Justice for Jayde

I hadn’t thought about Jayde in years.

The toddler was dead when her mother carried her blanket-wrapped body into the Alpena hospital emergency department. She’d been in and out of consciousness on the couch for days, her skin patchworked with bruises and her brain swollen from trauma. 

Don’t call for an ambulance, her mother’s boyfriend demanded. She’s fine. We’re fine. Everything is normal. We don’t need help.

But the girl died, and the adults who caused her death now sit in prison, he with a 55 to 90 year sentence for second-degree murder and first-degree child abuse, she serving 15 to 40 years for letting it happen.

I listened to the police scanner in the newsroom the night police closed in on Aaron Trout, wanted and considered dangerous after his girlfriend brought little Jayde’s body to the hospital and sent the ER into lockdown mode. I reported on the court case that ensued, and on Trout’s attempts to regain custody of his own children from jail while facing murder charges in Jayde’s death. I read Jayde’s horrific autopsy report, struggling to find words to describe the marks where the toddler had been duct taped to a potty chair or left to sleep on a cold porch with her hands tied behind her back ― words to explain the dented bone where her head impacted the wall as Trout swung her by her ankles in a rage.

I visited the backwoods house where Jayde died and interviewed residents in the nearby quiet-looking town who agreed nothing bad happened there … except when it did. I reported on the mother’s inability to leave her controlling boyfriend, even to report her own daughter’s abuse.

After one court hearing, I spoke to Jayde’s father, from the Detroit area, who wore a t-shirt emblazoned with “Justice for Jayde” and smiling photos of his daughter. “This is just what we do downstate,” he shrugged when I asked about the shirt.

For most of my life, I’d lived in places that didn’t need “Justice for …” shirts and signs. People in my safe, small towns didn’t get violently killed. Other acts of violence stayed behind closed doors, where people like me didn’t have to think about them.

Since Jayde's death, I’ve seen the"Justice" phrase used frequently. Justice for Brynn. Justice for Dee. Absolutely, I think. Let’s get the creeps who did these horrible things. Let’s give them what they deserve, or at least as close to it as the law allows.

But is that really justice?

Maybe. But maybe justice goes beyond catching the bad guy and focuses on stopping the next bad act.

Jayde came to mind today as I typed up a story for The Brooklyn Exponent about a Michigan Court of Appeals decision in a Lenawee County case. A mother and father had appealed a local court’s decision to take away their parental rights because of ongoing domestic violence, drug abuse, and undertreated mental health issues in the home.

A year of attempts at reunification didn’t lead to change in the parents’ behavior, so the court said they can’t be parents anymore. Their daughter is now flourishing with her foster family.

The mother in that case reported fearing for her daughter’s safety if they stayed with the father, who hit when he was angry. They stayed anyway.

Had a family member not stepped in to report what she saw in the home, the child might still be witnessing abuse. Or experiencing abuse. Or worse, I thought as I typed my story, thinking of the limp arm dangling from a blanket at an Alpena hospital.

Such stories fill me with sadness and with rage. Most of all, they make me feel helpless. I don’t know how to help the next Jayde, hidden away in a home I’ll never see. I don’t know how to help the mom who knows her home is unsafe but doesn’t know how to leave it. I want someone ― some Children’s Protective Services worker, some police agency, some lawmaker ― to find a fix and find it now because the problem is so much bigger than we see. One headline about one abused child in one dysfunctional home represents a hundred children, a hundred homes where the hurt hides behind pulled shades.

I can’t live like that, growing ever more numb to sad stories because I feel powerless to play a role in them. But what’s one nondescript, non-superhero person to do?

Notice, that’s what.

Notice the kid who acts out and gets aggressive with her playmates, who talks less than she used to or seems sad or reluctant to go home. The kid who might be watching adults abuse one another at home. Who might endure weekly visits with her biological parents who act like they don’t want her.

Notice the woman who cancels plans and avoids messages, who seems to be in constant contact with her significant other. The one who apologies frequently and seems more anxious than usual. The one who might be in an abusive relationship she doesn’t know how to escape.

And then what?

I don’t know. I don’t know how to solve the Big Problems any more than anyone else.

But I do know that it takes all of us. If we all saw that Jayde’s mom needed help, maybe she would have gotten it. If we all see that the bratty preschooler might be more than just the class problem, maybe we’ll surround him with the adult support and connection he needs to counteract the troubles he shouldn’t have to deal with at home.

