My terrible winter

This text is progressively more sad detail, if I was in your shoes I would stop reading once I’ve had enough.

If you’re reading this, I most likely feel bad about ghosting you. I took me over a month to start writing. During this month there were many conversations where I wanted to explain myself, but failed to gather the resilience to bring up all the trauma. I’m writing this to both process the memories and to have explanation for you that doesn’t force me to do it on the spot.

TL;DR

In a very short time I lived through my wife’s ski accident, the death of our family pet and the unexpected death of my mother. A lot of family members got acutely sick, a two month old baby included. Everything was timed terribly and we had extraordinary travel mishaps.

In sad detail

A priori

It was late January. I’ve emerged out of a somewhat stressful stretch at work. My wife succeeded at weaning our toddler. We were belatedly starting the ski season. Everything was looking good.

The accident

My wife is not confident on skis. Being a responsible person, she decided to stick to the beginner slope for the first day. Thankfully it was the middle of the week, so it was rather empty. She did a proper warmup. We repeated the basics together and I stuck around to watch her progress a bit. I watched her go at what she felt was a safe, slow pace. Take the turns carefully, with good control. Fall down on a straight stretch for no apparent reason. The ski season has ended there and then, having lasted less than an hour.

Getting her donwn the slope was a bit of a nightmare already. She couldn’t figure out how bad it was, tried walking a bit and sat for a long time of indecisiveness. Later we learned she completely tore ACL, there was no way she would get anywhere walking. We took the gondola down and decided own car will be the fastest way to get to the hospital. This turned out to be surprisingly torturous, with Ewa shrieking in pain on even the smallest vibration. Later, getting home form the hospital was even more torturous. We spent quite a moment trying to get her onto the passanger seat, but there was no way to fit her long leg with the non-articulating brace. Same with backseat facing forwards, we’d need to completely remove the front seat. We had skis inside, taking half the backseat, so I took them out. Ewa did some acrobatics, but finally fit herself in the backseat sideways. I spent an awful amount of time, with her almost crying from pain, trying to somehow fit all the stuff back in witout being too much of a hazard. She now only had to endure the pain all the way back from the mountains.

The event

A couple days later I went down hard with a flu. I don’t remember the exact order, but poor Ewa had to deal with three sick kids too, while not really able to walk.

In that time my sister in law, the medical authority of our tribe, herself down with sinusitis, wrote me a text message. “I hear your mom is not feeling great. Please convince her to go to ER.” By the time I read this I was no longer needed. They were waiting for an ambulance.

The hospital assembled the team well after midnight. They performed a three hour exploratory surgery, leading to bowel resection due to multiple perforations. It took over three hours.

The tearing

It was the weekend. Ewa had a hospital appointment Monday. I wanted to go see my likely dying mother. Ewa called some ladies who babysat our toddler previously and somehow none of them happened to be in town.

My wife needed me. My kids needed me. My dad needed me more. It was the first time in my life that I heard him cry. I flew the first plane I could.

The amazing people

The one and only good memory from all of this: so many people stepped up to help Ewa while I was away. Googlers are an amazing bunch and so many of them turned to be real friends, that some that have offered never got their turn to help us in our need. And we did lean a lot on the good people for three weeks.

The spiral

Mom has survived the septic shock and was showing good signs of recovery. She was still the top concern, but doctors were optimistic. To the point of spooking my father by speculating a surpsisingly early release from the hospital. We got the reading materials about post-release care and made appointments with the nurse who would teach it to us. It looked like the nightmare is about to end.

Then disaster struck. Unexpected breathing problems required ventillation. After one day they started weaning her off that, but the problems came back. They found significant amount of liquid in the lungs, which in turn they found out was an effect of significant heart function degradation. This put a hard limit on how much fluids (nutrition, hydration and medication) Mom could get. That, plus the stress of cycling on and off ventillation, pushed her into no longer winning with the sepsis.

The distraction

That Thursday our hamster, who normally shied from people, climbed into Ewa’s hand and died. Girls were properly devastated. Once they stopped crying, Ewa had to tell them the second news: I had to cancell my flight next day. Grandma was too sick for me to go. They despaired even more.

