Lessons Learned

I told Jody I was thinking I should stop writing this blog. We talked late into the night and Jody said “you have to continue, no matter what comes next, for the sake of our children and their children”.  Well let’s just say I could now see the bottom of the rabbit hole.

I have read a lot of books and I am always fascinated by how the author can paint a word picture of stark emotional honesty. Maybe I had a naïve vision of how “this can’t be so hard, millions of writers do this every day”.  Well I think I need a moment of sober second thought.

Chronicling the ups and downs of our life as we go through this was, in my estimation, a great way to keep all who know and love Jody up to date on her progress.  Unfortunately there is one element of everyone’s life story we all try to ignore.  I know because that’s what I have been doing.  I don’t know if it was a comedian or some dialogue from a movie but this was the summary of life that got my attention, “no one gets out of this alive”.

I guess the hardest part of this experience is to accept that there are two outcomes.  One unspeakable; the other a celebration of beating the odds and living long enough to be a problem for our childrenJ.  I really like the sound of that last part.

Positive thoughts.  Positive outcome. Positive thoughts. Positive outcome. Postive thoughts...

This would be a very good time to change subjects and talk about “Jody the nurse”.  This always makes me think of our early days together.  See, now I am smiling again.

Many of you do not know Jody as a “rock star” nurse.  I use the term rock star in the current vernacular that describes people who are INCREDIBLE; head and shoulders above their contemporaries in their chosen profession.  Jody was that “rock star” nurse.  She graduated near the top of her class and was in the top 3 percentile in Canada on her board exams.  Her specialty was and still is pediatrics.  While she says she liked the challenge of diagnosing people that couldn’t tell her what was wrong, I think she is just a baby nut. 

She was fierce when it came to advocating for her patients and berating doctor’s who didn’t quite know their stuff.  She also still has an uncanny ability to diagnose illnesses.  Those who have experienced this will testify to that but I for one have seen every single time this has occurred.  Many people have said she should hang out a shingle, I agree wholeheartedly.

In her first job (Houston, Texas) she was held up at gunpoint on the ward by two thugs wanting the narcotics keys. It was Halloween and they were dressed in masks.  Jody laughed at them thinking it was some prank until one of the long time local nurses said “honey, that’s a real gun, better give them what they want”.  A week later two guys pulled guns on each other in her apartment.  They apparently were her roommate’s dates for the evening. If you are thinking you may want to relocate to Texas, think again.  It was time to leave Texas and move to Vancouver; that is where we began our life together.

Miracles Do Happen

Vancouver hospital was where all the most traumatic, life threatening pediatric cases in B.C. would go.  There were regular flights in Medivac planes which Jody went on from time to time.  One day their ward got a call from somewhere north of Williams Lake in the interior.  A woman had given birth prematurely at 23 weeks and several days.  The caller asked what they should do with the baby, it was breathing.  The response was “wrap it in a warm towel it should die shortly”.  It was born too early and all the scores and indications for survival were very poor. Seven days later there was a second call, the baby is still alive!  On the tenth day the Medivac plane took this baby down to Vancouver where the combined skills of Jody’s neonatal intensive care unit brought this child back to a point where she could go home after 6 months.  This was a true miracle.

Somewhere in this country there is a thirty year old girl that is a walking miracle.  To give some perspective I just Googled the current earliest survival record, it is 21 weeks and 5 days.

And here is a more recent story that gave Jody chills.

On a quiet afternoon in the early summer of this year Jody was buying some groceries at Battaglia’s on

Lorne Park Rd.

.  A young girl that worked there stopped her and asked if her name was Jody.  When she responded in the affirmative she said “I am alive today because of you”; stunning words to say the least.

Back in the days when Jody worked at Mount Sinai Hospital she was often “floated” to the emergency ward at Sick Kids.  On one particular day an 11 year old showed up and coded. She had a condition that Jody had seen many years ago in Vancouver.  When the doctor’s were saying it was time to give up Jody refused.  The girl’s father said it was like something out of a movie.  The girls was saved by her singular effort.

Rock star?  You better believe it.  Now I am getting chills typing this.

Now for a real moment of serendipity…yesterday before seeing the doctor a fourth year student came in.  One of his first comments was, “you look familiar”. Here’s the connection, his brother (age 30) spent a lot of time at Sick Kid’s Hospital when he was young and that was where he met Jody for the first time.

We humans are strange and wonderful beings, but I do digress…

So now we wait.  A biopsy will be done soon.  We will then have something very real to worry about or blast off into the world of chemotherapy (or both).  Staying positive has now become a full time job. 

Repeat after me, staying positive is a full time job.  Now write it on the blackboard 365 times.