Maybe if we remember that the developmentally delayed child may have witnessed her father hitting her mother, we can give her an extra smile, an extra layer of patience and encouragement. Maybe if we are conscious that many homes don’t offer the support ours does, we can build up our own sons and daughters to be advocates for the battle-scarred student the next desk over.

Maybe if we see, and take the small steps that are within our power, fewer hurt kids will grow up to hurt their own kids.

We can’t save Jayde. But we aren’t helpless to help the hurting right in our own circle, our own neighborhood, our own family. Horrible headlines don’t need to make us cringe and close our eyes. They can prod us to action.

Go help a kid. 

You could be saving a life.

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If you believe a child is in immediate danger, call 911.

If you think a child is being abused or neglected — or if you are a child being mistreated — call or text 800-422-4453 right away. This is the ChildHelp National Child Abuse Hotline, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They can tell you how to make a report. Find more information about identifying and addressing child abuse at childhelphotline.org.

For information about how you can help counteract traumatic childhood experiences, visit apaf.org/our-programs/justice/free-resources/what-are-pce-s.

To learn about supporting someone you suspect may be impacted by domestic violence, visit thehotline.org.

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The photo with this post depicts Jayde's dad holding a picture of his daughter. I took the photo, but it's the property of The Alpena News. I'm using it with their permission. (Thanks, Steve.)

55 and Alive

What would you do if you knew your next birthday would be your last?

Back when I was in my late 20s, my mom turned 55 on a cool April day. “Fifty-five and alive!” I remember her saying. She had stage four colon cancer, and the doctors were starting to run out of treatment options. A month later, they’d tell her it was time to take that last vacation. Not long after that, I stood beside her casket, singing “Praise God, From Whom All Blessings Flow” under the cemetery canopy with the balloons she’d requested for the occasion stirring in the breeze behind me.

Mom’s death shifted the way I saw life. As I aged into my 30s and then my 40s, I found myself tracking time with an end date in mind. A person lives until they are 55, and that’s all they’re promised, a voice in my head kept telling me. 

Life became more urgent as the years passed. You’re not doing it all. You’re not accomplishing enough. You’re running out of time, the voice said.

And now, here I am, turning 55 myself. And utterly flabbergasted at how happy that makes me. 

A year ago, the day before my 54th birthday, I had a mammogram that would turn into a cancer diagnosis. It came as no surprise. I was the same age Mom was when she learned she had cancer, and I’d long expected myself to walk the same path she did. 

Except I didn’t. Chemo and a mastectomy and radiation have made the past year interesting, to be sure. But I went through it knowing I’d come out the other end OK. That was a reassurance Mom never had. She knew when she declared “55 and alive!” that she probably wouldn’t see her 56th birthday.

And yet, on her last birthday, that lovely woman made her declaration with real joy. Real hope. Real zest for life, whatever that life looked like.

In the months that followed, she and Dad went to Boston and watched whales. She kept meeting with the “Lunch Bunch” she’d started at church to give older folks something to do. She kept hugging the little kids who flocked to her after her decades of teaching. As her strength failed and the tumor grew in her thinning frame, she kept showing up at church on Sunday mornings, never missing until the day before she died in her living room recliner, my brother and I kneeling at her side and holding her hands as she left us for Heaven.

I didn’t know my mom as well as I now wish I had. I was in my 20s when she died, self-absorbed and focused on my own future, her first grandchild growing inside me. But as I type about her in a coffee shop, marking my own 55 and Alive day, I feel her beside me, nudging me toward life. And joy. And doing what matters most, because time is not a given.

I recently rediscovered a list I started about a year ago, titled, “Things I love.” It’s a scattershot sampling, not nearly as long as it could be, including the smell of tomato plants, listening to my kids, and rescuing bugs from being squished. At the top of the list is my very favorite go-to activity: getting lost on country roads. The list makes me happy. And it reminds me that joy is not a matter of chance. We can choose it. We can seek it out.

On a recent back-road drive, sneaking peeks of beguiling woods and little streams and contemplating my coming significant birthday, I found myself laughing with astonishment. 

I could be dead. 

But I’m not. 

That’s so freaking amazing.

