Since many people on Facebook—and people in general (note: not many)—are curious to know a bit about me and my current life, I thought I would get the semi-detailed, I-hope-this-is-interesting-to-you-since-you-asked-about-it version of my life post-Florida.
In fact, like a lot of returned missionaries, I see my return from the field as indicative of a major shift in my life. In quick sum: I graduated from Timpanogos High School in '01, took one year of classes at then-UVSC, went to Florida Ft. Lauderdale Spanish Speaking Mission, came home in '04, and married my high school girlfriend, Gayle, four and a half months later. Sweet.
Okay, so that's the easy part of life. I spent some time working inhell a computer store where I learned quite a bit about computers. I wrote an entire novel called The Terra Campaign: Impetus while I was going to school, beat countless video games, listened to a lot of Rage Against the Machine, and generally enjoyed life.
Then, for my 23rd birthday, I asked Gayle for a child. Well, we all laughed at that, since we had been trying to conceive for a few months already and nothing had happened. It turns out that Gayle actually was expecting by the time my birthday rolled around; we found out at the beginning of May that Gayle was pregnant.
By the time we were scheduled to listen to the zygote's heartbeat, the baby was already dead.
We took the news pretty hard. I was grateful that I was out of school, for the most part, because of the summer, and Gayle's teaching job, of course, wasn't in session, so we were able to recover a little bit. The actual miscarriage occurred on July 4th; Gayle passed parts of the baby into a port-a-potty next to the parade route. It was a bright, sunny, hot day in July, but also one of the darker ones—though not as dark as what was to come next.
See, we really did want a child. We felt it was time to increase our family, Gayle's job was such that we had the medical insurance covered, and I would be graduating soon (this was mid-2006, and I would be graduating in April of 2007). After the requisite six weeks or so to let her body recuperate, we learned that Gayle was again expecting. (In fact, I had come home from work and was putting stuff in the fridge when Gayle told me, a happy smile on her face, that she was pregnant again. I promptly dropped the stuff on the floor and stared at her, flabbergasted and excited.)
We heard the heartbeat at the appropriate time; we went through the correct checkups; everything was going according to plan.
The end of December was rapidly approaching, which was momentous for a number of reasons. First of all, we were going to learn the gender of the baby. Second, I was quitting my job at the computer store, something I had wanted to do for a good long time, because, starting the first week of January, I was going to be student teaching for Greg Park and Kori Crampton at THS, and I didn't want to schism my attention between three masters. Third, it was almost Christmas, so what isn't there to look forward to?
The day of the ultrasound was rocky to say the least. We went into the clinic with a VHS tape, a little nervous and pretty excited. The technician doing the scan was new, so she didn't chat too much—she was concentrating. At least, that's what I assumed. Having never been a part of this before, I didn't know that the reason she was so quiet was because things weren't going according to her training. The elder technician had to prompt her to tell us the baby's gender, because she forgot.
We waited outside for a good ten to fifteen minutes, waiting for the doctor to show up. Eventually, a nurse pulled us into a room to talk to us, apologizing that Dr. Jones couldn't come because he was performing an emergency C-section, and was unavailable. Still, we needed to know: There was something wrong with our baby's heart and right foot. She didn't know what it meant, what it would portend, or how severe it was. All she knew was that the baby didn't have all four chambers of his heart.
We were devastated. Moving through the day mechanically, I went to the computer store and quit that day. I didn't offer any explanation. I simply handed over my keys. A couple of friends were concerned, but they didn't press for questions.
As the news disseminated through different sources, the largest emotion I remember feeling was bafflement and worry. A gnawing, distressed, sleep-depriving worry that wouldn't go away. Because of the way the calendar shook out, we had to wait until after Christmas to see some specialists at UVRMC. They explained that Peter (our little baby) was in potentially dire straits. He was missing the right half of his heart, suffering from a heart defect known as hypoplastic right heart syndrome (HRHS). They didn't know what to do to fix it, referring us to the experts at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake instead.
We waited for nearly a month before our appointment came due.
It was a long month.
I started my student teaching, all the while not knowing if Gayle carried my son or simply a corpse. In fact, in a rare fit of vaguely poetic outburst, I wrote this poem:
All tests not nominal
Rather—exceptional
Frustratingly abnormal
Never preferable.
Statistics claim normal
But now inexplicable
And how rarely affordable
All tests—inapplicable.
