I wanted to leave a “quick” note about my absence from writing. In short, 2023 was an insane year for us. Here is a “short” recap for the events that happened in 2023-2024.
The year started out with my mother having (planned) open heart surgery. She was scheduled to have two valves replaced. During surgery, they noticed a third valve was worse than they had originally thought, so they ended up replacing three valves and placing a pace maker defibrillator.
A month or so later, James’s mother was diagnosed with degenerative dementia, most likely Alzheimer’s disease. Before her diagnosis and subsequent treatment, her memory, especially short-term memory, was faltering. At times, she would ask the same question over a dozen times in a half hour. For example, she kept asked about Vince starting school during one visit, and I continually had to tell her he was being homeschooled, which she doesn’t approve of. The only way I broke the cycle was to just answer yes he’s in school. I have noticed she asks the same question over and over, especially if she doesn’t like the answer we provided. Medication has helped quite a lot, but she has to take it. In recent visits, she has been fairly quiet, so I am not sure if her memory is still getting worse and she is having difficulty following the conversation or she’s just distracted. One thing I do know is she is sweeter and spends more time sitting with Vince and interacting with him while he is engaged in his activity instead and following his lead of making him do what she wants.
At the end of April, James had lost his job. A client made up a horrific and completely ludicrous story about him. His employer asked him why that person would lie instead of fully investigating the incident, which the truth could have been determined or at least poke enough holes in the client’s story to count it as a lie. He was unemployed for about a month, leaving our single income household struggling. (This incident was one of the catalysts for writing this blog).
At some point in time between April and June, Vince had a bad experience with a speech therapist. She used restraints to get him to sit and focus. He reverted back to not talking at all for over six months. He had been using around 30-40 single words a day.
In July 2023, as I was writing the next section of our story, we received some unexpected news that James’s sister was getting a divorce from her husband. They had been together roughly 30 years, had three children and four grandchildren together. Amy’s marriage seemed to be a point of stability for James, like a beacon of hope that a good relationship could be formed from the screwed up childhood they had endured. Without disclosing too many details, Amy’s (now ex) husband had been having an affair for a few years and has at least two young children.
In August, James had emergency surgery to remove his appendix. The surgery ended up taking at least an hour longer than it should have due to adhesions and scarring. His recovery period was a little over three weeks. Since he was fairly new at his job (he returned to a previous employer), he had only accumulated about a week of paid time off, leaving us with two weeks unpaid with an already stained budget.
Once I finally got back to writing the post on a change of scenery, James’s father was admitted to the hospital with an intestinal blockage (around September 2023). He was not doing well, and for a while, it seemed like he might not make it. By the time he was released from the hospital, the blockage was taken care of, but he was no longer able to swallow anything. All of the interventions that were performed to help the blockage had permanently damaged his epiglottis, that was already damaged due to the cancer treatment received years earlier, so he was released on a feeding tube – no food or drink by mouth as it would go directly into his lungs since his epiglottis was stuck open. It was touch and go for around a month or two before we realized he was going to be alright. As of now (Sept 2024), he is still on a feed tube, but he has had two surgeries to fix his epiglottis and is able to take a small amount of food and drink by mouth.
I would love to say life went back to normal after that, but I can’t. We got exciting news in October. Just as James’s father was returning home from the hospital, we discovered, quite by surprise, we were expecting our third child. My pregnancy was fairly uneventful, even though I was considered high risk due to my age (42). We went the entire pregnancy without knowing if the baby was a boy or girl. We decided that since this bundle of joy was a surprise, we wanted to keep the gender a surprise for us, too. June 2024 rolled around, and we welcomed a healthy little boy into the family. He was nearly nine pounds and had his cord wrapped around his neck twice, luckily it caused no issues. My cesarean surgery went well and my recovery was quick, which is a blessing because I now have three boys to look after.
At the end of November or early December, we received more bad news. My mother was diagnosed with throat cancer. Luckily, it was caught early. It was an HPV variety of cancer, and when found early, it responds well to treatment. Treatment went well and she was doing alright, but then she was having issues swallowing and everything tasted badly, so she stopped eating. I had to convince her to go to the hospital. She was in the hospital over her birthday and in total for over two weeks. When she went home, she was really weak and on a feeding tube. She lost over 55 lbs during the course of her treatment. I am happy to say that the cancer is currently undetectable and basically back to normal. She is still getting tested every six weeks to ensure the cancer is gone. Luckily, this type of cancer has a 80-90% lifetime cure rate and is detectable by blood tests.
In December, we had minor furnance, plumbing, and septic tank issues. Vince had extensive dental work that required him to be put under general anesthesia.
Needless to say, we were looking forward to saying goodbye to 2023 and were looking forward to 2024. Thankfully, this year has not been as rough, but it has been eventful.
January, my mother let us know she was dating someone. We finally got to meet him this past weekend.
In May, one of my closest aunts passed away of uterine cancer. She had been terminal for several years. I also had a young cousin who died unexpectedly of pancreatitis within the same week as my aunt. Within weeks, my (same now deceased) aunt’s eldest daughter lost her husband to stomach cancer.
Around the same time as my aunt’s passing, we had an appointment at the University of Chicago for Vince. He was officially diagnosed with stage 3 autism. We are currently enrolled in a short-term ABA study ran by the BCBA students at the university, so we have been making weekly trips to Chicago. Which would be alright, but the baby has decided he hates car rides and screams for the majority of the hour trip.
May was eventful for us as we had our basement flood twice. The first time was due to a sump pump failure. Doug, a wonderful man from church, came out the same night and replaced it for us. The second time it flooded, we had a crazy storm where a tree fell on our carport and it rained like I have never seen in this state.
Our newest edition to the family arrived in June, and a couple of weeks after he arrived, our air conditioning went out during what was probably the hottest week of the summer. Thankfully, one of our church members, Doug, had a spare window unit he lent us, which kept the house right around 80°F. Luckily, our neighbor knows a little about HVAC and helped us replace the condenser fan and capacitor on the outside unit and got us back up and running.
I feel like I am missing some major event, but needless to say, life has been very busy with its ups and downs. But thankfully, we have a supportive church family and a stronger faith in Jesus that helped get us through.
So, now that the dust has blown over the dumpster fire of 2023 and early 2024, I hope to be back on a more regular schedule to continue telling the story of how I went from leaving the church to what brought me back and to how we are trying to live out our daily lives through the struggles and blessings.
A Mother's Special Calling 