So, how’s your August going so far?
The month started out innocently enough. On the second, my husband and I celebrated the 44th anniversary of our engagement. It’s quite an accomplishment really… the fact that we can both remember the date.
The following week, however, calamity struck. My daughter-in-law has periodically had some problems with her gallbladder this year and it decided to take control of things, dropping her into the ER. She spent that Tuesday night in the hospital and emerged with surgery planned for that Thursday.
While she was on the operating table my husband and I were knocking some tennis balls around to entertain our grandchildren. When I went splat on the very hard tennis court landing on my hip and seeing stars, they didn’t seem all that entertained. Me neither!
Nothing broken (not even a sweat) but for the subsequent week the left side of my body reminded me that the number coming up for my birthday on Friday the 13th was the correct number. Yes, Madonna and I really are THAT old.
So now with my daughter-in-law home from the hospital, unable to lift her children for a couple of weeks, we made adjustments to provide help. Happy to do it.
On my birthday last Friday (just as hubby was serving up a beautiful steak dinner) my son provided a most unusual gift … a trip to the ER for himself-with a red hot appendix. The two grandmothers took care of bath and bedtime while my daughter-in-law stayed with (well, nearby) my son at the hospital.
His successful surgery was Saturday morning and his adventure was completed within 24 hours.
This gave us two young parents of two kids under four years old with orders not to lift anything more than 20 lbs. That’s either of the kids. When the post-op nurses greet you with recognition, you’re at the hospital too much.
They have taken it well. They have lots of support, the kids are quite cooperative and when it means I get to snuggle more, I’m okay with it.
I’ve gotten pretty good in the last 18 months at counting my blessings, so I’m quite mindful of these:
1. When they arrived, each in turn, at UNC Hospitals’ Hillsborough Campus, they were well cared for – my son was more acutely ill and was admitted expeditiously.
2. COVID protocols were in place, providing some frustration for the limits of visitors, but they were administered respectfully.
3. If we lived in Mississippi right now, either or both of them could have been facing sepsis before getting medical care because the hospitals are full of COVID patients.
That last one has really stayed with me. I love my grandkids, but I want their parents to raise them. Unvaccinated people all over the country causing patients with heart attacks, bursting gallbladders and unexpected injuries to have their emergency care delayed or denied altogether.
I’m so grateful to live in the Orange County “bubble” of high vaccination rates and plenty of hospital capacity, but so much of the American South is in a terrible crisis with the Delta variant now putting young children in the hospital. Not just “home with the sniffles” as the feckless governor of Mississippi described the other day, dismissing concerns about spiking infection rates – in the hospital.
I love seeing the students return to Chapel Hill. I hope they’re not turned around and sent home by the end of September. We have so many tools to make this a safe, successful year for them. Let’s use them all.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97-9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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