A fire in my belly urges me to go, do, accomplish, fix problems, change the world. Don’t get a wrong picture of me, here – I’m no superachiever. I’m as lazy as the next guy and think Big Thoughts far more often than I do Big Things. But the fire still burns, telling me I gotta do more, gotta be more.

And that’s true, in its way. A strong, safe world is an all-play, and we all have roles in bettering our communities and the lives of those around us.

But doing more and being more can walk alongside joy. They can come with peace, and strength, and deep breaths and drives in the country and cat cuddles and noticing the sunlight making sparkles on the walls. I can lead a purposeful, meaningful life and still marvel daily at being alive, at having time to do one more thing, love one more person, rescue one more bug.

It doesn’t matter how old you are. You have Things to Do. And you have time – at least today – to do them. Isn’t that just the most amazing thing? Revel in the joy of it, friends. And when our time runs out, well then, we praise God, from whom all blessings flow, that we had this time, to do. To be. To live.

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Because I could, and because it sounded fun, I designed a “55 and Alive” sticker that I uploaded to the website Redbubble. It’s a site made for creators to be able to sell their artwork to others, but I use it to make and print stickers I want for myself. There’s probably a bunch of other ways to do the same thing. I mention it not to promote Redbubble, but because I figured someone else might like knowing it’s possible to make your own stickers and buy them from yourself. It’s fun. Here’s my sticker, if you want to see it.

A coffee shop in the rain

The weather forecast called for rain, but it still took me by surprise. Outside my coffee shop window, tiny rivers run down the sides of the street. A woman with a blue umbrella trudges through the parking lot across the street. A passing mail truck kicks up a mist, its wheels whooshing wetly.

Rain comes, a necessary gift to the land, cleansing and refreshing and offering excuses to curl up on the couch with a book and a cat.

Necessary, yes. But sometimes it’s sad. Like today. 

Today the rain is sad because I am sad. 

I don’t know why I’m sad. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just empty inside, or too full, I’m not sure. I just know I’m not OK.

I don’t feel like I have permission to not be OK. My life is so easy. So full of privileges. I’m loved. I’m supported. I’m healthy. I have the time and the means to sit in a coffee shop with a Hotty Scotty latte and watch the rain and type about my feelings. 

People I love are fighting really, really big life battles. They deserve to be sad, and scared, and angry. It feels wrong for me to claim those feelings when my load is so much easier to carry.

I have no reason to be sad. I don’t deserve to be sad.

But I am.

The rain will let up, and I’ll be fine tomorrow, or even later today. For now, though, I’ve got a knot in my heart, and I’m struggling.

I’ve been avoiding writing blog posts lately to put more of my writing energies into the book I want to write. I needed to write this post today because I needed somewhere to put my sadness. But I also wanted to write it because I suspect a lot of people walk around in the rain, feeling feelings they think it’s not OK to have. 

And maybe it’ll help someone else to know that I’m sad, too.

A few months ago, on a day when my cancer treatments hung especially heavy on my shoulders, I ordered a hot drink at a coffee shop that employs and raises money for women facing huge life obstacles. The woman at the counter saw sadness on my face as she took my order. She asked if she could pray for me. I nodded. She called together the other workers, and we stood in a close circle and she asked God to carry and comfort me, whatever my needs may be.

When I needed a place of peace today, a place where it was OK to feel sad even though it’s not OK to feel sad, I knew where to come.

Today’s barista is new, you can tell. She wasn’t sure what buttons to push and took my order with a nervous giggle. I wonder what her story is. What hurt she’s gone through. Whether she was sad when she came to work this morning.

What I do know is that, whatever her past, she’s helping to create a safe space for me, in this place where people understand that sometimes people are sad, and that sometimes the rain comes, and you have to just let it come.

I started therapy recently. You’re not supposed to tell people that, I hear my inner voice say. But I want to be healthier emotionally ― even though I’m super scared about the hard work it might take to get there ― and there’s no shame in that. I hope it helps me be stronger, strong enough to help other people be stronger, too.

Everyone gets sad, and the rain lets up, and they get happy again. If you’re sad today, you’re not alone.

And if you’re not sad today, know that someone around you might need you to be a coffee shop in the rain.

Love isn't enough

Austin and Monica tried to provide a decent home, by their reckoning, and for four years they fought to keep their kids. The court agreed the Alpena parents loved their children. 