The end

I was not even able to process the news from home. Just yesterday we’ve heard Mom has a good reaction to her new antibiotics. But that Thursday morning her kidneys started failing. Which started the failure cascade. The medical team was not giving up. Mom got another transfusion and a carousel of IVs. We called a priest, then stayed with her until the evening. Not long after we left, she died.

All of this happened during the most beautiful winter. We walked a bit after coming back from the hospital, before the hospital called with the news. This is the last picture of my Dad smiling I have:

I hope he will smile again.

The accident

Have I mentioned that all of this was happening during school holidays? With no parents available, girls were spending their days at a sports camp. The last day, literally the last hour, Ania grazed a fire sprinkler (yes, the device on the ceiling, sports camp), cutting her head quite badly.

Friday evening is the perfect time to have an accident. The clinic they went to was obviously hilariously crowded. They got to Ania well after closing time. I’m definitely not happy with the quality of the stitching they did. I kinda understand them.

Later that evening girls learned Grandma died.

The tearing

Mom died. She needed to be buried. Ewa had an immovable surgery planned. Ania had an immovable exam planned. Mom’s sister needed to fly in for the funeral from abroad. Many people could only make it on a weekend. Not a single date in the calendar made sense.

We ended up sacrificing Ewa again. The funeral was planned on top of her surgery. Well, technically the day after, but I would take kids there on the day. And leave Ewa to lean on kindness of others again, this time at least without kids on her head.

The failure

I flew in for a less than three days. Should have been enough to help girls pack and drive Ewa to hospital. Alas, everyone got sick again. Except Ewa, she has a magical immunity for all I can tell. With all the grief and all the sickness and all the madness happening, Ewa did not find the passports of the girls. So instead of helping pack, I spent most of the time home turning the whole place upside down to find those passports. I was sick. I failed.

Ania had a valid national ID, so she ended being the only one flying with me. It was Thursday evening. Ewa was in hospital. I needed someone to take in a toddler and a 10yo next morning. For a sleepover. Or three, the plan was not that solid. And have I mentioned amazing people? Girls would have an amazing sleepover… If only Dorota was not so utterly heartbroken for missing Grandma’s funeral.

The funeral

So here I was. Four plane tickets in hand. Only two of us. Ewa having the surgery. Two girls at a friend’s place. We dropped off luggage and ordered an early lunch. “Your flight is cancelled.”

…

We got onto a later flight. Much later. So much later, we even had time to visit Ewa in the hospital. I think we shouldn’t have, but I was not thinking straight. Then the flight was late. Then the second leg was even more late, because it was at airport close and were waiting for all the other late flights that had passengers for Gdańsk. And you know what’s coming, right? Obviously, not the luggage. So I join the hilariously long queue to report missing luggage. And after giving all my details what do I hear? “Flights from Copenhagen are handled in the other queue.”

Once that is resolved Ania is hungry. We grab whatever they have in the last open kiosk and catch a taxi. The driver forbids her from eating. We arrive after 3am. The funeral is in the morning. At least my suit was already here, my sister bought some clothes for Ania and I prepared a speech beforehand, so not all hope was lost.

I was sick. My medicine didn’t arrive. So I started the day by running to a pharmacy. I can’t even figure out what transpired that morning otherwise. But I could not believe I was late for my Mother’s funeral. And when it was the time to step up and speak… I couldn’t figure out how to get the notes out of my phone. Somehow people still ended up telling me it was a great speech.

The sickness

Have I mentioned being sick? Turns out anyone at the funeral who sat within about 3m of me got sick too. Exept Ewa and Dad, they’re both made of brass enhanced by elvish magic for all I can tell. Ewa’s brother flew in to get her out of hospital and help for the couple days. In the process he came into contact with me and got sick too. And what a sickness it was. Ater the funeral I spent over 24h with fatigue so bad, that just sitting up in the bed got my heart rate above threshold. Ewa’s brother was fatigued for well over a week. That week was his industry’s most important yearly trade show. That made the week very memorable. But he powered through. Not only Googlers are amazing.

In even sadder detail

This part is not ready to share, might never be.