6 ~ (1984—1985)
Bricks Without Straw, Part 2
During the years when Karis was one and two years old, our little family’s resources were stretched thin. David had a traveling job and was often gone from home for several weeks at a time. He needed to keep that job, because we depended on the medical insurance it provided for Karis.
The member of our family who suffered most, I think, was our little son Danny. Whenever Karis was hospitalized, Danny was shuttled around from one home to another among our friends. When Dave was in town, he had to work during the day, but he could stay with Danny at night, so I then stayed at the hospital. On weekends they would come to Chicago and stay with me at the Ronald McDonald House. When David was traveling, I would leave Karis late afternoon, make the hour and a half trip home to take care of Danny, drop him off at the home of our blessed “friend of the day” the next morning, and then drive back to Chicago to spend the day with Karis at the hospital.
We decided that Danny needed more consistency in his life, and enrolled him in pre-school. Karis was disconsolate. Her first words had been, “My Danny.” She adored him and missed him terribly. When he went off to preschool, she would sit by the door and cry, sobbing “My Danny, my Danny.” But within the next week or two or three, she would be back in the hospital, and I didn’t have to worry anymore about what to do with Danny each day.
I agonized for Danny and the upheaval and abandonment he was so often feeling, but was too overwhelmed to come up with better solutions. Danny was understandably jealous of Karis. At home, I discovered him pulling her by her head off the double bed where she had fallen asleep and then pushing her under the bed. When next I couldn’t find her, I knew where to look! She wasn’t necessarily “safer” in her crib or even on my lap. Dozing one day while she nursed, I woke just as Danny jerked her off my lap, flung her on the floor, and climbed in my lap himself. One day I heard Danny yelling, “Mommy! Baby crying! Mommy! Baby crying!” I found him in her crib jumping up and down on her tummy.
When Karis was a year old, and Danny just turning three, a huge challenge came to me in the form of an unplanned pregnancy. I went into shock. I could not fathom how I would manage to care for another child. I immediately feared that this baby too would be born with medical problems. There was just not enough of me to stretch any farther.
At the hospital, when Karis was sleeping, I would sometimes research the medical conditions of the children around us, so that I would be able to relate better to their families. I had a lot of information about various congenital problems stored up in my mind. Almost every night during that pregnancy, I dreamed that this new baby was born with one or another disability, and would awaken in panic. I felt overwhelmed and paralyzed by fear.
My nurse friend Donna helped me gain some perspective. A devout believer in Christ and in the sanctity of life, Donna helped me begin to trust that God, the Creator of this new little life, would give me love and all of the resources that I would need to care for her. When our sweet dark-haired Rachel Dawn was born perfectly healthy, I could hardly believe it. I wasn’t able to nurse Rachel as long as I wished because of Karis’s frequent hospitalizations, but curly-headed Rachel seemed to take her little world in stride and quickly became very attached to her father, who often cared for her when I could not.
While I was pregnant with Rachel, one morning I was returning home from taking Danny to preschool when a large car came around a curve, ran a stoplight, and plowed straight into our little Toyota Corolla from the right side, exactly where Danny had been sitting just minutes before. I heard Karis scream from her car seat behind me, even before I felt the impact of the other car. The baby inside me became very agitated. Our car was totaled, and it took an hour to untangle the two vehicles so they could be towed. But had the elderly driver of the other car not hit us, he would have killed several school children who just then were crossing the street with a crossing guard and would have been right in his path. He was still yelling about “stupid women drivers” when a kind policeman offered to take Karis and me home.
Another challenge in my life during those months was my relationship with Dr. R. He cared passionately about his young patients, but seemed to regard parents as incompetent and untrustworthy. When Karis got sick, he would yell at me and blame me for whatever was going wrong. One time, when Karis had to be hospitalized after our family had been on a camping trip, he shouted “When are you going to get it through your head that your daughter is sick, and you can not treat her like a normal child?” For once I had the nerve to yell back, “Never!” (I knew that nothing about the camping trip had made her sick. She was as likely to get sick just staying at home doing nothing in particular.)
Karis was a completely normal child, with only one problem: her intestine didn’t function very well. I saw no reason to make her into a “sickie.” Karis herself was so enthusiastic about life that she wouldn’t have permitted us to coddle her. Whenever she had energy she was up and busily involved with any fun or mischief or play or learning that could be had. She danced before she could walk. She had an impish sense of humor and a wonderful grin. She lived life with zest, loved everyone, and assumed that everyone loved her.
I knew, in fact, that Dr. R did love Karis, and along with his wonderful nurse Donna, this was the redemptive factor in being able to hang in there with him. One early morning, having spent the night at the hospital with Karis because she wasn’t doing well, upon returning to her room from the bathroom I saw Dr. R leaning over Karis in her crib, saying, “Poor little lamb, I wish I could help you.” I quickly backed out of the room and since my stockinged feet made no noise, I don’t think he heard me. When after a few minutes I walked back in, he was as rough and gruff with me as always, but I had caught a glimpse of tenderness beneath his tough shell that helped me weather his harshness in relation to me.
David’s employer didn’t care where he lived, as long as he could get to an airport. We became intrigued with a church in Port Huron, Michigan and wanted to be a part of it. In December of 1985, when Karis was 2½, Danny 4 and Rachel 8 months old, we moved to Port Huron, to live in a house that a realtor from that church had found for us. Dr. R referred Karis to Dr. P at Children’s Hospital in Detroit. What a marvel to discover a surgeon who could be kind both to my child and to me! God was gracious in this, because the next year would be the most difficult in Karis’s little life so far.
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