It isn't as good now that I read it again as I thought it was when I wrote it, but it's part of this time of my life. I don't think I'll ever revise it. I also wrote this one, “Barter”, a reflection that came—in part—because of the crushing depression I suffered, knowing that I—as the supposed bread-winner of the family—would be unable to support us financially as the enormousness of Peter's hospital bills became more apparent:
I’ll tell you a tale—
—you fix my engine.
I’ll recite my poem—
—you hand me my groceries.
I’ll invent a new world—
—you repair my son’s heart.
I’ll create a lie—
—you believe it
—we’ll call it square.
This one works a little better for me, but this isn't an explication of poetry; it's a brief recitation of what has happened to me.
Fast forward—blur past the tears, the frustration, the devout prayers, the clinging to priesthood blessings—to two days before I turn 24, April 24, 2007. I had finished student teaching, and I passed time and gained money by substitute teaching at Gayle's school. Other noteworthy events had transpired (my brother got had his mission call to Seoul, I had attended a national conference in California), but they were prologue to what I was expecting mid-May—the birth of Peter Jon Dowdle, a little boy who I desperately loved and had yet to meet.
I was working on a computer network at my father-in-law's business when Gayle called me from the doctor's office. She had gone to start her weekly, building-up-to-the-blessed-event checkup. I had decided to pull in a little bit more money (through the aforementioned networking) rather than attend. After all, it was the first one. What could happen?
I answered my phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“Uh, the doctor just checked me.”
“Okay.”
“I'm a five.”
I paused. “That's great, honey.” She didn't say anything back. “What does that mean?”
The phone disconnected. I couldn't get Gayle back on the line, so I turned to Brent, my father-in-law. “What does it mean to 'be a five'?” I asked.
He stared at me in disbelief. “It means she's having the baby!” he said.
“Oh.”
Sometimes I'm not so good with words.
Connections happened, and the nurse got a hold of me. She told me that I didn't have time to go home and get packed up—we needed to get into Salt Lake City and check her into the University of Utah Hospital immediately. I asked if I could at least go to the bathroom. She said that I could; we weren't in that big of a rush.
I picked up Gayle, drove us to the hospital, and then, together, we walked in. “Uh, my wife is having a baby. Where do I go?” I asked the closest attendant. She pointed us to the elevators.
The maternity staff was waiting, and one of the doctors we had previously met was there to help orient us. By this time, 5:00 had come and gone, so we decided to postpone the birth until the following day. The primary concern, of course, was that Peter would need to have surgery upon arrival. The last thing we wanted now was to have him come in the middle of the night, call in the surgeons from a night of sleep, and have them perform an emergency surgery.
I 'slept' on a cot that was more springs than mattress. At about 7:00, I called the school and told them that both I and Gayle would be unavailable—for obvious reasons. They understood and said they'd take care of it.
Peter came the next afternoon. Gayle was in labor for some 24 hours, but only pushed for about 7 minutes before Peter popped out. He opened one eye, glared at us, and started crying. I cut his umbilical chord and they whisked him away, through a window in the side of the room, without anyone getting to hold him.
The next day I had to substitute a class at the school. It was my birthday. It was the first time I held Peter.
The day after that I graduated from college. As soon as I was done with the ceremony and eating a lunch at Bajio's, I was back at the hospital.
He was at U of U hospital for three days or so, until they kicked Gayle out. Once Gayle was 'home' (by that I mean she no longer slept in a bed at the hospital, so, pragmatically, she was at 'home'), Peter was taken to the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) at PCMC. He stayed there for another seven or eight days, during which time I substituted Gayle's science class. Every day I would drive from Herriman out to PCMC, spend a few hours there with Peter, then come home in an empty car, only to repeat the same routine the next day.
I have to digress here and explain about his leg. It was clubbed at birth, a visible handicap that I truly tried to pray away. With all that he already had to go through in order to live, why would he also need his leg to be twisted at the ankle? Why would he have to have this problem, too?
Peter's leg, in order to be fixed, had to be put into a cast. Babies grow so rapidly that the cast had to be replaced every week. So, once Peter was home, he still had to be taken up to PCMC every Thursday just to get a new cast.
At three weeks, Peter's condition worsened to the point that, sans surgery—immediate surgery—he would die.
