I brought my dads watch home with me when I left. I am pretty sure it is the same Timex watch with a plastic strap that he bought at a KMART in Florida a few years back when we were going on a family cruise, – the cover photo of this blog was taken on that cruise, much hilarity was had by all. Dad is never able to wear rings or expensive watches because he is constantly doing something, usually dangerously misguided, like welding with his shirt off or pouring corrosive sealants onto unsuspecting objects. I have been picking at what seems to be red anti-rust paint that is splattered all over the edge and strap. The plastic face is totally scratched and I can only imagine how many times it has been ground, clobbered and pummelled onto hard surfaces. The strap still has a faded MADE IN CHINA gold sticker on it, which always strikes me as funny that they make those stickers in shiny gold because nothing says quality like a MADE IN CHINA sticker. Overall its a pretty shitty watch and I love it.

The doctor gave Mum and Trudy some sobering news this morning. He is highly concerned about the healing potential of the screws into the bone due to how brittle the spondylosis has made them along with the fact that there are signs of osteoporosis, creating a very porous and vascular structure. He is worried and is all out of alternate options. We are worried. He is managing expectations by giving us a solid 50/50 prognosis. He will be in the ICU for at least another 2 weeks. It could be longer. My stomach is living in a tight ball of twine knotted somewhere behind my ribcage and heart. Everything feels like it is totally where it shouldn’t be. Most especially my dad.

His mood is not great, the uncertainty of all of this is taking its toll, on all of us. My Dad and I pray to a very similar place. My sister and my Mum pray to the very same person. The truth is in the end it all boils down to the same thing, love and hope in this unsettlingly volatile world. If there is such a thing as a miracle we really need to have all of the stops pulled out now and for it to get here as fast as it can.

We know nothing yet, outside of the hope and knowledge that Jim has already overcome things in life that could crumble most giants. I cling to this idea right now and tighten this watch strap.

Get here as fast as you can, Miracle. We are waiting for you.

One more night down. I am in a spiral of projecting, with childlike inaccuracy, how I felt to be silent and restrained in an ICU 30 years ago. It is not terribly productive to consider the circumstances to be the same.

My return flight home is booked this morning, so instead of sitting here vibrating nervously inside and thinking silly warped thoughts of loneliness and panic, I am going to take the time to go home (Toronto) and get some work, home and life items sorted out. I will come back in a week for an earlier extended Christmas stay, when I can be of actual help when he is out of the ICU and back on the ward and then home.

Having also originally only packed a back pack with a few items, thinking the stay would likely be a few days, I am devastatingly sporting a sort of homeless chic that is starting to be all homeless and no chic. Time to regroup.

I spent some time with Dad this morning and he was stable and resting. It must be mind numbingly frustrating for him to not be able to communicate at all and this more than anything is wearing on us the most.

I board my flight soon and promise to continue to update everyone as I plan to stay in constant contact.

Jim, you are strong and triple so to what you can even fathom. You can do this. You will be back home again, excessively fawning over your orchids and lolling around in your pool and watching wood burn in the fire-pit and sleeping in your bed and cooking for your friends and creating ridiculous machines in your workshop and driving your steam engine and growling at your grand children and yelling for Kareen for no reason and firing all of those god dam cannons.

Fight.

This is the X-ray of the newly installed plate. The madness of all this science baffles me. How you study medicine and think to yourself “I am going to specialise in one of the most intricate and complexly important areas of the body” is remarkable to me. I mean, I could totally do that, with my eyes closed.
But whatever I will let the surgeon have this one.

We had a rough day as he is pretty uncomfortable and isolated in the ICU. He is not able to move or talk at the moment, but what he really needs is to rest and let the bones heal, fuse and get strong. Being still is not one of my dad’s fortes. I am sending him gluey, healing, cement bonding type thoughts.
We want that plate and bone to become one and the same. Strong, stronger, strongest.

He is so far stable in ICU, he still has a tube in his throat so he is not able to speak just yet. We are working with some elaborate eye blinking and eyebrow signals for responses, which are entertaining at best. I have gotten a few smiles as well, to help defrost my heart. I told him that I knew he would not die yesterday as sadly Nelson Mandela had passed away and I knew he would certainly not want to share the limelight. He liked that.
He has moved and can feel (so far) his right hand. He also shrugged his shoulders for me which he seemed quite pleased with himself for. Early days yet for that and the ICU doc seems quite hopeful. Pray, hope, pray.

He is very calm so far and seems to be getting some sleep which is magnificent. Again…pray, hope, pray that he can remain calm and endure the tedium of this next stage.

Each of us is dealing so differently with our stress responses;
My super power apparently, is to alternate between being calmly supportive and crying. But mostly i seem to be best at good old fashioned ugly crying. Should anyone here require any tears, I am your gal. I have all of them.