And yet, when Children’s Protective Services workers visited Austin and Monica’s home, they found drugs, filth, and a carcass in the bathtub.

CPS offered the parents help making their home safe. Multiple agencies pitched in, helping the parents buy a washing machine and stove, providing paint and baby supplies, and hauling in dumpsters where the parents could dispose of the trash that filled the home. Intervention program workers directed them to food pantries, offered cooking lessons, and helped clean their living room.

The help helped, but it wasn’t enough. The local court placed the couple’s first child into foster care in 2020, when the girl was five months old. In the ensuing months, Austin and Monica worked hard, got their home habitable, and brought their daughter home. Soon, though, the kitchen cupboards were again full of dirty dishes, flies were everywhere, and the girl’s new little brother had dirt caked into his car seat and his skin folds.

The parents refused to move dangerous items like a large fish tank on top of a dresser and left marijuana, drug equipment, and razors and knives within the children’s reach, CPS workers said. The more than 15 animals living in the home ― including ducks, rats, aggressive dogs, and a tarantula ― added to the chaos and uncleanliness. Workers tasked with helping the parents called them belligerent and disrespectful.

The court removed the children again. And again. And again ― each time providing services toward reunification, each time rewarded by a burst of productive energy from the parents, each time returning the two, and then three, children to the home.

The parents loved the children, everyone agreed. They tried.

Still, again and again the home became overrun with clutter and animal urine and broken glass and moldy sippy cups and fleas and guests doing drugs. A worker watched the oldest child, now 2, pick up a used marijuana joint off the floor and put it in her mouth. Daycare workers reported what they believed was feces caked into the bottom of the children’s feet. One caseworker found a deer carcass and an electric heater in the bathtub. Another witnessed the children licking milk off an unclean floor.

The oldest girl told a worker her mom had slapped her “because I’m a bad, bad baby.”

Monica’s anxiety and Austin’s angry impulsiveness, a remnant of his trauma-filled childhood, left the couple in a “devastating cycle,” feeding negatively off each other until “the whole household fell apart for lack of structure,” according to a psychologist who evaluated them. 

The kids loved their parents and the parents loved their kids, said a state worker who observed their supervised visits.

But love was not enough.

The courts broke the cycle by breaking the family. It terminated Austin and Monica’s parental rights, and earlier this month the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld that decision.

Our heart breaks for these kids. They didn’t deserve to start life tossed back and forth between homes and living with a deer carcass in the bathtub where they should have giggled and splashed and played with bubbles.

My heart tugs, at least a little, for the parents. No, they didn’t take care of the children in their care the way they should have. But they’re parents who lost their kids, the biggest hurt any parent can suffer.

And my heart goes out to the community that didn’t know this drama was happening in their midst.

The community that doesn’t see the same drama still playing out in their midst, all over, all the time.

Last year, officials reported 100 confirmed child victims of abuse and/or neglect in Alpena County. That’s 100 kids ― and those are just the ones we know about ― living in rotten conditions, getting a rough start on their lives, probably carrying that hurt forward into adulthood. 

It’s not an isolated problem, of course. More than 24,000 kids were determined to be abused or neglected in Michigan just last year, 661 of them in the county where I live.

Police and other officials tell me over and over that combating violence starts with protecting childhood. Making sure kids get fed. Get to school. Are held accountable. Feel loved.

When we fail at this, we all suffer. Tough childhoods directly contribute to more violent, less safe communities. You can hate Austin and Monica for not protecting their children. You can be glad they lost parental rights and say they deserve any pain they are feeling. But you cannot say that’s the end of it, because it’s not. And you can’t say it’s not about you, because it is.

Child abuse and neglect isn’t just sad. It makes you and your loved ones less safe.

Want to protect a child? Be alert for parents who are overwhelmed, isolated, and unsupported. Offer help so they know it’s OK to ask. Invite them to your church’s food pantry. Buy a package of diapers for the frazzled mom behind you in the checkout line. Support efforts that reduce family stress by providing affordable child care, transportation, healthy food, and health care access.

Volunteer for the school supply giveaway. Donate to the Boys and Girls Club. Treat kids with respect and know someone is watching you and learning from you.

Feeling sad for hurting kids doesn’t stop the hurt.