See, Peter's heart, not having a functioning right side, was working very hard to get both oxygenated and deoxygenated blood throughout his system. While in utero, the problem was, essentially bypassed. But while working on his own, his body was not getting the oxygen levels necessary to sustain life (most people's oxygen is in the high 90s to100; Peter's, before his surgery, had dropped into the 50s. At one point, he even dabbled in the 30s with 2 liters of oxygen being pumped through his nose). Hence the reason for the surgeries.
Now, Peter had been up on Wednesday to see one of the cardiologist—admittedly, not his regular one. This doctor decided that Peter would be fine for another week, and that we would return the following Wednesday to have the surgery. Uncomfortable, Gayle nevertheless took Peter and brought him home.
Thursday came. Peter needed a new cast. After getting that taken care of, she began loading everything into the car (Peter, diaper bag, oxygen tank, pulseoxymeter, her mother), and she noticed that he looked a little pale and a little blue. She checked his oxygen, and saw it was in the 50s or so.
She rushed him into the ER; a couple of hours later, Peter was in surgery. Peter's clubbed foot saved his life, for without it, Gayle would have been at home with Peter, the little boy off of his obnoxious pulseoxymeter, and could very well have died. As it was, he was in 'bad shape' when the surgeons took over.
I, meanwhile, had been teaching the morning classes at the middle school. I don't remember when the call came, necessarily, that Peter was going in to surgery immediately, but I do remember sitting at Gayle's desk, the room empty of all but the typical detritus of middle school, and sobbing. I cried pretty frequently, I think, during that time, but that one was different. It was as though all of the grief, concern, frustration, disappointment, and sadness tried to push through my eyes. When I looked up, I saw a coworker staring at me, concern rife on her face.
I explained the situation. She told me to leave. The kids didn't need me as much as Peter and Gayle did.
I left, allowing the other two teachers to cover the class and think of something to do. I still am intensely grateful to them for allowing me to be there.
Peter survived the first surgery, and we had him home—scars and all—fairly soon thereafter (I'm fuzzy on the days). Other experiences ripple through my memory at this point: we didn't have the wherewithal (I being a substitute teacher and Gayle not teaching) to stay in the spacious apartment we were in, so we moved into my in-laws' house; Peter had to have a PIC line inserted to fight off an infection; rapid heart palpitations sending us up to PCMC at 1:00 in the morning; the divinely inspired home teachers, one of whom was a former cardiologist and heart surgeon, who offered support and explained things so that I, with my feeble brain, could understand them; the constant love and help from ward members, parents, and friends. This story could go on in minutiae, but I'll push on to other points.
By the time Peter had reached his six month birthday, he was in surgery again. The circumstances were similar, yet different. My life was taking place at a web development company, a job I had picked up during the summer that worked well, for a while. We still lived with my in-laws, but we had a new car, I was writing a new novel, and everything looked on track for a Halloween surgery for Peter.
During the pre-op surgery, however, events took a turn south and Peter was struggling severely. By noon, I was in my car, racing toward PCMC. For the second time in six months, I arrived to see a red-eyed Gayle in the waiting room, not knowing if I had seen the last of my son. Emergency surgeries are difficult to go through, though the alternative is far worse.
Let me quickly note that, due to the complexities of the problem, Peter needs three surgeries: the first (the one done at 3 weeks) was a temporary procedure that shunted some blood into his pulmonary arteries, allowing him to live long enough for the second procedure. The second procedure is actually one operation split into two. There is some rerouting of the arteries inside, beginning a bypass of the damaged section of the heart. The third (and, we hope, final) surgery will finish the bypass, allowing Peter to live a healthy, not-perfectly-normal life sans transplant and, supposedly, sans any other surgeries. The best life expectancy that they can give us is 30 years, since the procedure was developed in the 1970s, and so no one knows how long someone like Peter can live. Knowing my son the way I do, I'm pretty sure he'll outlast the mountains.
Peter was in costume as a Ninja Turtle by Halloween of 2007, a brief six days after a major heart surgery. He still had to have oxygen attached to him for a little while as his body adapted to the changed physiology, but he was doing just fine.
By this point, his casts had been done away with and his feet were stuck into a brace. Sweet mercy did I hate that bar. You don't know true discomfort until you're awakened at 3 in the morning by a kid kicking you with a sharp metal bar, just because he wants a bottle.
