Heartache 101

Meet Ethan Conner, my first grandson. Pictured in his wheelchair (I'm holding his hands), as a baby, and in his Halloween pirate costume.

At two years of age Ethan had a seizure and stopped breathing in his daddy's arms. He was clinically dead for several minutes. They got him breathing again in the ambulance. They lost him once more at Children's Hospital but brought him back. He was in a coma. I was there when they told his parents he would be a vegetable if he ever woke up. The brain damage was too severe.

I am doing my best to make a rather involved and tragic long story short.

Ethan had been misdiagnosed. After making so much progress he had another seizure after he had been home for a few months. He was rushed to a different Children’s Hospital. This time they got it right. Funny, this new group of doctors knew what the problem was straight away. The ventricles of his heart weren’t working, so they installed a defibrillator. Which was akin to closing the barn door after the cows had gotten out. The poor little guy had suffered even more brain damage. All the progress he had made was virtually erased. When it comes to writing about my grandson and what happened to him I am reduced to a puddle of emotion. It’s beyond difficult, trying to express the heartache of watching a child you love go through so much pain and agony. Not to mention the suffering of his mom and dad, and extended family members.

He can’t sit up on his own. He has a permanent feeding tube and has to wear diapers. He’s going to turn five in April. He loves to listen to Curious George and Sesame Street, as his vision is impaired. They really can’t determine just what he can and can’t see. Therapy has been cut off because of the budget cuts in California. He does go to school five days a week.

He has problems with extreme pain in his legs due to atrophy, and mucus is a constant problem.

But he’s here. With us. Now.

I don't suppose it's surprising that I’m fed up with shallow people, people that complain all the time about trivial matters, people that are self-centered and petty. When I'm exposed to such people I can’t help but think about Ethan’s mother and his maternal grandparents. You see, my son, and Ethan’s mother had a fling, they were together a very short while. In fact, she didn’t know she was pregnant. Seemed she was on some sort of experimental birth control and it took the doctor’s several months to figure out why she was so sick, that she was actually growing a human being inside her. My son didn’t find out until she was eight months along. He offered to marry her, but she didn’t want to get married. She didn’t want him to have much to do with the process at all. Later on, after Ethan was born and a few months old, she eventually consented to let him take the baby at regular intervals. I think it dawned on her that it wasn’t going to be so easy to raise a child on her own.

The reason I have come to admire Ethan’s mother and her parents (until all this happened to Ethan I didn’t know them at all) is because I have never met such selfless, wonderful people before. Taking care of Ethan is a twenty-four hour a day job. And the entire family accomplishes this without protest, with love in their hearts. As he gets older it becomes more difficult to manage his needs and they never complain.

I’m driving up to see him this Friday. They live about seventy miles away. I’ll post a new picture and you’ll be able so see how big he is now. Their whole family is made up of super-sized people, on both sides, so he’s getting huge! I can't even pick him up and he doesn't fit on my lap.

Until my late forties, tragedy had never really found me. Then all hell broke loose. I had to take care of my father as he deteriorated from heart disease and Alzheimer’s. My stepmother was a juvenile diabetic with myriads of health problems, and she could no longer drive so I had to take her numerous doctor appointments several times a month. As her illness progressed, her own kids were conveniently MIA, so I had to take care of her, and she eventually died in my guest room of breast cancer. I was holding one of her frail hands and Dad was holding the other, when she went. It was not a pretty death. Then came Ethan’s calamity. Dad died a little over a year ago, and that was not a pretty death either.

I have become intimately acquainted with sorrow and loss—and it’s changed me immensely. For the better. I wake up and I am happy to be here. I strive to see the beauty around me. There is no time for whining. I strive to be like Ethan’s family when I grow up.


All Rights Reserved. © 2009 by Elizabeth Bradley.