What Now?

I am not sure why I was hesitant and struggling to put this next series of events on paper. My previous story titled Ninja Down was hard enough to process because I was reliving all the emotions associated with those memories. The reluctance this time is because it involves my parents and what happened to them. They came to see me while I was in the hospital because my first surgery didn’t go as planned and the situation became serious very quickly. So, part of me feels guilty that they had to experience what they did. Revisiting this portion of events is difficult to swallow again. I have honestly been putting it off but I need to tell it so you can get the full story. So here it goes.

It is December 2007 and after my two surgeries to remove my brain tumor, I get released from the hospital almost a month later and off we go back to Breckenridge to try and enjoy what is left of the Christmas holiday. We had a real Christmas tree this year which barely fit in our tiny one-bedroom apartment. We were happy to have mom and dad there with us and this was honestly the first time they had been in Colorado and seen real snow and mountains. It was only a couple of days later when mom went into the bathroom in the middle of the night, and we heard a crash. My boyfriend rushes in but she is laying on the floor up against the door but somehow manages to get in and she is passed out. She fainted and fell back against the towel bar. So, we are calling 911 and Emergency Services take mom to the Emergency Room. Meanwhile, I am still recovering from my brain tumor surgeries and still very weak and having difficulty with my mobility. It was the next day or so (still fuzzy on the timeframe) and suddenly I am having a fever and experiencing one of the worse pains in my head that I honestly thought I was going to die. I think I was welcoming death just to get over the pain. So again, Emergency Services arrives, and I was told that as soon as they walked into the apartment, they were asking weren’t we just here? Well, after a brief explanation that they were there a day or so earlier to take mom, I am off to the Emergency Room.

Now I am in the Emergency Room and my mom is upstairs in her room after the back surgery she needed after her fall. So let me rewind a bit. At this time, I am employed at the Summit County Sheriff’s Office so when the call came into Dispatch that I was the one in need of help, it set off the alarm to the local law enforcement agencies and next thing you know, the Emergency Room is flooded with the Deputies from work and officers from the local Police Agencies. My boyfriend who was not too fond of law enforcement officers was overwhelmed by the turnout. The Sheriff himself (my boss) came to see me and even went upstairs to check on my mom and dad. After the Emergency Room Physician contacted the Neurosurgeon who did my surgeries a couple of weeks prior, it was decided that I would be transported back to Denver. So, my mom is in the hospital in Frisco Colorado, and I am going back to the hospital in Denver Colorado. This was not how I had planned us spending the Christmas holidays. I ended up having an infection, so I was there for a few more days until I was discharged on Christmas Eve. We ended up being stranded in Denver because the I70 highway was closed due to severe weather and blizzard conditions. On top of that, my mom was also scheduled to be released from the hospital in Frisco on the same day. The Undersheriff from work was kind enough to go pick up my parents from the hospital and take them to my apartment.

While we were waiting for me to get discharged, my boyfriend receives a call from the on-site management of our apartment building with news that our apartment had flooded. In our bathroom, we had a fan in the wall, and it was so cold that the fan door on the outside was frozen open so the water in the toilet tank froze and cracked. It flooded the apartment and who knows how long it was like that. It was not until my parents arrived that they saw, and the Undersheriff notified the onsite managers. My parents are now sitting in my flooded apartment while the managers are scrambling to deal with the flood and keep them warm and comfortable at the same time. We finally make it home and I am barely aware of what is going on and not in the best mental and physical state. I am trying to process what is happening and I managed to get the idea to contact a friend of mine who worked at the property management company that I used to work at, and they were kind enough to set us up in a two-bedroom condominium in the meantime. So off we go to a temporary place to stay and most importantly, it had a fireplace which is one thing we had never had. Leave it up to my parents to find the bring side of things. They had never flown before and they were in the mid 70’s so they were happy with that experience. They were also excited to see snow (being from South Texas there isn’t much snow there) and to have a white Christmas.  In the meantime, I was worried about them and how they were taking in these stressful events and chaos and honestly anxious to get them back home to Texas. We were able to stay in this condominium until mom and dad left to go back to Texas which I think was within a week. Then we were off to another condo that we were able to rent temporarily.  I was finally able to breathe a little since mom and dad left then we had to deal with the fact that we were homeless.

My boyfriend then decided that it would be best that I also fly back to Texas so he could handle the mess with the apartment and find us a new place to live. I hated to leave him to deal with this alone, but we really had no choice since I was still trying to recover, and I could not physically handle moving from place to place until we found a new home. I immediately flew to Houston to stay with my sister and her family to recuperate. It was good to be in a warmer climate and to have a break from the snow. I don’t think the harsh weather we were having back home was helping me in any way. I’m grateful that I got to spend time with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephews. I really needed to be surrounded by family because I was feeling lonely and weak from not only the physical stress of everything that just took place, but also feeling mentally drained.  I just had to concentrate on taking care of myself and getting my mobility back to normal. During my time with my sister, a friend had come to visit me, and she gave me a gift of a turtle stuffed animal. She gave that to me because she heard I was moving around slowly like a turtle. I still have that turtle to this day, and it has been a source of comfort and a reminder of how far I have come.

I stayed with my sister for a few weeks and then received notification from my boyfriend that he found us an apartment. This was the beginning of the year in February and the worse time of the season to be looking for a rental in Summit County. I needed to get back home to finish recuperating to see if I would be able to return to work by the end of February as scheduled. I was on short-term disability from the start of my medical leave and was anxious to get back to work and to some normalcy.

Upon my return home, I was pleased with our new apartment and how much bigger it was. It had amazing views and a huge deck that was so nice to sit out on. We were living outside of Breckenridge which I enjoyed more than I thought. It was an actual neighborhood and a lot quieter than where we lived in Breckenridge. I needed a quiet place to regroup and try to figure out what my life was going to be like now that I was diagnosed with Secondary Adrenal Insufficiency, Hypothyroidism, and having to adjust to being partially blind now. During one of the surgeries, they had to move my optic nerves, so which caused Traumatic Optic Nerve Neuropathy. I lost my peripheral vision and half of my central vision which meant that I was no longer able to drive. I had to relinquish my driver’s license and get a state identification card instead. This was part of my independence taken away from me that was difficult to accept. Especially since I had just bought a brand-new Toyota truck not even 6 months prior. These medical diagnoses were overwhelming to me, and I still did not understand what all this meant other than my life was going to change and consist of multiple visits to my Physicians and Specialists. In addition, I needed to get back to my full-time job at the Sheriff’s Office, and in my mind, I was going to just jump back in and pick up where I left off. Much to my surprise, I was in for a rude awakening.