We do.

I almost didn’t write about this now, suspecting nobody’s going to want to read about a CPS case right before Christmas. But then I got to thinking…what good is this sacred December celebration if it doesn’t prompt us to see and respond to the hurts around us?

God so loved the world that He plunked His one and only Son in a manger, cute as a button, no crying He makes.

But love wasn’t enough.

Jesus didn’t come so we could celebrate His birth. He came because He had work to do. He came to eat with the hurting and the weak-willed and the failure. Came to flip over tables and wash feet and confound the wise and uplift the simple. He came to die so we can live.

We need the breathless pause of Christmas with its joy to the world and its heavenly peace and its cute cooing baby. But we also need the man/god on the cross and in the tomb, descending into Hell and beating the snot out of the old evil foe.

We need a God who walked on our soil and walks with us daily, strengthening us for the work we must do ― the work of stepping with compassion into the lives around us.

Because love isn’t enough.

*****

If you need help because you're at risk of abusing a child or you think someone else has abused or neglected a child, do something.

You can start by contacting your health care provider, a local child welfare agency, the police department, or a child abuse hotline for advice. In the U.S., you can get information and assistance by calling or texting the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453). 

Narwhals: or, The Case of the Missing Breast

“If you hadn’t just had surgery, this would be kinda hot,” said my husband, unclasping the binding stretched tight across my chest.

Three days had passed since a surgeon with nice hair had lopped off one of my breasts ― the one that, as breast cancer survivors like to say, had tried to kill me. I’d known almost since my diagnosis in spring that fighting cancer would mean losing the breast. From far off, though, “mastectomy” was only a word. Now, it was a blank space.

My intrepid spouse helped me out of the elasticized wrapping in which I’d been swathed for my trip home from the hospital. I peeled away the mound of gauze that lay beneath, and together we inspected the smile-shaped incision held together by surgical tape that draped across the startlingly flat left half of my chest.

No oozing, no strange colors, nothing alarming. At least, nothing more alarming than a piece of you that’s suddenly missing. Two thin, three-foot tubes snaking out from under my arm ended in rubber balls shaped like translucent hand grenades. Drains, the surgeon called them, made to collect fluid on my outside so it doesn’t accumulate on my inside.

You know those rolls of stretchy, fabric-ish stuff in the Band-Aid aisle? I don’t know what it’s called, but it works great for strapping fluid-filled hand grenades to your torso when you get undressed and no longer have pockets. An awkward but gloriously hot shower later, I wriggled back into my elastics, taking one more look at what had been something instead of nothing only a few days before.

What a sight I was ― misshapen, lopsided, taped together and sewn shut and topped off with a bald head sprouting peach fuzz.

Beside me, my spouse fumbled with the elastic bandaging, trying to ease it over my good shoulder without jostling my achy bits. I instinctively started to cover my incision with one hand. I didn’t want him to have to look at a mangled wife.

But that’s not what I saw on his face. In his eyes, I could plainly see, I was just me ― the person he’d pledged 30 years ago to love and care for, for better or for worse.

I giggled and struck a pose in the mirror. Yes, I lost something I valued. Yes, I am going to sometimes feel ugly, or deformed, or just sad about what I lost. But I’m also OK. Because, when it comes right down to it, the people who love me don’t give a rat’s patootie whether I have all my body parts. My good lookin’ husband still thinks I’ve got it. And I’m still me, imperfection and all.

******

Somewhere around one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. Not all of those will lose their hair or a breast, but some do. Yet, since I’ve started paying attention, I have seen almost no women with obvious signs they are undergoing cancer treatment.

I suspect that’s at least partly because women experiencing those appearance-changing effects feel like they have to hide their changed appearance.

For those who want to wear a wig or a prosthetic breast, I say, bully, more power to you.

But people shouldn’t have to disguise their differences and paper over their hurting parts.

When I’m at the grocery store, or at church, or waiting in a waiting room, I’m probably surrounded by people desperate to mask a deformity they see in themselves. Maybe their body doesn’t look like other people’s. Maybe their heart feels mangled. Maybe they can’t eat, or they eat too much, or they hate their family. Maybe they’re afraid and sad and don’t know why. Maybe they can’t forgive themselves for past actions or they can’t stop reaching for chemicals to feel OK. Maybe the hurts they experienced decades ago well up as guilt and self-loathing, no matter how much they try to get better.

