Seven Crises

I spent a lifetime worrying about my daughter. I have no idea if it was more or less than the average parent, because of course I only have myself as a reference point. I’m guessing more, however, since I am a worrier.

I had recurring dreams quite often for several years about the start of a nuclear war and me trying to get to Adri to make sure she was safe. It always began with me outside on the balcony of whatever apartment I might be living when suddenly in the distant horizon I’d see a mushroom cloud form and then feel a rumble. The dream would turn into a post-apocalypse story that later Cormac McCarthy would seemingly crib from my subconscious (somehow) when he published The Road in 2006.

Or maybe such fears and images are universal.

I got pretty good at waking myself up eventually after first seeing the mushroom cloud. Not quite lucid dreaming but more as a psychological defense mechanism, but it would still take me a few waking moments to calm down and convince myself that it was just “that dream” again.

And while I take full credit, or rather blame, for perhaps being a bit to fatalistic and dark worrying about the worst-case scenarios that might involve Adrianna, the truth is she also gave me a lifetime of occurrences and events that only encouraged and reinforced such worries. Seven, to be exact, not counting the final one, of course.

The first was her birth. We were in Austin trying for a more natural birth that still took place at a hospital, and things were progressing as normal a week past her due date once we were admitted to our room at the hospital that Saturday night on June 17th. Things took a turn, however, when the fetal heart monitor showed she was going into distress, and they had to perform an emergency C-section.

They seemed pretty concerned and it all happened so fast and we were all scarred and afraid. I still got to be in the operating room, however, but when they removed Adri I didn’t hear her cry and was petrified. I saw them with her in the corner of the room. Finally, after a minute or two that seemed like a lifetime, they brought her over so we could see her. She was fine, alert with eyes wide open looking around with wonder as if nothing had happened.

Crisis averted.

The second was a couple of months later. She had been acting as if her stomach hurt quite often, was extremely colicky, and started projectile vomiting, at which point we took her back to the hospital where they determined she had pyloric stenosis, a condition where the valve between the stomach and small intestine doesn’t function properly.

She had to have surgery to correct this, and again we were afraid and terrified. She was so little, so seemingly fragile, and the thought of her all alone on the operating table was almost too much to bear. But she did fine and we were able to take her home a day or so later.

Crisis averted.

The next incident is probably a silly one that probably happens countless times over the course of a childhood that still that had a profound and lasting effect on me none the less: Adri had learned to ride her two-wheeler and we’d ride around the block often after dinner when it was a bit cooler. She’d be on her Little Mermaid bike and I’d walk next to her. We stayed on sidewalks and occasionally alleys, usually riding to a pasture that was somewhat near so she could see the cows. We had great conversations during these rides, and they are some of the highlights of my life with her.

My mom lived on the corner, and one of the streets was a fairly busy affair with two lanes each direction divided by a median in the middle. In order to get from the back of the house to the front we’d have to traverse a sidewalk next to the house on the busier road.

I’d usually try to walk between the street and Adri to provide a buffer “just in case,” but this one day she got ahead of me, and then suddenly teetered and fell… into the street. I quickly reached over and pulled her up out of the street and back onto the sidewalk just as a car zoomed past in that very lane.

I was shaking and terrified, imagining how close she came to getting hit and how I could have let that happen. I kept telling myself that it didn’t happen, though, and it didn’t happen because I was watching closely, but I don’t listen to myself that well usually. I could not stop thinking about “what ifs” after that. For years, even though nothing happened.

 The crisis had been averted.

The fourth event was her heart surgery. In her mid-teens it was discovered she had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a congenital heart defect where there is an extra pathway between the upper and lower chambers of the heart which causes a fast heartbeat. It’s usually not life-threating, but it can lead to sudden cardiac death in children and young adults. There are examples of children dying during sporting events and it only being discovered after the fact that they had WPW.

So of course, the worrying commenced. It was recommended she undergo heart surgery to correct it, usually a cardiac ablation to sort of “turn off” or permanently disable the extra node causing the problem. Heart surgery is all I heard and all I worried about.

The surgery was successful, and another (huge) crisis was averted.

The fifth incident was a biggie, but one I’m not ready to talk about publicly yet, and one that I’ve been careful editing out when sharing some of her texts. I think it’s important to talk about, but for some reason I’m hesitant, so for now I’ll continue and speak in vague terms.

This happened not long after her surgery, and I was made known about it by a call from her mother late one evening. She told me that she wasn’t yet stable but the doctors, including Adri’s uncle who was a surgeon, were doing the best they could. She’d call me back when she had more news, she said, but that we should “pray for her” in the meantime.

This was around midnight, and I had to wait for another call that would tell me is she survived or not, if my daughter was still alive. Needless to say, it was not a pleasant three or so hours while I waited, helpless, wishing I was there and could do something.

But when the call finally occurred it was good news, and another (extremely huge) crisis was averted.

The sixth event I’ve mentioned before, as recently as a couple of days ago, when Adri broke down physically and mentally after both her great grandmother and Stephen’s mother died relatively around the same time. I came over she was in bad shape. I tried to stay with her overnight and ride it out, whatever it was, but she only seemed to get worse. I tried holding her and talking to her calmly and reassuring her that it would be okay, but it got worse and worse, so I had to eventually her to the emergency room.

She was admitted to the hospital and her vital signs improved, but then they insisted she be admitted to an inpatient program as condition of release from the hospital, and she was there a week, alone, until they thought she was healthy enough to go home. I’m being vague about this as well, but there were no illegal or unprescribed use of drugs or alcohol involved in this situation.

It was a long week, and I went over to their apartment and stayed with the boys for that entire week, and Cindy would come by after work and help as well until Stephen would get home.

It was hard and confusing for the boys, but she returned healthy, yet another crisis (apparently) averted.

The final event that she survived was of course the one from February of 2024, where she suffered cardiac arrest and where it took the EMTs almost 15 minutes to get a heartbeat back and stable enough to transport, followed by 12 hours in the emergency room and then another five or so days in ICU. I’ve written about this in detail already and probably anyone still reading my posts in general or this far into this one in particular know the details already, but if not you can find it if you look on my Facebook page.

This was the worst to date. I had to wait, again, for a return call while the EMTs were working on her to find out if she was alive or not. This was a shorter wait which also resulted in a positive outcome, but the ICU nurses let me know that she definitely was not out of the woods. I learned later that that was actually an overly-optimistic understatement. I stayed with her that week and she survived, and gained a new heart doctor as well that we were going to see this time on a regular basis.

Crisis (for now) averted.

Really, though, it was just postponed.

So those were the Big Seven. Events that didn’t make it easy for me to not worry about her, to stop letting my brain and imagination conjure up worst-possible scenarios. I was being classically conditioned like some Pavlovian dog to expect or at least be aware of the possible worst.

These Seven, furthermore, did not occur in a vacuum.  Through it all there were other issues as well, and while not necessarily acute and of an immediate emergency, they none the less added to my worry and fear of her survival: bulimia, ADHD, possible multiple competing affective disorders, normal teenage rebellious behavior, and just run-of-the-mill issues encountered and experienced by every child of divorce.

And again, the only frame of reference that I’m intimately aware of is my own, and I realize that my fears and worries were probably par for the course of parenthood. But they were my own.

And through every averted or diverted crisis I’d sigh with relief and chastise myself for any apparent complacency I had let myself experience since the last one, while fearing and dreading when and what the next one would be, fearing and dreading that the next would not be averted. Part of me “knowing” that we had been pressing our luck, that the winning streak would end at some point.

And it did.