This is one of those things that no parenthood class can prepare you for.
Anyway, by Christmas Eve 2007 (a little more than one year after learning of Peter's potentially fatal flaw) Peter had learned to crawl. I have footage of it on my telephone.
By mid-January 2008, we were blessed with a home—a small townhome in American Fork, where I'm typing this lengthy blog right now. This is significant, for I was still working at the web development company when we moved in. Gayle and I are both teachers by training, so lack of money is something we had expected. Peter's hospital bills, of course, almost instantly put us out of savings, despite Gayle's excellent insurance. So the fact that we were able to save enough to actually buy a house is something that I marvel at still.
By the time June 2008 had come around, I was into a freelancing job that pulled in precisely no dollars at all (and that isn't hyperbolic; my boss was in Africa during the summer, meaning no jobs were being distributed). I was frustrated, depressed, and nauseated by the idea of having to stomach another worthless job. Not only that, but Peter's pending surgery haunted me—we needed to pony up the $1,500 or so on our end, and the insurance would take on the rest.
Before she left for Africa, I had groused to my boss about my inability to find a teaching job. I love to teach—I've been wanting to be a teacher since the 10th grade. Yet every position I applied for ended in disappointment. Looking at me the way only a psychologist can, she said, “I think there's someone you need to meet. I know the principal at a nearby charter school. We'll arrange a meeting.”
That connection was all I needed to get the job that I currently love and work in right now. In fact, I look forward to Sunday night, because that means that, when I get up, I get to go to work. And that thrills me.
So life has been, as expected, unexpected. Peter is doing very well. He talks, runs, bosses other kids around, and generally acts like the almost two year old that he is. He has enough hair to make only the faintest intimations of being a redhead, bright blue eyes, fat cheeks, and more scars than I have years. I love him.
I originally planned on having a few more anecdotes about what has transpired since I left the mission field—stories enough to bore anyone within clicking distance—but I now see that my word count has topped 3,000, which is waaaaaay more than a blog should be.
If you have extra questions for me, let me know.
For now, just know that life is good.
In fact, like a lot of returned missionaries, I see my return from the field as indicative of a major shift in my life. In quick sum: I graduated from Timpanogos High School in '01, took one year of classes at then-UVSC, went to Florida Ft. Lauderdale Spanish Speaking Mission, came home in '04, and married my high school girlfriend, Gayle, four and a half months later. Sweet.
Okay, so that's the easy part of life. I spent some time working in
Then, for my 23rd birthday, I asked Gayle for a child. Well, we all laughed at that, since we had been trying to conceive for a few months already and nothing had happened. It turns out that Gayle actually was expecting by the time my birthday rolled around; we found out at the beginning of May that Gayle was pregnant.
By the time we were scheduled to listen to the zygote's heartbeat, the baby was already dead.
We took the news pretty hard. I was grateful that I was out of school, for the most part, because of the summer, and Gayle's teaching job, of course, wasn't in session, so we were able to recover a little bit. The actual miscarriage occurred on July 4th; Gayle passed parts of the baby into a port-a-potty next to the parade route. It was a bright, sunny, hot day in July, but also one of the darker ones—though not as dark as what was to come next.
See, we really did want a child. We felt it was time to increase our family, Gayle's job was such that we had the medical insurance covered, and I would be graduating soon (this was mid-2006, and I would be graduating in April of 2007). After the requisite six weeks or so to let her body recuperate, we learned that Gayle was again expecting. (In fact, I had come home from work and was putting stuff in the fridge when Gayle told me, a happy smile on her face, that she was pregnant again. I promptly dropped the stuff on the floor and stared at her, flabbergasted and excited.)
We heard the heartbeat at the appropriate time; we went through the correct checkups; everything was going according to plan.
The end of December was rapidly approaching, which was momentous for a number of reasons. First of all, we were going to learn the gender of the baby. Second, I was quitting my job at the computer store, something I had wanted to do for a good long time, because, starting the first week of January, I was going to be student teaching for Greg Park and Kori Crampton at THS, and I didn't want to schism my attention between three masters. Third, it was almost Christmas, so what isn't there to look forward to?
The day of the ultrasound was rocky to say the least. We went into the clinic with a VHS tape, a little nervous and pretty excited. The technician doing the scan was new, so she didn't chat too much—she was concentrating. At least, that's what I assumed. Having never been a part of this before, I didn't know that the reason she was so quiet was because things weren't going according to her training. The elder technician had to prompt her to tell us the baby's gender, because she forgot.
