It's Raining! It's Pouring!

Nikolina, as I posted elsewhere, came home yesterday evening, and we had a right fine celebration at Pizza Factory with Donnie, Shane (our son), Lemony (his wife), Nathaniel (our grandson), and Nikolina. As we were finishing, Fr. B and the staff from the local retreat center quite coincidentally showed up, and they all got to meet Nikolina and be rewarded with her infectious smile and highly social, happy eye contact -- she's an extrovert and already a bit of a flirt. (Fr. B, early on in Nikolina's surgical odyssey, celebrated a mass for her and for all of us.) We all left in jolly spirits.

However, the saga is not over, and I am not referring to the fact that Nikolina still has a series of operations ahead of her. Since it never rains, but it pours, we should not have been surprised that Shane ended up in the hospital within an hour of Nikolina's homecoming. We spent about six hours waiting for CT scan results only to learn that my diagnosis was accurate: appendicitis. (I want an honorary medical degree; I think I've earned it!) The appendix is getting close to rupture stage so the doctor would not let Shane, who, like me, has a very high threshold for pain, wait until his day off to do the surgery. It will be done the very first thing in the morning.

Goodness, I never thought I would be doing a post on Shane. He is the perfectly healthy child between two seriously handicapped ones. I cannot remember Shane ever being sick except for about a year with periodic migraines, which he learned to control, using biofeedback. (I control mine that way, too. Surprisingly, we each taught ourselves how to do it, which mightily impressed the doctors in both cases.)

In any event, it looks like life has become just a tad more complicated. I will need to take some time off in order to help Lemony with Nikolina so that she can be at the hospital with Shane and take Nathaniel to school. (Nathaniel was with us after school today.) It is sort of like the game of musical chairs, only its musical kids. Memories of our children's younger years -- musical kids then, too -- flood back these days.

So, it looks like we are going to have to ask for God's help again. I wonder if God ever gets tired of pulling one family out of dilemma after dilemma? I hope not because we are still living in the Land of Splat!, where we really depend upon God to get us out of all that muck that ends up covering us from time to time!