wow, i am amazed with the blogging community

so yesterday i posted about my friend, Joanna. her husband, Ron, is in a life or death situation - the blogging community has really rallied behind her and i am in awe. i am deeply touched that so many people care and have taken the few seconds needed to make a donation. bless you from the bottom of my heart. when i posted yesterday, about this same time, there was $649 -ish in the account. now we are passed $3,000 dollars!

i think back to that time when my child, Tucker, was so ill and me and my husband had left our apartment in Nevada for life in a rehabilation center (not rehab as in "drugs", but physical rehab). you see, Tucker, was a victim of medical malpractice. i still find the whole topic very difficult to talk about, but i'm going to share a little with you. basically a surgeon made a critical mistake and left Tucker without oxygen. he suffered a traumatic brain injury and is now classified as "multip-handicap". he is in a wheelchair, is cortically blind, is fed through a g-tube and has no purposeful movement (meaning he won't reach out for a toy). cognitively, tucker is at a 6 month old level. this injury occurred when he was 16 months old. it was a devastating and life altering experience. i can only cope by thinking of tucker "after" his injury. i find it way too painful to remember things as they were before. i almost go into a post traumatic stress syndrome when accosted with those memories.

when we left for the rehab center, we left the state of Nevada for Salt Lake City. we had no money, no where to live, no jobs - we left everything. we took an apartment. we had no furniture but 2 lawn chairs. we slept on sleeping bags and "invested" in egg crates to put underneath them. i found milk crates to put our clothes in and a friend of my husband took us shopping for some dishes and cookware. we didn't have cell phones, laptops (or blogs!). it was very isolating. my husband and i coped very differently, so it wasn't a good time for us as a couple. it was a very lonely, awful, horrible time. we spent up to 12 hours a day at that facility. fearful to leave, fearful to be there. i lost so much weight from the stress- i wanted to die if you want to know the truth. Joanna's plight is stirring up these memories and i feel compelled to share them with you. maybe i need to face them. my father and stepmom took care of our bills (car payments and i can't even remember what else) and for that i will be eternally grateful. they helped raise tucker from a newborn and this event took a toll of them as well. even as i type now, my eyes are full of tears. clearly still a very painful subject for me.

my point though, was to say, that during those difficult times, $3,000 dollars would have seem like the lottery to us. we still had living expenses and tucker still needed things. people would randomly send us cards with a $5 bill in it, saying, - go grab some coffee; take a much needed break from the worry. these little things meant the world to us. so from someone who has been there, thank you.

I'm also going to organized for a box of handmade cards to be sent to JoAnna and Ron. if you would like to participate, email me at keeshagirl4@aol.com and i'll send you my address. since his surgery needs to happen soon, i'd like to get the cards to them as soon as we can.