Trudy is excellent at getting it done. Doing the mountains of required paperwork, making arrangements, calls, planning. She is a rock of practicality and function. Waiting around is the worst for her I think and in true spirit of always needing to do something, she manages to immediately need to use the washroom once the stress creeps in through the barricade of love, prayers and blanketed hope we are all trying to hide under.

I cry and she toilets.

Kareen responds to each new element of this saga by being strong, practical and using her nursing background to compartmentalize and deal with each new hurdle. She is also still able to be a total mom, trying to have me sit on her lap when I stopped holding it together in the emergency waiting room. I am a 35 year old woman, currently sporting a rather frizzy humidity induced afro and permanent cry face. Its pretty much the scene for a Hallmark card.

The prayers, support and love are certainly felt. All we can do now is wait.

“Sleeping” on the brown leather reclining couch in our room. Yesterday was likely the second longest day of my life and the green glowing numbers on the digital clock on the shelf have been taunting me since about 3:14am. What a useless time 3am is when all you can do is wonder about things that you have no control over. Like “I hope he is he ok” “Will this recovery be better than the last?” and “How many people have sat their bums on this couch?”

I keep thinking about him in his ICU bed and hoping he is not lonely. They have him very well monitored and someone is with him always, it’s just not us. I went to see him just before stupid 4am but he was sleeping. (Yet another pointless early morning hour. ) Mum is going to go in to talk to him while they do his vitals at 5 so I am sure he will like that.

She can explain to him, as only she can, that the tube in his throat is temporary and his movement will come back once his spine has had more time to heal.

Everything happens for a reason and obviously there was some reason that he needed to have a bigger plate. Perhaps cannon firing requires something that could stand a bit more torque, so this is for the best overall.

One more day.

He is in the ICU now and will likely be for the next 4-5 days.
They were able to go in and remove the smaller, plate and install the new larger one. His spine was compressed by the dislodged bone which was causing paralysis elbows down this afternoon. The new plate is held in with 8 screws and covers C4 to T3, which is apparently significantly larger than the last one, his bones are very brittle, due to his pre existing condition, and the Dr did say there are no guarantees that the screws will not dislodge again in the future. But the larger plate with the extra screws and a much more sedated healing stretch should allow for the bones to fuse and help with the overall strengthening. It’s going to be a long road and he is going to have to take it EASY!

Again, he has pulled through another unimaginable set of circumstances. Unreal. Right now he is stable and being very well cared for in the ICU.

Too exhausted right now, but will update more tomorrow.

He is in surgery now. Not sure how long they expect to be. Will update when we hear from the doctor. He has all of our love.

The lower screws of the titanium plate have broken off from the bone, due to the shape of his neck and how brittle his bones are. He goes back into emergency surgery around 6pm tonight. There is some new cage, graph, plate or contraption that they can try.

A whole new wave of strength is needed but instead we all feel calmly numb and simply pray. This extended nightmare must be happening for some reason, everything happens for some reason. I wish we could fast forward to that part where we are all on the other side of this at home, together, whole and healthy.

Back at St. Clair he had a bad turn this morning. Dr came to the house and was not pleased with progress and some new symptoms that appeared today.

Every single prayer is needed.
Will try to update more as we know.

In times of turmoil and uncertainty it seems so much easier to learn things that perhaps you already knew, but never fully processed. I am learning the following:

My mother is a tireless human. She has the energy of a small village who’s water source is clearly laced with Redbull and caffeine.

My hatred for mosquitoes knows no limits. They serve no functional purpose in my life, besides to fester my eternal hatred and bite me with infuriating accuracy. In other news we have lots of mosquitoes at home. All of the mosquitoes live in my parents house. No one else seems affected. I believe there to be some sort of conspiracy going on.

I have no issues lying to small children. Things like “sorry, there is no more ice cream” and “we can’t go in the pool because it’s sleeping” simply roll off my tongue. “Don’t climb up that rock” somehow didn’t occur to me.

Tiny nephews concentrating on making tiny plastic frogs jump into a dish,  – a game that belonged to me as a child – *my mother is clearly a hoarder* –  however do make everything so very much better. 

My Dad is so strong and so determined that I don’t think a traffic jam of oxen could stop him.

His new, at home physiotherapist, came for our 1st visit and was simply amazing. He gave us all the confidence that with his huge bank of knowledge and experience he would have Jim walking again and eventually back to full ability and range. All that is good in the universe, I bow to you.

The physio guy had some electrode type contraptions that he used to activate all his muscle synapses and help to get all the nerve endings firing again. Trudy has decided that we should use it on her abs. She is an idiot going to have a six pack in no time.

The session was over an hour and he really got a huge workout, which was amazing! We were even able to get him into the wheelchair and have a little meander around the house and sit to watch the sunset.

He got tired, but not as quickly as could be expected, and truly the only thing missing was some wine and cheese.

Seeing him in his favourite spot on the front porch, encased (for the 1st time in over a week) in fresh air and the glow of the setting sun made me happier and more hopeful than I could have hoped.

One more day closer.