We waited outside for a good ten to fifteen minutes, waiting for the doctor to show up. Eventually, a nurse pulled us into a room to talk to us, apologizing that Dr. Jones couldn't come because he was performing an emergency C-section, and was unavailable. Still, we needed to know: There was something wrong with our baby's heart and right foot. She didn't know what it meant, what it would portend, or how severe it was. All she knew was that the baby didn't have all four chambers of his heart.
We were devastated. Moving through the day mechanically, I went to the computer store and quit that day. I didn't offer any explanation. I simply handed over my keys. A couple of friends were concerned, but they didn't press for questions.
As the news disseminated through different sources, the largest emotion I remember feeling was bafflement and worry. A gnawing, distressed, sleep-depriving worry that wouldn't go away. Because of the way the calendar shook out, we had to wait until after Christmas to see some specialists at UVRMC. They explained that Peter (our little baby) was in potentially dire straits. He was missing the right half of his heart, suffering from a heart defect known as hypoplastic right heart syndrome (HRHS). They didn't know what to do to fix it, referring us to the experts at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake instead.
We waited for nearly a month before our appointment came due.
It was a long month.
I started my student teaching, all the while not knowing if Gayle carried my son or simply a corpse. In fact, in a rare fit of vaguely poetic outburst, I wrote this poem:
All tests not nominal
Rather—exceptional
Frustratingly abnormal
Never preferable.
Statistics claim normal
But now inexplicable
And how rarely affordable
All tests—inapplicable.
It isn't as good now that I read it again as I thought it was when I wrote it, but it's part of this time of my life. I don't think I'll ever revise it. I also wrote this one, “Barter”, a reflection that came—in part—because of the crushing depression I suffered, knowing that I—as the supposed bread-winner of the family—would be unable to support us financially as the enormousness of Peter's hospital bills became more apparent:
I’ll tell you a tale—
—you fix my engine.
I’ll recite my poem—
—you hand me my groceries.
I’ll invent a new world—
—you repair my son’s heart.
I’ll create a lie—
—you believe it
—we’ll call it square.
This one works a little better for me, but this isn't an explication of poetry; it's a brief recitation of what has happened to me.
Fast forward—blur past the tears, the frustration, the devout prayers, the clinging to priesthood blessings—to two days before I turn 24, April 24, 2007. I had finished student teaching, and I passed time and gained money by substitute teaching at Gayle's school. Other noteworthy events had transpired (my brother got had his mission call to Seoul, I had attended a national conference in California), but they were prologue to what I was expecting mid-May—the birth of Peter Jon Dowdle, a little boy who I desperately loved and had yet to meet.
I was working on a computer network at my father-in-law's business when Gayle called me from the doctor's office. She had gone to start her weekly, building-up-to-the-blessed-event checkup. I had decided to pull in a little bit more money (through the aforementioned networking) rather than attend. After all, it was the first one. What could happen?
I answered my phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“Uh, the doctor just checked me.”
“Okay.”
“I'm a five.”
I paused. “That's great, honey.” She didn't say anything back. “What does that mean?”
The phone disconnected. I couldn't get Gayle back on the line, so I turned to Brent, my father-in-law. “What does it mean to 'be a five'?” I asked.
He stared at me in disbelief. “It means she's having the baby!” he said.
“Oh.”
Sometimes I'm not so good with words.
Connections happened, and the nurse got a hold of me. She told me that I didn't have time to go home and get packed up—we needed to get into Salt Lake City and check her into the University of Utah Hospital immediately. I asked if I could at least go to the bathroom. She said that I could; we weren't in that big of a rush.
I picked up Gayle, drove us to the hospital, and then, together, we walked in. “Uh, my wife is having a baby. Where do I go?” I asked the closest attendant. She pointed us to the elevators.
The maternity staff was waiting, and one of the doctors we had previously met was there to help orient us. By this time, 5:00 had come and gone, so we decided to postpone the birth until the following day. The primary concern, of course, was that Peter would need to have surgery upon arrival. The last thing we wanted now was to have him come in the middle of the night, call in the surgeons from a night of sleep, and have them perform an emergency surgery.
