Thanksgiving

     So....last week, round about Tuesday, I started to feel pretty crappy. In all honesty, this started a week or two before, but Tuesday I was feeling really, really rotten. I got off work and had chills, congestion, aches. I begged my kids to feed themselves and then I crawled into bed. After I slept for a couple of hours I woke up, just in time to put everyone else to bed and I took some NyQuil and crawled back into bed.
     Wednesday morning found me still aching. So I took some DayQuil and took my little self off to work. I made it to five o'clock, but only barely.
     John came home, in some kind of fluke....some kind of The Universe Has Decided To Give You A Break....and so I went home, crawled myself into my bed right along with my fever, chills, body aches, and misery and snuggled in for the evening. He left to go back to Kearney at 3am on Thursday morning.
     Thursday morning was another round of DayQuil. And another round of  "Is Jen going to make it to the end of the day?" I did.
     I was so miserable my hair hurt. Every cough was a stab of pain under my right shoulder blade. My back ached. My feet hurt. My neck was killing me. I nearly crawled from my car to my house. I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried.
    Ashley came to my rescue. She promptly sent me to bed and brought me chicken noodle soup.
     Physically, I was feeling terrible.  Mentally, I was at day three of feeling like a crappy mom. John had been home for all of eight hours and I had let him handle everything. All of these FEELINGS brought on a migraine.
     But back to bed I went. In a sort of fog, I remember Zoe coming in to do some reading. And then I started to cry, because I was so tired and felt so horrible, I didn't even have the energy to sit up and read with her. And then I started to cough.
     The long and the short of it is, I couldn't catch my breath. So I panicked. And I went out to tell the kids that I needed them to call someone to come out and check on me, when I collapsed in the dining room.
     The kids called a friend, who made the roughly seven minute drive to my house in what felt, to me, like three minutes. Then they called 911. The details are all still little fuzzy, but all of it ended up with me in the ER.
     My brother and sister in law beat the paramedics to my house. My sister and brother in law beat the rescue squad to the hospital. John made the trip from Kearney in record time. I got to find out the answer to whether or not paramedics will loan you their phone in route to the hospital to call your kids. (No.) Also, the ER nurses, while lovely and kind, will not let you use their phone either. In case you were ever wondering.
     The diagnosis was iffy, initially. They treated me for dehydration, migraine and a virus that maybe was bronchitis but maybe wasn't, so 'Here's some antibiotics and we'll see what happens'. That changed on Saturday, when the radiologist read the x-rays and said basically, "No, that's pneumonia. Good thing you were already prescribed the correct antibiotics."
     I spent the next three days in bed. Asleep, mostly. Crabbing. aching and whining some too. Turns out....I'm going to be fine.

     Enough about me. Let's talk about some other people.
     My friend Jen, for instance. Who had barely gotten both feet inside her door from work when she got back in her car without hesitating to come out and find out what was happening. Then she stayed with my kids, and my brother's, and handled that end of things.
     My brother, who took one look at me and realized that part of the problem was panic. He sat right down next to me and said soothing things and held my hand and explained what was happening and reassured me that the kids were fine. He sensed that I wasn't going to finish the walk from the kitchen to the stretcher outside, so he picked me up and carried me. His wife, who took the kids to a different room and reassured them that I was fine, and then came to the hospital and reassured me that the kids were fine.
     My sister, who sat at the hospital, not knowing what was going on, waiting, Who sat at the foot of the hospital bed and listened to what the nurses and doctor were asking me and interpreted what I was trying to tell them. Her husband, who teased and joked and reminded me that yes, I felt crappy, but it was a temporary thing.
     The paramedics, who left their families to come take care of me and mine. Who didn't scoff or roll their eyes when I asked to borrow their phones. Who were kind, and soothing, and treated me like I was not at all crazy.
     The nurses, who were trying to figure out what was going on with me, which was not easy to do through the fog of my migraine and inability to take a deep breath.
     My mom, who came on Friday morning with chicken soup and sat with me. She watched me doze and reminded me to drink my orange juice and take my medicine.
     My kids. My fantastic, wonderful, superhero kids. They made the calls, they held my hand, they didn't panic even a little. They handled it. They took care of themselves and each other and me. I couldn't possibly be prouder. They picked up the slack around the house. They let me sleep, they brought me snacks and snuggles. They folded clothes and washed dishes.
     My hubby. He didn't even hesitate. He walked into the hospital and told me I was beautiful, even though I was anything but. He carried me out to the car, brought me home and tucked me into bed. He got the kids up for school, and did every single thing that came after that for the next three and a half days. Cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, pharmacy runs, kid wrangling. He listened to me whine, he rubbed my back and neck. He sat with me. He let me watch what I wanted on t.v. He brought me treats and made me drinks and snacks and dinners. He did it all. And when I thanked him, he asked what I was thanking him for.
     I don't even know how to say 'thank you', in a way that conveys what I feel about all of these people. I'm so grateful. When I fell, there were people there to pick me up. Literally and figuratively. I don't know how to show my gratitude for that. I remember, clearly, a time when things were a lot different. I remember being sick and alone. I will always remember it, but I'm going to remember this, too. I'm going to remember when I had a soft place to land and I'm going to be grateful for it, forever.
    I am so blessed. I am so grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.