Just some humor for today 😆 I was thinking of something that happened this past spring and wanted to tell you guys, because as usual for us it was both horrifying and funny. We were on a walk around our neighborhood, either during our Covid quarantine period for the kids or shortly after. The ground was still wet in places, and snow filled the ditches of our dirt road. We have a great Golden Retriever named Blue. At the time he wasn't quite 2, and we wanted to bring him on our walks with us. This wasn't something that was easy. We never taught him not to pull on the leash. He was wild! On this particular day I took the stroller, and Patrick spent half a mile wrestling Blue into a semblance of submission, but did so at the expense of his body. It was hard work. Blue is 70 pounds and his chest and shoulders ripple with muscle when he pulls at the leash. We had no idea what was going to happen. Patrick suddenly stopped and told me something was happening. I think he let go of the leash and I called to Laura to grab it and hang onto Blue. Then Patrick went down on one knee, and then the other. Of course, I knew what was happening. He knew it also. He braced himself on the stroller tray, probably thinking he was going to rest for a moment and then get back up. But that's when he lost consciousness. His arm slipped down into Samuel's lap and hooked the tray. I had to make a split second decision, and I grabbed Patrick's arm as the stroller began to tip. He is much too heavy for me to control simply by having a hold on his arm, so I dislodged it from the stroller tray and he went down, forehead-first into the cold, frozen gravel. We found out later that his heart had stopped. From what I've seen, when he is unconscious and his defibrillator gives a strong shock, his body doesn't give any indication that anything is happening. I got down beside him and slapped his face. I slapped it and slapped, slapped some more, calling his name in a loud but calm tone because I had a toddler and three young girls watching my every move. I very nearly started screaming, wondering if a neighbor would hear me. He came to, his eyes fluttering until they were open, looking up at me in those few moments after unconsciousness when he is disoriented and needs to get his bearings. After a moment he spoke, sat up, and eventually rose to his knees. Then he said his face hurt. I'm kind of giggling as I write this, because this is where we find humor in the unimaginable. I had to tell him, "It was either your face or the entire stroller." I had to explain that I let him fall so he wouldn't drag Samuel down with him. He was digging small rocks out of his face for the next couple of days, giving me side eye and halfheartedly joking that I didn't take good enough care of him during an episode. When waking up from losing consciousness, where any other time he mostly feels the abnormal sensations in his chest, this time he awoke bleeding from his face. He knew he had lowered himself to the ground, but he didn't know it wasn't far enough that the remainder of his descent was carefully, safely orchestrated. He went down like... well, a dead weight. Boom. I felt the vibration in the ground when he hit. And all he did for days afterwards was whine about how I wasn't strong enough 😂 What a brat. I would say, "Your eye socket did its job. Your eye is fine, right?!" Some of you may wonder how the kids feel about all of this. Maybe one day I'll compile a list of questions and record an interview. I think that would be interesting, to see how all their answers differ. But for now I'm 100% sure they take their cues from me. If I'm calm, they are calm. If I don't fall apart, they don't fall apart. That's not to say we hide things from them. We have told them when the defibrillator has brought Patrick back to life. We have told them all about the times when they are asleep and the medics come into the house with their heavy boots and equipment and loud voices, and the girls sleep right through it. We tell them Patrick is headed for a transplant. And we tell them we love them. Over and over. We laugh. We joke. We tease. We keep life fun, even when our family is facing, as I said before, an unimaginably difficult future. What is to come, we don't know. So we choose humor and love. Never stop laughing! Always find reasons to smile! I don't know if I have said this before, but in 2007 when Patrick had his bypass in Anchorage, I was able to visit him in the recovery room. His eyes were closed, he was full of tubes and wires, but he was conscious. I told him I loved him. His response? He signed, "I love you," gave me the bird, and then showed me an obscene gesture - all with one hand. It's all he could move. But that's how I knew he was going to be okay. Pat The Brat is a survivor ❤
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