I 'slept' on a cot that was more springs than mattress. At about 7:00, I called the school and told them that both I and Gayle would be unavailable—for obvious reasons. They understood and said they'd take care of it.
Peter came the next afternoon. Gayle was in labor for some 24 hours, but only pushed for about 7 minutes before Peter popped out. He opened one eye, glared at us, and started crying. I cut his umbilical chord and they whisked him away, through a window in the side of the room, without anyone getting to hold him.
The next day I had to substitute a class at the school. It was my birthday. It was the first time I held Peter.
The day after that I graduated from college. As soon as I was done with the ceremony and eating a lunch at Bajio's, I was back at the hospital.
He was at U of U hospital for three days or so, until they kicked Gayle out. Once Gayle was 'home' (by that I mean she no longer slept in a bed at the hospital, so, pragmatically, she was at 'home'), Peter was taken to the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) at PCMC. He stayed there for another seven or eight days, during which time I substituted Gayle's science class. Every day I would drive from Herriman out to PCMC, spend a few hours there with Peter, then come home in an empty car, only to repeat the same routine the next day.
I have to digress here and explain about his leg. It was clubbed at birth, a visible handicap that I truly tried to pray away. With all that he already had to go through in order to live, why would he also need his leg to be twisted at the ankle? Why would he have to have this problem, too?
Peter's leg, in order to be fixed, had to be put into a cast. Babies grow so rapidly that the cast had to be replaced every week. So, once Peter was home, he still had to be taken up to PCMC every Thursday just to get a new cast.
At three weeks, Peter's condition worsened to the point that, sans surgery—immediate surgery—he would die.
See, Peter's heart, not having a functioning right side, was working very hard to get both oxygenated and deoxygenated blood throughout his system. While in utero, the problem was, essentially bypassed. But while working on his own, his body was not getting the oxygen levels necessary to sustain life (most people's oxygen is in the high 90s to100; Peter's, before his surgery, had dropped into the 50s. At one point, he even dabbled in the 30s with 2 liters of oxygen being pumped through his nose). Hence the reason for the surgeries.
Now, Peter had been up on Wednesday to see one of the cardiologist—admittedly, not his regular one. This doctor decided that Peter would be fine for another week, and that we would return the following Wednesday to have the surgery. Uncomfortable, Gayle nevertheless took Peter and brought him home.
Thursday came. Peter needed a new cast. After getting that taken care of, she began loading everything into the car (Peter, diaper bag, oxygen tank, pulseoxymeter, her mother), and she noticed that he looked a little pale and a little blue. She checked his oxygen, and saw it was in the 50s or so.
She rushed him into the ER; a couple of hours later, Peter was in surgery. Peter's clubbed foot saved his life, for without it, Gayle would have been at home with Peter, the little boy off of his obnoxious pulseoxymeter, and could very well have died. As it was, he was in 'bad shape' when the surgeons took over.
I, meanwhile, had been teaching the morning classes at the middle school. I don't remember when the call came, necessarily, that Peter was going in to surgery immediately, but I do remember sitting at Gayle's desk, the room empty of all but the typical detritus of middle school, and sobbing. I cried pretty frequently, I think, during that time, but that one was different. It was as though all of the grief, concern, frustration, disappointment, and sadness tried to push through my eyes. When I looked up, I saw a coworker staring at me, concern rife on her face.
I explained the situation. She told me to leave. The kids didn't need me as much as Peter and Gayle did.
I left, allowing the other two teachers to cover the class and think of something to do. I still am intensely grateful to them for allowing me to be there.
Peter survived the first surgery, and we had him home—scars and all—fairly soon thereafter (I'm fuzzy on the days). Other experiences ripple through my memory at this point: we didn't have the wherewithal (I being a substitute teacher and Gayle not teaching) to stay in the spacious apartment we were in, so we moved into my in-laws' house; Peter had to have a PIC line inserted to fight off an infection; rapid heart palpitations sending us up to PCMC at 1:00 in the morning; the divinely inspired home teachers, one of whom was a former cardiologist and heart surgeon, who offered support and explained things so that I, with my feeble brain, could understand them; the constant love and help from ward members, parents, and friends. This story could go on in minutiae, but I'll push on to other points.
