I am posting the journal entries from my sister’s CaringBridge site (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/tracyslatoncrosson) in order to retain that documentation in our 2014 blog book. Check out the start of the series on my blog with the “My Sister” post.
By Popular Demand
By Ken Crosson — Mar 19, 2014 9:15pm
This website has a counter that shows how many visits it receives. I just came back to the site an hour or so after I posted that journal entry about the found bracelet, and I noticed that the visit counter had jumped up a bit, probably because you all received notices that a new journal entry was posted and you clicked through to get the latest. Well, you deserve better than a desperately-seeking-bracelet-owner post, so here's what's been happening in the past week or so.
Tracy came home on Monday, the 10th. Her stay in inpatient rehab was far shorter than originally expected, and it probably would have been shorter still if it hadn't wrapped around a weekend. Simply put, while Tracy was of course not 100%, she had no deficits, either physical or cognitive, that justified keeping her in intensive rehabilitation.
Physically, she is doing great. She is cautious and a little slow going up and down stairs and gets tired more easily when doing things like housework or holding the baby, and she has added a mid-day nap to her routine. The fatigue is probably the result of both her reduced heart function and the medications she is taking to protect her heart while it heals. The great news about that is that we expect her heart to strengthen back to normal -- or, thanks to improved exercise habits, to better than normal! -- over the course of the next few months, and when that happens she will be able to phase out the medications, so her energy levels should be better than ever by the end of summer.
In order to clear the decks so Tracy can focus on healing, we've put Jake and Zane back into public school (we had been homeschooling them since the middle of Jake's first-grade year). Homeschooling had been Tracy's biggest job, and it was a doozy. Well, Zane is absolutely loving elementary school, and having spoken to his principal today it sounds like elementary school loves him back. Jake is working hard to figure out the routines and complexities of middle school, but he seems to be enjoying it -- and on his first science test, on just his third day of school, he brought home a 95!
Tracy's parents are still in town and are tackling the task of getting the littles off to school in the mornings, and I drive Jake to swimming three days a week and then take him on to school. As a result, the switch to public school has made Tracy's days very relaxing, which is exactly what she needs.
Cognitively, Tracy's doing almost as well as she is physically, although her planning skills are degraded and she still finds herself perplexed by basic math. Apparently her multiplication tables didn't make the return trip from the twilight zone, because today she was trying to help Zane with his homework and she had to call her father in for help with 7 x 3. She knows she SHOULD know this stuff, and she knows she USED TO know this stuff, but she just doesn't know it now. (Well, she knows 7 x 3 now, at least.) I think she's doing better with new memories, but her retention is still imperfect and we sometimes repeat a conversation shortly after having it the first time. (Lest you worry that I'm revealing embarrassing information about Tracy in this journal, she's sitting right next to me as I write this and I'm reading every word to her -- and she thinks her newfound struggles with math are kind of funny.)
The dust has not yet settled enough for me to be deeply reflective on these events -- while being self-employed means I have the flexibility I need to focus on my family when a crisis hits, it also means that when I turn my attention away from my work for an extended period clients stop coming in, so with things having calmed down a bit I am scrambling to stoke the business development fires and find more clients -- but as strange as it sounds, and leaving aside if we can the temporary death and whatever injuries Tracy has for now, they reveal our family as being profoundly blessed.
First, Tracy flat-out died and then came back, even though the statistics on cardiac arrest say that the odds were 19-to-1 in favor of her staying dead. Then she woke up with her intelligence, awareness, and every essential aspect of her personality intact, even though EEGs and stone-faced warnings from her doctors ("...early signs of moderate to severe brain injury...") had prepared us for the possibility that if she woke up she would be significantly handicapped. Then she improved at such a rate that she got sent home from the hospital weeks earlier than the best-case scenarios had projected. As unbelievable as her initial collapse was, her recovery from such a catastrophe has been even more incredible. I am not numbered among the world's most devout believers, but I genuinely believe we benefited from a miracle, and I will say so to anyone.
Along the way to that miracle we learned that Tracy is deeply loved by an awful lot of people. So many have done so much for us it would take too much space to acknowledge everybody, but everything from car rides to visits to meals to grocery shopping to outright financial support has poured in from all around us, easing every burden that could possibly be eased from the outside, and protecting our entire family from some of the nasty consequences that could have piled on us during this ordeal.
Many mothers have contributed to feeding our baby; one in particular we will spend a long time trying to thank properly, because she has supplied us -- and has offered to continue to supply us for a good while -- with all the milk our little one can drink (and then some), and as a result that baby is about as healthy, well-fed, and happy as a baby can be. If nothing else had been done for us except for this extraordinary gift of life-sustaining food for our helpless and beautiful daughter it would still be overwhelming. On top of everything else, it has brought me to my knees in gratitude.
Our friends have taken it upon themselves to organize multiple fundraisers for our family, and the response has been mind-blowing. Hundreds of people have made donations: Friends, and family, and colleagues, and people we don't even know. They've come from as close as right next door, and as far away as the other side of the world. They've come from people we talk to on a daily basis, and from people we haven't spoken to in years. One of my favorite people from college sent a contribution, even though (regretfully) I don't think I've spoken with her since graduation; another came from a girl I had a crush on in fifth grade (she knows who she is). The whole notion of fundraising to support my family makes me shudder, honestly, but while I'm being honest I also should admit that the past four weeks would have been far, far worse without the financial support we've received, and continue to receive, from these many generous people. Those hundreds of contributions -- some small, but some pretty substantial -- have added up to a significant safety net for my family. We cannot pay it back, but I promise that in time we will pay every penny forward, and then some.
Now, as if all the above weren't enough, Tracy is about to be made a cover girl by popular demand. Her friends got her in as a last-minute entry in a cover contest for Little Black Dress/Little Red Wagon magazine, a Cobb County quarterly that was looking for an extraordinary mom to feature in its next edition. Those same friends rallied the voters in her behalf, and Tracy won the contest by an astounding margin. In addition to an extensive prize pack, she will get a mini makeover and then sit for a professional photo shoot next Saturday. Yes, there probably was some ballot box stuffing (I'm pretty sure her 6,800+ votes didn't come from 6,800+ different people), but that just shows that the love for her is both broad and deep. Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for the magazine -- I will post something here when it's available.
Finally, there have been suspicious incidents of sheer good luck. Today Tracy and her mom went out to get their hair done by Challise Copeland at Challise & Company in Marietta. (For the record, Tracy's is the best haircut she's had since I've known her, and Tracy's mom was talking about coming back from Florida whenever she needs a haircut from now on -- and I think she was half joking, at the very most.) Anyway, Challise's salon sponsored today's Northeast Cobb Business Association luncheon, and they gave away a slew of door prizes. There was one separate drawing for a massive grand prize good for a whole array of spa services, and I put Tracy's name on my ticket. I'll leave you to guess whose name was drawn from the bowl at the end of the meeting. Unbelievable.
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