The Ferrett (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} theferrett) wrote,@ 2004-04-02 09:30:00 |
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| Current mood: |  worried |
Medical Emergencies - Please help
This essay is a request for help. I ask that you please don't skim it this time.
Essay starts:
"You talked to your Mom about us?" Gini asked, incredulous. She was angry, because I had sat down with my mother and asked for advice on what I was doing wrong in our marriage.
That was four years ago. Gini was furious. She couldn't understand that to me, my family was friends - people I trusted more than anyone else in the world. She'd had a bad childhood, and if Gini had told her mother that we were fighting every day, it would have been because she was preparing her mother for our eventual divorce.
To Gini, family was family. Friends were friends. You kept them locked in two different boxes.
Until this summer.
In May of 2003, I was privileged to be a part of the first Judd family reunion in eight years... And something magical happened that weekend. Old wounds were healed between her brother and her, rifts slowly closed between her sisters. Everyone forgave a little bit.
When she returned home, I think that Gini really understood - not just "Yes, I see," but understood - how family could be friends.
Nowadays, Gini calls her relatives about once every three weeks, and she laughs a lot more when she calls. Michelle, Gini's sister, visits about once a month if she can. She feels a lot better, because she has a support system that was just not there for twenty years. Oh, she doesn't use it much, but it's good that it's there.
The irony, of course, is that just as all of this is happening, her baby sister Kristi has fallen desperately ill. And when I say "desperately ill," I mean "the doctors don't know what's wrong with her and Kristi's pretty sure that she might die."
I'm just going to give you an excerpt from Gini's journal entry:
2am. I just hung up from talking to Kristi and Jon. They are so scared. Kristi confessed to me that she has lost 20 pounds in the last week, and she is so swollen and disfigured that they have decided to take the giant Pooh, Eyore and Tigger balloons that were sent to her to the pediatrics ward tonight, while the kids are asleep, so she doesn't frighten them.
The nurses who have been caring for her are crying.
In the background I heard Jon sobbing. "They're gonna take you to Seattle and you're never coming back."
It's what I fear as well.
The doctor who looked at her in low light in the morning came back this afternoon and was startled by how bad she looked in real light. I had spent half an hour on my cel phone at the office, begging her to talk to them about moving her. She didn't want to, because everyone has been so nice and they are really trying. Bludgeoned by my insistence, she broached the topic.
The doctor immediately agreed that it was an excellent idea.
My ear is hot and sore from a marathon telephone session - brother Bill, sister Michele, mother, stepmom, Kristi, and around again. She's not sick enough to justify a lifeflight, so she must be packed up in a commercial flight and sent to Seattle. Alone. Jon has to work, because if he can't pull together the rent by Tuesday, they will be evicted. Seattle then became the only choice; direct flight, an hour and a half.
My mother was stewing about how she was going to manage getting to the airport before the final plans were made. In the morning I will simply issue a command: DO IT. I have the moral high ground now. I paid for the ticket.
It was one-way. We don't know when she will get to return.
The ticket agent was patient and sympathetic. His name was Nathan. I have called back to leave a positive review with his supervisor.
It's like a stab wound, being two thousand miles away from holding her in my arms. I remember, I told her. I remember holding you in my arms and changing your poopie diapers. And we both choked against sobs.
"Go camping with me tonight," she said. "I told Michele, too. If we all imagine, we can be together."
I sniffed, stifling the tears. "We're out in Ponderosa pines, and there's a warm breeze."
"It's so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face," Kris said.
"But the stars are out, and there are shooting stars for us to count."
"I hear crickets."
"And the air smells like pine and campfire smoke."
"Stay with me there tonight," Kristi begged. "If you sleep there we'll all be together."
It's drizzling and cold in Cleveland. But tonight when I sleep, it will be under soughing pine trees and twinkling stars.
I have to get to bed now. Kristi's expecting me.
Kristi and her husband are in a lot of financial problems now - some of her own making, yes, but nobody could have planned on this. They're in severe danger of losing the house because Kristi can't work.
And so I ask your help. I once vowed that I would never put up a PayPal button on this blog, but this time it's not for me. Kristi has medical insurance that might kill her - she has some strange disease where there is so much calcium in her blood that when they put a stint in her urethra, the calcium formed on it like grains of salt on a pretzel stick. When the doctor pulled the stint out, it had partially crystallized. And yet her insurance kicked her out of the hospital not once, but twice.
She needs money, to keep her home and her health. I'm asking for it. Please donate anything you can through PayPal. If you don't have PayPal and you'd like to help out, email Gini.
Updates will be given through Gini's journal. And if you can't give, yes, prayers to whatever beings you think are in control are equally acceptable.