By the time Peter had reached his six month birthday, he was in surgery again. The circumstances were similar, yet different. My life was taking place at a web development company, a job I had picked up during the summer that worked well, for a while. We still lived with my in-laws, but we had a new car, I was writing a new novel, and everything looked on track for a Halloween surgery for Peter.
During the pre-op surgery, however, events took a turn south and Peter was struggling severely. By noon, I was in my car, racing toward PCMC. For the second time in six months, I arrived to see a red-eyed Gayle in the waiting room, not knowing if I had seen the last of my son. Emergency surgeries are difficult to go through, though the alternative is far worse.
Let me quickly note that, due to the complexities of the problem, Peter needs three surgeries: the first (the one done at 3 weeks) was a temporary procedure that shunted some blood into his pulmonary arteries, allowing him to live long enough for the second procedure. The second procedure is actually one operation split into two. There is some rerouting of the arteries inside, beginning a bypass of the damaged section of the heart. The third (and, we hope, final) surgery will finish the bypass, allowing Peter to live a healthy, not-perfectly-normal life sans transplant and, supposedly, sans any other surgeries. The best life expectancy that they can give us is 30 years, since the procedure was developed in the 1970s, and so no one knows how long someone like Peter can live. Knowing my son the way I do, I'm pretty sure he'll outlast the mountains.
Peter was in costume as a Ninja Turtle by Halloween of 2007, a brief six days after a major heart surgery. He still had to have oxygen attached to him for a little while as his body adapted to the changed physiology, but he was doing just fine.
By this point, his casts had been done away with and his feet were stuck into a brace. Sweet mercy did I hate that bar. You don't know true discomfort until you're awakened at 3 in the morning by a kid kicking you with a sharp metal bar, just because he wants a bottle.
This is one of those things that no parenthood class can prepare you for.
Anyway, by Christmas Eve 2007 (a little more than one year after learning of Peter's potentially fatal flaw) Peter had learned to crawl. I have footage of it on my telephone.
By mid-January 2008, we were blessed with a home—a small townhome in American Fork, where I'm typing this lengthy blog right now. This is significant, for I was still working at the web development company when we moved in. Gayle and I are both teachers by training, so lack of money is something we had expected. Peter's hospital bills, of course, almost instantly put us out of savings, despite Gayle's excellent insurance. So the fact that we were able to save enough to actually buy a house is something that I marvel at still.
By the time June 2008 had come around, I was into a freelancing job that pulled in precisely no dollars at all (and that isn't hyperbolic; my boss was in Africa during the summer, meaning no jobs were being distributed). I was frustrated, depressed, and nauseated by the idea of having to stomach another worthless job. Not only that, but Peter's pending surgery haunted me—we needed to pony up the $1,500 or so on our end, and the insurance would take on the rest.
Before she left for Africa, I had groused to my boss about my inability to find a teaching job. I love to teach—I've been wanting to be a teacher since the 10th grade. Yet every position I applied for ended in disappointment. Looking at me the way only a psychologist can, she said, “I think there's someone you need to meet. I know the principal at a nearby charter school. We'll arrange a meeting.”
That connection was all I needed to get the job that I currently love and work in right now. In fact, I look forward to Sunday night, because that means that, when I get up, I get to go to work. And that thrills me.
So life has been, as expected, unexpected. Peter is doing very well. He talks, runs, bosses other kids around, and generally acts like the almost two year old that he is. He has enough hair to make only the faintest intimations of being a redhead, bright blue eyes, fat cheeks, and more scars than I have years. I love him.
I originally planned on having a few more anecdotes about what has transpired since I left the mission field—stories enough to bore anyone within clicking distance—but I now see that my word count has topped 3,000, which is waaaaaay more than a blog should be.
If you have extra questions for me, let me know.
For now, just know that life is good.
Comments
I can not begin to put words to the admiration that I have for you both and Peter. Thank you for sharing those details with me (though tear-jerking as they may have been), and for shedding light on the strength you have gained for your experience.
I think we should get together. Kate and Peter would have a blast, and it's been far too long since we've seen you. Do we have your number? Ours haven't changed. So, yeah, soon then.
http://inspiringhearts.blogspot.com
also if you have not already joined I would go to
http://www.hypoplasticrighthearts.org
Teri
Thanks for bringing that up. I know that I didn't explain Peter's malady very well.
Surprisingly, my wife has read your blog and takes great heart from it--no pun intended. Thank you for reading my post, and best of luck to you and yours.