It’s alarming to picture a world in which everyone lets their scary things show. But, if we convinced those around us that it’s safe to be different…mightn’t we discover how much we are all the same?

The acceptance and gentle encouragement of my husband and of friends who love me has helped me accept, and not fear, my recent physical change. It’s not as easy, perhaps, to battle past long-erected walls to show those in our circles that we value them ― not the version of them they feel they need to show the world, but the imperfect them, differences and all.

But that battle might be worth it, I think.

******

I’m not going to spend a lot of future blogging time talking about breast cancer. Other topics feel more urgent. But I’m happy to swap stories or share my experiences, if it’s helpful to you or someone you love. Email me at julie.j.riddle@gmail.com if you feel like chatting.

I will say this: A cancer diagnosis is scary. But the sooner you catch a problem, the greater your chances of overcoming it. I discovered I had cancer when I realized I was a year overdue for my annual mammogram, did a self-exam, and discovered a sizable lump. If I had gotten the mammogram when I was supposed to, my course of treatment might have been simpler. 

Mammograms, like most other cancer-catching tests, are easy. They can keep you alive. If you need help scheduling a test, email me and I’ll do my best to help. I’m no expert, but I’m happy to be a friend to walk by your side.

******

About the photo:

Right before surgery, I told my husband that some women who’ve had a single mastectomy call themselves unicorns. That didn’t feel right for me, I told him. (Everyone knows unicorns are the snobs of the animal kingdom.) Instead, I thought I’d call myself a narwhal.

Yesterday, with an impish sparkle in his eye, he brought me a box. I opened it to find a HUGE stuffed narwhal, pink, with a sparkly horn spiraling from her head.

Mega husband points for that one, honey.

(Narwhals are weird. And that's what makes them awesome. I can't help thinking...Maybe all of us with a difference we think we need to hide need to embrace our inner narwhal.)

Pneumonia

It’s only 3:00 a.m.

Good Lord, how can it be only 3:00 a.m.??

I had finally slipped to full sleep after the 2:00 a.m. nurse visit, floating in a jewel-toned dream of book sales and Chinese paintings. When another bone-jarring seizure of coughs pulled me back to consciousness, I was convinced, with eyes still closed, that the worst was past and morning was near.

Nope. Three-o'-bloody-clock, the face on the wall insisted. Still no real sleep, and what little I’d had had been interrupted by the boiling, monstrous barks emerging from somewhere deep in me as I leaned helplessly over my outstretched legs.

Apparently, I thought in the cold light of the clock, pneumonia is going to be tougher than I thought.

The sleepless night wouldn't be so bad had I not spent the entire previous night wide awake in the Emergency Department. That first night in the hospital was almost fun. Medical types bustled in and out every five minutes, “checking my vitals” (such a mysterious, slightly sexy phrase, even if it only means they shove a thermometer in my mouth and poof a cuff around my bicep) and asking my birth date 100 times. When they weren’t in the room, I listened with a grin as nurses wrangled the old man across the hall who kept trying to escape. Sure, sleep would have been a nice alternative, but a night on the ER graveyard shift held its own beguiling energy.

I hadn’t expected my trip to the hospital to turn into anything, much less a several-day stay. Sure, I’d felt crummy the past few days. I’d huddled under mounds of blankets, body trembling and throat raw from coughing spells. A slow trip from the couch to the bathroom and back left me heaving for air and swearing I’d never pee again. But that was normal. Or, at least, it was the expected result of the final of six chemo treatments, for which I’d rattled the rope under a bell the previous Monday. You’re SUPPOSED to feel rotten by the end of chemo. And, frankly, I skated through most of treatment with so little difficulty, I felt this final beating up of my body as a badge of honor, marking me as One of the Strong who survives and thrives through difficult times.

Then my husband told me my cheeks were awfully pink, and I remembered what I had promised Aimee. Before I started chemo, my nurse navigator talked me through a list of red flags which, if experienced, meant you absolutely positively SHOULD CALL YOUR DOCTOR, no matter what and no matter when. Right there at the top of the checklist, there they were: chills, fever, sudden onset of coughing, difficulty breathing.

Dang.

