Today Is My Daughter’s Rebirthday
Celebrating the most trying day of my life
Some days we remember like it was yesterday. It’s the emotions that stay with us. Like raw physical feelings of confusion and dread, disbelieving but knowing deep inside that everything is about to be upended. And panic!
Those feelings and more roiled within me that September day, that September 20, 2019. When I went to awaken my disabled daughter Cally, I knew that something was wrong. She had come home early from her day program the day before with some mild gastrointestinal bug that was going around the program. This was no bug though. My brain immediately went into an internal conflict. “There’s something seriously wrong here” competed with “No, don’t over-react. Just calm down and sort this out”. Yes, let my rational medical mind take over from my emotional parent mind. You see, I’m trained as a veterinary internist. My primary area of interest was gastroenterology, mainly in horses on which I specialized, but I also had a broad knowledge of gastroenterology in many species, including humans.
Nevertheless, my parent brain, the part of me that is highly protective of my disabled daughter, kept yelling, “This is bad! This is Bad! Oh, shit, what is it?!” Adding to my distress was that I was alone with my daughter that day. Her mother was on a horse trip in a remote area. I had to figure this out myself, but the panic and confusion within me just kept escalating. I felt paralyzed. Finally, my medical brain agreed with my parent brain, “This is bad. Get her to the emergency room!”
I won’t go into the details of the next several hours in the emergency room, but many will know firsthand that too often your emergency is not the most pressing one at that moment. They did get her on iv fluids, gave her some pain medication, and eventually got her into radiology for an abdominal CT scan. I was able to peek in and see the image of her abdomen. Once again, my medical brain and parent brain were in conflict. My medical brain saw the air in her abdomen, a clear sign of a ruptured or perforated portion of the gut. My parent brain, though, completely dismissed what I had seen. Of course it did, because such a finding indicated that a catastrophic situation was actively ongoing, and no one was acting like it was a matter of the utmost urgency. Of life or death! “It can’t be that bad”, I thought, rather unconvincingly.
Meanwhile, I was told that a surgeon would be consulted and my daughter was moved to a room in ICU. While that seemed like progress, things were happening much too slowly. I saw my daughter’s blood pressure falling. Yeah, this is bad, my medical and parent brains agreed. Finally, the surgeon arrived, a full five hours after my daughter had been admitted to the hospital. The very first words out of her mouth were. “It won’t matter what I do,” not, “Hello, I’m Dr. Olsen”, or “Hello, I’m sorry, but this is a very serious situation for your daughter”. Just “It won’t matter what I do”, words that hung in the air for what seemed like forever. I was stunned! And furious! At least introduce yourself, for God’s sake! My medical brain, though, knew she was right. A rupture of the gut, the stomach in her case, releases billions of bacteria and fungi into the abdominal cavity, setting off a chain reaction that results in severe sepsis. That was why Cally’s blood pressure was falling, among other indicators. When I practiced in an equine referral hospital, we frequently received emergency patients in this condition. More often than not, we recommended euthanasia, because the complications from the contamination of the abdomen were too great to overcome, even with heroic surgery.
That’s why I, just as bluntly, asked if we should just go ahead and euthanize my daughter. Of course, I had no intention of doing that, but it seemed that letting her pass on her own was actually an option that the doctor was proposing in this situation. My question startled the surgeon, who emphatically stated that she was not recommending that, and then she explained why it was such a bad situation. I said, “Look, just do the best you can. Let’s stop this discussion now and just get going on trying to save my daughter. Please!”
Long story short, Cally did have a ruptured stomach, there was a lot of contamination of the abdomen with stomach contents, they flushed the hell out of her abdomen, and they amputated part of the stomach. She spent three weeks in intensive care, and it was intensive. There were a million complications that could and should have occurred, and while it wasn’t smooth sailing, Cally did recover. Fully! No one expected it, and while I am not religious in the conventional sense, I am happy to consider it a miracle. Cally, who by all rights should not have survived such a catastrophic event, truly was reborn!
There was a death that day, though. I was able to finally get in touch with her mother on her remote horse trip and I asked her to come home ASAP. Her daughter could die any hour! When she finally arrived home many hours later, she had an expression that told me everything I needed to know. She wanted out! She just couldn’t do this anymore. Our marriage had gone through some great difficulties recently, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for her. Of course, there is much more to that part of the story, but what matters most is that I have forgiven her, and importantly, Cally, who is intellectually impaired and non-verbal, gave me permission, as clear as can be, to not hold a grudge on her behalf. Another miracle, in my book. So, now Cally and I are together alone. We have gone through her near death, another stomach perforation a few months later, a divorce, the pandemic, and many other situations, great and small, together. Through all of that, I have learned forgiveness, gratitude, acceptance, and peace. I have truly transformed!
Happy rebirthday to you, Cally! And to me!