My Daughter is in the Hospital, & Little Else Matters (posted 10/17/24)

I am writing this from my daughter Katie’s hospital room in Denver, to update and touch base with those who have emailed or are wondering why I haven’t posted a column this week. 

Katie had a set-back this past weekend, but she’s doing better now, and I appreciate all your prayers and well wishes posted after my last column.

Katie continued to improve after her surgery, and last Saturday afternoon she was released after two weeks in the hospital; her husband and my wife were ecstatic to finally have her home again.  They got her settled in, and my wife prepared to fly to Vermont on Sunday, to join me and some friends of ours on a previously planned fall getaway.

Unfortunately, in the middle of the night Katie once again started experiencing a lot of pain, and she was rushed back to an ER, and eventually re-admitted to the hospital she’d left only 14 hours before.  Since then she’s been on antibiotics and pain meds, and the doctors have been watching her closely.  

She’s got an infection that has been responding to treatment, and the docs are doing various tests to diagnose the cause of the problem.  They’re fairly optimistic that they’ll be able to get her through this without another surgery, and she has been feeling a little better each of the last several days.

I flew to Denver, and we celebrated her 27^th birthday in the hospital on Tuesday.  Which stinks.

On the other hand, she’s an optimistic young woman, and she knows that she’ll now have a birthday story that will make her extra grateful during all future birthdays.  Just like many people who had that one horrible trip – with the canceled flights and the food poisoning – that makes every subsequent vacation sweeter, or the WWII vets who never had a tough winter after that freezing Christmas of ’44 in Bastogne.  

It’s a cliché to say that tough times reveal people’s character, but I’m happy that this truism has been confirmed in our lives over the last several weeks.  My wife has been a doting mom at her daughter’s bedside, trading off night shifts with Katie’s husband, who has proven himself a stand-up guy. 

He’s been with her every day, making sure she has everything she needs, and reading one of their favorite Tolkien books to her every evening.  He has been bringing her things from home, including some kind of scent-diffuser – her hospital room smells like sage, instead of like a hospital room – which has to be the most thoughtful thing I’ve ever heard a straight guy do.

And something that I have to admit I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years!

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.  In addition to the increasingly positive prospects suggesting that our nation might be nearing a return to political sanity in a few weeks – I’ll be posting about that stuff again shortly – our homes and hometown have survived three hurricanes in the last two months. 

And we’re living in a time of unbelievable advances in medicine, in a great nation that has helped to produce – and benefit from – those advances. 

It’s the middle of a quiet night, and I’m watching my beautiful daughter sleeping peacefully in a sage-scented room, surrounded by amazing technology in an impressive building filled with skilled professionals dedicated to returning her to health. 

My heart is full, and I can’t believe that 27 years have passed since my wife and I were watching her sleep in another hospital bed, her face as innocent and her expression as untroubled as it is right now.