Mom's dozing and I'm playing catch up

I'm just going to take a few minutes to write a quick update.  Mom's dozing, and I'm trying to get a little caught up on things around here.  This post is a little personal, but I want to open up a little and let you all know what's going on with me.

If you haven't heard already, I got pretty badly burned a few days ago.

I wasn't having a good day.

The burn happened just a few minutes after I choked, and both those things really made an impression on me about how unexpectedly short life might be, and about how important it is to be prepared, and mostly, about how important we all are to those who love and need us.

The choking happened when I was putting away some chicken that I'd boiled on the stove.  I'd lifted the chicken out of the water, and I'd turned the heat up to start boiling the liquid down for borth.  Then, I picked a couple pieces off the chicken to nibble on.  I was in a hurry, and I swallowed one piece too quickly.  I remember thinking as it was going into my throat, just as it was too late, that the piece was way bigger than I'd realized.  After a second, I knew that I was in trouble.  I couldn't breathe, I couldn't yell.   I couldn't even choke.  I was just standing in the kitchen with the refrigerator door hanging open and the container of chicken in my hand.  I'd put the lid on it, and I'd gotten it midway to the fridge.  I was frozen in that moment in time.

Stephan was sleeping upstairs - he'd had an early morning job - and he'd just gotten home a little while before, and David was watching a movie upstairs.  I knew that I had to get upstairs because that's where all the arms that could perform the Heimlich were located.  (Side note:  Amanda is planning to review with me how to do a self-Heimlich using a chair . . . )

It seems, as I think back on it, that it took a long time, and I remember everything in slow motion, but it must have been almost instantly that I was bounding silently up the stairs.  I couldn't make a sound.  Everything in memory of it is so silent.  It's terrifying to think about.

And then unexpectedly, halfway up the stairs, the meat was in my mouth instead of in my throat.  I could breathe again.  I was shaking all over, and I still start shaking when I think about it.  I'm shaking now, days later, as I type it up.

Life is really not a sure thing.

So, a few minutes after I'd choked, while I'm still shaky and not thinking very clearly, I decide to sip some chicken broth to try to calm down, and I ladled boiling broth into a coffee cup.  I turned and picked my devotional up off the island so I can read it while I sip, and pray, and calm down some.  Then, without any warning at all, the broth is all over the front of my shirt, and I'm burning.  I ripped my shirt off and ran to the bathroom to lean over the sink and have cold water run over the burn.  My skin blistered right before my eyes.   I can think of no words to describe the feeling this gives a person.

I think I might have already been in shock, and I just sunk.  I couldn't function.  I didn't know what to do.  I called my mom-in-law (Thank God she answered her phone), because I was paralyzed.  She told me what to do, and hung up and did it.

Things happen so fast.  You can't know what the next moment will bring.

I learned that it's important to have things around the house like burn pads and big bandages and that's it's important to review things, like the Heimlich maneuver.

I learned that I'm fragile, and I need to be more careful with myself.  I learned that maxims like:  "Chew before you swallow" and "Hot! Hot! Careful!" are words of wisdom.

But, mostly, I learned that I can count on those I love to be there for me.  David and Stephan both offered to drive to CVS to pick up burn pads for me.  My mother-in-law told me quickly what to do.  Mommy spent most of the evening trying to get out of her chair and worrying over me.  (Even after she forgot that I'd burned myself.  She just wanted to get up.  She knew that somebody needed help.)

I'm still really woozy, even today.  I keep making mistakes.  (I've burned mom's oatmeal TWICE in the last few days!)  I couldn't figure out how to make an angle cut in the right direction with Stephan's skill saw.  Then, I was shocked when he came home and turned the board over and made the cut.  He teased me . . . asking me if the hormones I'm taking (progesterone) are "female" hormones . . ."  implying that I'm making myself a little more stupidly feminine.  :-)

I'm not myself even yet.  Maybe it takes a few days to recover from a shock, but, in a way I'm more myself than I've ever been because I realized that I'm really important.  I haven't thought very positively about my own value for the last couple years as I've looked to my past with so much regret and shame.

But, in a moment of clarity when I thought I was going to die, I realized that if something happened to me, you guys would miss me.  I'm not perfect, but I am missable.  And, Mommy needs me.  I think many of us who have a tendency toward melancholy, as I do, . .  those of us like that often think as Orlando voiced in "As You Like It" just before he entered the ring with the king's wrestler.  (He is responding to the ladies who are begging him not to do this foolish thing):


"I beseech you, punish me not with your hard

thoughts; wherein I confess me much guilty, to deny

so fair and excellent ladies any thing. But let

your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my

trial: wherein if I be foiled, there is but one

shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one

dead that was willing to be so: I shall do my

friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me, the

world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only in

the world I fill up a place, which may be better

supplied when I have made it empty."


But, he was wrong. He was valuable, as are we all, faults and all.