A Nan Story...

At my Grandmother's funeral, my Uncle Brian told a story about my Nan that I had forgotten. I would like to pass it on now. My Grandmother grew up in England. When she was a little girl, her mother took her to Brighton Beach for the day. She played for a bit and after a while, noticed a couple of girls near her age playing near by. She went over an played with them...after all, they had a shovel AND a pail! A little while later it was time to go and my Nan liked that shovel and pail so much that she decided to take it with her. Of course, the Governess of the two little girls went over to speak with my Nanny's mother. Come to find out that my Nan had attempted to steal from the future Queen of England and her sister!!! In my Uncle Brian's words..."No wonder she emigrated to Canada!"

Sick Kids....

So, "M"'s test results came back...She has reflux in her kidney's. Grade 1 on one side and Grade 3 on the other. That means the urine is going back up the ureter. For Grade 1 reflux it is going about half way up the ureter and for Grade 3 reflux it is going all the way into the kidney. "M" has been referred to Toronto Sick Kids Hospital and has to stay on a low dose antibiotic until they see her. From what I understand, there are couple ways they can go for treatment. They could keep her on antibiotics to prevent infections and wait and see if she will grow out of it or they can surgically repair the uteter. Part of me hopes it is the first one so that she will not have to go through surgery and part of me hopes they opt for surgery so that my baby girl will be fixed and I won't have to worry as much that she will get sick. Is that wrong? I just want her healed and better so that she can concentrate on being a little girl...

And the hits just keep on coming....part 2

So we met up with our husbands in Syracuse and Dave and I headed to Watertown to do some grocery shopping before we went home. We got our groceries and headed to the border with a van full of sleeping kids.

Back in Canada!!! In another 2 hours we were thankfully and blissfully home. (I would like to add...I LOVE our housekeeper...who made sure we came home to a clean house!) Since we were both terribly tired, we decided to grab some Burger King for supper. As we sat down to eat; the two adults thinking about the next 2 days and wondering how we were going to get through them, Dave's Mom called. Her news was not good. Dave's Uncle Mike had passed away. Dave, understandably so, was deeply upset by this news. I kept thinking to myself..."this can't be real, how can we loose two family members within 2 days of each other?" (Dave's uncle had passed away on Thursday, but his Mom had waited until we got home to tell us...thankfully) Shortly after that, with heavy hearts, we headed to bed. I don't think either of us slept much. When we woke up the next morning we headed to the mall to buy Dave a suit and some shoes (he was to be a pallbearer at his uncle's funeral). We made our necessary purchases and headed home to get ready for wake #1. Somehow, we made it through the next 3 days. We buried Nan on Monday and Mike on Wednesday. By Wednesday evening, we were emotionally spent. We went to work on Thursday and Friday and did the best we could...given the circumstances. We woke up on Saturday with "M" standing beside the bed complaining that she had a nose-bleed. I checked and it had stopped. We cleaned her up and went downstairs for breakfast. Afterwards the girls went upstairs to get dressed. Within a couple of seconds "A" came running downstairs yelling that "M" was bleeding badly. Dave dashed upstairs to check it out, with me not far behind. I got there in time to see Dave frantically trying to grab more tissue and keep "M" calm. She was crying and yelling "I need a doctor...I'm gonna die!". The poor little thing was scared to death...To be honest I was too. I had never seen so much blood come out of a nose. I scooped her up and carried her downstairs and placed her on the kitchen table to get a better look at her. Soon thereafter, she started vomiting blood. I called my Mom, who is a RPN, for help. She came over and suggested that we call an ambulance for our bleeding and cursing little girl because she was losing so much blood. (she was cursing like a sailor at this point!) I stepped outside to call the ambulance and while I was on the phone with them, my Mom said to cancel because the bleeding had started to slow down. We eventually got it stopped but decided to take a trip to the emergency room anyway. After a 6 hour wait, we were told that "M" had pneumonia. That was unexpected. Who knew that pneumonia would cause a nose-bleed? They gave us a prescription for an antibiotic and sent us on our way. Until next time....

And the hits just keep on coming....part 1

It has been a really hard couple of weeks for my family...

First the good stuff...

We departed on February 20th for a family vacation (the first one in 4 years) and arrived to a sunny day in Orlando at around 4pm. We enjoyed the rest of the day. We relaxed by the pool, went shopping and then went to bed exhuasted.

The next day we went to The Magic Kingdom. The kids loved it...I may never go again!!! It was soooo expensive and the line-ups were horrible. But, there really isn't anything like seeing your child's face light up when they see Cinderella's castle for the first time. We did meet some of the characters and the kids were able to do the rides that they really wanted to do. The parade and fireworks at the end of the night are not something you want to miss. They are amazing.

Things started to turn from there....

We got home at about 9:30 that night and, finally, got the kids tucked nicely into bed. I was exhaused myself, so I headed up to bed at about 11pm. Shortly thereafter, while I was watching "The Golden Girls", the bathroom light went out. I got up and checked it and it turned right back on as if someone had just turned off the switch (no one had, it was still in the "on" position when I went in to check and I turned it off and then on again). I went back to bed and went to sleep...without thinking much more about it, other than it was a little odd. Dave came to bed around 1am. At a little after 2 am, the phone rang...this is where it turns bad. It was the nursing home and they needed to speak to my Mom about my Grandmother. I hung up the phone with a sense of foreboding and went to my Mom's unit to get her. While Mom was dialing the phone, Dave showed up to tell us that they had called back and were waiting in our unit on the phone. By this time, my Mom had gotten a hold of the nursing home. Nan was gone. She had passed away in her sleep. I was devistated, but I didn't want to show it. Other people needed me to be strong. I left to go and get my sister and Dave went to hang up the phone and check on our kids. My sister and her husband greeted me at the door....and I told her the news. That was hard. She took it well, but I don't ever want to have to tell someone that kind of thing at 2:30 in the morning ever again. Mom and Dad showed up shortly thereafter and we went to get my cousins (who had just been told by my Aunt and Uncle that Nan had passed). As we all sat there in shock talking about our "game plan", we couldn't help but start telling stories of someone we all loved dearly and meant the world to us. Now that I think of it...Nan might as well of planned it this way...we were all together and were there for each other. It was decided that my Mom and Dad and Uncle Brian and Aunt Cathy would head back to Canada and help Uncle Mike make the arrangements. We would stay and finish our trip because our kids were all young and wouldn't understand why we had to leave. We tried to make the best of the rest of our time in Florida, but there was always a shadow hanging over our heads. Nan was never far from our thoughts. On our last day there, the kids and I wrote notes to Nan, tied them to our Disney balloons and sent them up to her. (the one from Me, my sister and cousins said "thank you for being a friend" as we all fondly remember watching the "Golden Girls" with Nan)
We were fortunate enought to get to spend a day with some very good friends(whom we met when they lived in Canada) and am thankful for it. We went shopping, played poker, had a few drinks and many laughs. We reluctantly said good-bye to them on Friday and then to Florida on Saturday. After a near-miss in Washington (they overbooked the plane), we finally made it to Syracuse were our husbands were waiting to see us back home to Canada. To be continued...