Journeys are interesting. You have heard the saying that it is not about the destination but about the journey? Yeah, me too. Sometimes the journey can really suck. Sometimes we come to not only a dip but a damn crater right in the middle of our road and the only way to get around is to just plow right through it. Life was about to turn on a dime and drastically change in the wink of an eye and there was nothing to stop it.
This past summer, my 23 year old son experienced that crater; our family experienced the crater. Sitting in the guard shack at work, filling out his end of the day paperwork, my son, Alex, suddenly had some back pain that intensified. It caused enough of a worry that he phoned his father and I while vacationing down in Carlsbad for the weekend with his younger sister. When I picked up the phone around 7:15 am, no parent knows what to expect at the other end of a call. For me, a call from Alex at 7:15 was not unusual. He worked as a security guard from midnight to 8am, so I thought nothing of it. He told me his back hurt and he was uncomfortable. Upper back pain around the shoulders was not unusual for him, so I told him to call his uncle since I could not help him being 5 hours away. When I called him back he was being loaded up into an ambulance. He could not feel from his chest down. I stared at the phone as the ambulance driver from Halls Ambulance asked where he should be taken. I calmly told them Memorial hospital and told Alex I would call his uncle. My brother, Beau, agreed to meet the ambulance at the hospital and find out what was going on. We were in Carlsbad because, Aimee, our daughter, had to be off the Camp Pendleton base for 48 hours in between Devil Pup camps since she was serving as an Eagle. She could not be left and I did not want to take her home. I was a bit frantic. I experienced four different emotions almost instantly; anger, sadness, disgust and worry and neither was agreeing with the other. My husband and I just stared at one another in a state of shock. What the hell was going on and what do we do?
We sent Aimee and her best friend, Dani, out to the pool for a little bit so we could gather our thoughts and calm our nerves enough make some rational decisions and think through what needed to happen next. I had to figure out if this was serious or had he just thrown his back out. My husband was showered and we were looking for train tickets to get him home as fast as possible. I was still not sure so I went to take a shower. As I stood there with the hot water trickling over my neck and shoulders, a panic set in. "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???? HE IS SCARED AND YOU ARE NOT THERE!! GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THIS SHOWER AND GET HOME!!!" When I got out of the shower, I told Chris to pack it all, we were going home and after the call with my brother, I knew there was something really wrong. Alex was in a lot of pain. When I called him, we talked briefly and he made it very clear that his sister was NOT to come home. He wanted to see her but he wanted her to stay and finish out her commitment to the Devil Pups. This was important to her and therefore important to him as well. I truly admire their relationship. With that said, I called the only person I knew to call, Mr. Taylor, head of Kern County Devil Pups to get his advice. He called one of the parents of another Eagle in our group and she graciously took Aimee under her wing and told us to not worry about her, she had this and would make sure Aimee was back on base the next day with her son. She was amazing and we are forever in her debt for taking our daughter and caring for her while we could not. So, we dropped her off in Oceanside and got back on the 5 North which, of course was bumper to bumper traffic. The drive was truly a pain in the ass. I just wanted the freeway to divide down the middle and let me pass but of course, when there is urgency, Murphy's Law takes over; what can go wrong, will.
When we finally pulled off the freeway to our house to drop off Dani, it was almost six hours later and I knew from the conversation with my brother that Alex was still in a lot pain and there were still no answers except that we knew it was not a stroke. I was relieved. Chris, my husband, and I thought that would be the worst, little did we know.
Arriving at the hospital, we found my mom, brother, niece and her family waiting for Alex to come back from the MRI. The wait was uncomfortable. The smells in a hospital, the sounds, are at times nauseating. Sitting in hard plastic chairs, tired, hungry and worried, we waited until an hour later when we saw the gurney rolling towards us with two EMT's from the ambulance service pushing him. We waited as they rolled him into the little room behind a curtain and set the brake on the gurney. "Hi mom", he said with pain in his voice. "Hi sweetheart", we both said back. Looking at him, I pushed the hair away from his forehead and kissed his brow. "I hurt, mom, and I just.......I just want the pain to STOP!!" he said wincing as the pain in his shoulders and arms intensified. He looked pale and I was now scared. Looking at my husband as he kissed Alex's brow, I saw the worry on his face as well. The neuro-surgeon walked in just moments later with the MRI and introduced himself as Dr. Serxner. Chris and I held our breath for what seemed like for forever and then the punch came. Dr. Serxner gave the scenarios; a bleed in the spine, a tear, and others I do not recall now, but all were awful and all had the same outcome; Alex was paralyzed. He explained that he would be performing a spinal decompression on Alex and the surgery would take up to five hours. At this time, one of Alex's best friends, Jason, showed up. We were on our way upstairs and Alex was about to have a very serious surgery. Day ONE had come to a close. Day ONE was just the beginning and I wanted to scream, I wanted to punch something and I wanted to wake up and end this nightmare.
