I have known and had the privilege to care about in this life, I realize that each of them, when the dark of the night reached them, when their souls had been broken by the unimaginable pain and suffering that life will eventually bring to all of us, they were faced with this question. This question in my mind is now the hallmark proof of someone who has been to hell and back and decided that despite it all (the pain, the suffering, the grief), the answer to the question, “Am I going to live?” is unequivocally, yes.
And now, my sweet nephew Dusty, at a very young age, gets to join the rest of the light chasers in this world because he decided in that hospital bed that he was going to live. He defied the odds of walking out of the hospital healthy and normal, and now he is set free in the world to decide who and what he will do with his precious life.
Until Next Time,