I picked up the phone and dialed the on-call number. A few minutes later, a no-nonsense doctory voice called me back. I figured he’d suggest an OTC med for overnight, then an office visit in the morning. No, he said. You need to get your butt to the ER.

I crawled out from under my blankets, layered on several sweatshirts, a scarf, and two hats against my inner chill, and tumbled into the passenger seat of my car, my faithful hubby claiming the keys. I had been a frequent visitor to the hospital in recent months, but only to the oncology side. The ER was a new experience, and the security guards lifted their eyebrows at me as I tried to explain why I was there.

I hadn’t realized I needed to sit down until the wheelchair bumped against the back of my knees. Then I was rolling, stopping, telling someone my birthdate, describing the chills and the checklist and apologizing for taking their time.

The husband had parked the car and caught up with me and the check-in woman was asking more questions when my head clouded over. “I’m,” I tried to say, “I,” but then the clouds pressed in, and then I was gagging and grasping at breath and trying to figure out where I was.

Here’s a thing I learned about ER visits. If you want to get a room quickly, pass out at the check-in counter. Apparently I lost consciousness for 15 seconds or so, and — oh, the delightful drama of it! — my eyes rolled back into my head, the whole shebang. I awoke tearing at my layers in the wheelchair, desperate for cool air as they trundled me to Room 20 and got me safely penned onto a cot.

My fever and chills evaporated as soon as I got settled, and I worried I had come for nothing. But hours of bloodwork and tests validated my presence. I had pneumonia, said Dr. Caleb “Call me Dr. Egg” Eggenberger, a genuinely nice guy whose name would be a great special at IHOP.

Pneumonia didn’t sound too bad. I’m ignorant about most things medical, but as long as I recognized the name of the sickness, it couldn’t be too zany or off-the-wall dangerous, right? Maybe, said Dr. Egg. But, the chemo. The inner military that usually fights so effectively to keep me healthy is crippled by personnel shortages. I needed to stick around for a while. Just to be sure I’m OK.

The clock on the wall reads nearly 5:00 a.m. now. The coughing has subsided, though I’m sure it will be back. My overnight CNA just tested and retested my blood pressure, unsatisfied with the numbers. I think I can drift off to sleep soon, even knowing it won’t last long.

I’ve been feeling pretty sorry for myself tonight. The coughs hurt. My body needs sleep.

But in the quiet of the hospital night, I feel people all around me who are so much stronger than I.

Who bear so much more than I, and do it with grace and valor.

As they wheeled me from the ER to whatever they call this part of the hospital, the faces that peered at me from room after room were creased, their bodies small. I’m no spring chicken, but I still have relative youth on my side to help me fight disease. So many people spend their golden years battling one physical enemy after another, their fights so much bigger than mine. And yet they keep smiling, keep volunteering at church, keep giving time to their grandkids and encouraging the next generations to work hard to better their world.

I have the privilege of sitting in a mostly comfy room as I cough, a call button at my elbow and a television on the wall for entertainment. So many people cough alone in their homes, unable to jump through the hoops to access medical care. They cough, they grimace, and then they go back to work, determined to keep a roof over their kids’ head and food on the table.

The nurse who makes me feel like her favorite patient looks out the window for a moment, and I see on her face the long, long days of cleaning up other people’s grossness, ignoring other people’s demanding rudeness, breathing other people’s pneumonia. That she comes back night after night strikes me as astounding. Yet, here she is, calling me honey and asking if she can get me anything.

People have been so kind since I started cancer treatment. They tell me I’m courageous and inspiring. I have done nothing to earn that – nothing but let the systems designed to help me take care of me so I don’t die.

Heroism is not having those systems and fighting anyway.

The sun will rise in a few hours, I suppose. Maybe I can squeeze in a little more sleep before then. I’ll probably cough, and I’ll probably throw myself a little pity party, and then it’ll be morning and I’ll order some scrambled eggs that will come to me on a tray.

And then maybe I’ll look a little harder for the heroes fighting around me, take a deep breath, and see how I can help.

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A nurse just added a new band to my right arm. It’s an indicator that my blood pressure shouldn’t be taken on that side, she said.

The band reads, “Limb Alert.”

Maybe it’s just lack of sleep, but I find that really funny.

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Good hubbies, when you're in the hospital and it's 2:00 a.m. and the test results haven't come back yet.