Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A great challenge remembered.

Well, I have said it before, and I will say it again, life is never boring at the Murphy household.  At a later date, I will write about the last few weeks in great detail, but for now, I am just trying to distract myself with a different project to take my mind off the stress of my husband, Tim, being in a very serious car accident.

For the last few days I have been doing some writing challenges, and thought I would take on one subject in great detail over the next week as much as I can.  At first I could not decide on a subject, but then I decided, what better time to take on an old story that has been sitting on the shelf, since it is actually 20 years old this week!

So I hope you will join me on this journey into the past, and see where it will take me over the next week, and I hope that even though you may have never experienced anything like it, I hope that you will take something away about life, and how our experiences shape our lives.

I always think of this story starting on the 12th of August, 1992, but the 11th was more of the starting day.  For a few weeks my mother had been mentioning that I should go get a check up before going back to college, and to see  what our family doctor, Dr. Bernie MacLean thought of some bad bruises I had mostly on my legs.  But I had just turned 19, and I really could not be bothered to take the time to go to the doctor, as I did not think that anything could possibly be wrong with me.  But on 11th my mother was determined I was keeping my appointment, so she told Dad to drive me there while she was at work so I would not try to skip out on it.  I can even remember telling Dad we should go do anything else but sit in the doctor's office on a hot summer afternoon.  But off we went, and it was a very mundane.  Doctor Bernie, simply put, is one of the most intelligent, respected doctors you will ever meet, and he is also greatly loved by the people who have gone to see him for years.  He had in fact been the doctor who brought me into this world, and I love him, and always took his word as if it came from the bible itself.  He took a look at my bruises, and since he has such a busy practice, it was too late in the day to catch the lab at the hospital, so he wanted me to come back in the morning for a few simple blood tests. 

So the morning of the 12th I thought if I had to go back for blood work, I would at least have a bit of a girls day, so I brought my sister, Virginia, who was 12 at the time.  After the blah half hour at the lab, where I got to catch up with a few staff that I knew, we were off to do a bit of jean shopping for back to school.  Our first hint that something was up was when we walked in the door of my parents house later that afternoon.  I first thought Mom and Dad were maybe upset that we had taken a bit longer to come home than we had planned, because the looks on their faces were so serious, that I actually stopped just inside the kitchen door where they were standing together.  Mom said Doctor Bernie had called, and that he wanted me to call him.  I thought this was so odd, because I could never remember anyone ever saying that Doctor Bernie had called them before.  I sat on the steps leading down to my bedroom as I called him back, and nervously wrapped the phone cord around my fingers over and over again. Apparently my blood work had come back a bit odd, and Doctor Bernie said that I had to not just go back to Inverness for more tests at the local hospital, no, I had to go to Halifax, the capital of the province, with the biggest and scariest hospitals that you could find.  I remember just being totally confused, why did I have to go to Halifax?  What was wrong with me?  Only people in terrible accidents, and those who were in the last stages of dying were "sent" to Halifax from our rural areas of the province.  Doctor Bernie did his best to assure me that everything was going to be okay, but when I asked how long I was going to have to be there, and he said maybe a week, I actually felt sick to my stomach.  A week!  How could I have to go to a hospital for a week?  Don't forget the fact that I was 19 at the time.  He was not sure of what was wrong, but that my counts were very low and I would need a transfusion.  Well, I begged Doctor Bernie that afternoon not to send me away, to do the transfusion himself, and didn't it mean I would have to get an IV to get a transfusion?  I had never had an IV, but imagined it must be one of the worse things a person would have to experience in their lifetime.  But he said I would be in good hands, and that I had to go.

So after a flying trip to the next town over to see my best friend in Port Hood, and pick up some new underwear at the Co-op, I was standing in my parents yard beside the car, trying not to cry as I looked at my three younger siblings standing on the doorstep with their arms around each other.  I wanted to just go back in the house with them and go in my own bed, but instead, I got in the backseat and we began our three and a half hour car trip to Halifax and my unsure future.  Little did we all know what was to happen to our family in the coming weeks.

I hope you will stay tuned this week, as I take you through some horrid, some beautiful, and all very real memories. 

1 comment:

  1. Can not wait to read more! You are a fantastic writer verna!

    ReplyDelete