My story part three - On Poop Heads and Surgery

This section deserves its own preface.  I was at my 20th high school reunion in July and was talking with an old friend (to whom I have already apologized for spontaneously telling much of this story - sorry again LH if by some remote chance you are reading this) and an old acquaintance (who is also divorced and appears to be happily remarried).  The old acquaintance, upon finding out that I was in the middle of a divorce, said two things that I won't soon forget.  First, she said, "don't be so disappointed that you're getting divorced.  It didn't work out, so what?  Think of all the new skills you have learned in the process.  Whoever gets you next will be lucky".  That was a turning point of sorts for me because I hadn't yet considered the positives of divorce and what could be in store 'next'.  I have learned new skills that have made me a better person and prospective husband.  The other thing she said was:  "You're a guy, which makes you a 'poop head'''.  Nice, I know.  But it's true.  Guys can be poop heads when it comes to women (Okay, and lots of other things too).  One of the problems in our society is that it is not 'cool' or 'normal' for men to be sensitive or to talk about their feelings.  We are supposed to bottle it up and act tough even when we are hurting very badly.  I am (or at least was) as guilty of that as any other poop head on earth and that played a definite roll in the demise of my marriage.  While I am far better at it now than I have ever been, I was pretty bad at it.  I owe my progress to April who made me confront things I was uncomfortable doing, like talking about stuff I didn't want to talk about.  Unfortunately it was too little too late and my inability/unwillingness to talk about my inner most feelings on certain matters - as you are about to see -was not our only problem.
There are two things that need to be mentioned before I continue:
First, I really screwed up once.  Not just once but this once was bad.  I can't even remember what year it was but it was in the latter half of my schooling.  After trying to get pregnant for awhile we succeeded.  We were elated.  But that elation turned to sadness when April miscarried.  I was in the middle of a project at school and was working late and did not give her the attention and empathy that she deserved.  I have no good excuse.  I just piled it on top of the other problems I was dealing with and internalized it like I did everything else.  She never forgave me for that and I'm not saying I deserved to be forgiven.  Poop head. 
Second, April's relationship with her mom had gotten worse while we lived with her.  Unresolved issues from her childhood would surface occasionally and there would be heated discussions that remained unresolved.  I would come home from work at 11 p.m. unaware that these discussions had taken place and would get both barrels from April.  I was exhausted and had no interest in playing referee to a 30 year old woman and her mother but I should have been a better listener.  The problem was that I had to get up at 6:00 every morning to make it to class so I was perpetually tired and even fell asleep during some of our conversations.
Then matters got more complicated.  April's mom was ready to start dating and April was very helpful in this.  I think she sincerely wanted her mom to be happy and saw this as her chance help her move on.  Her mom signed up with one of those LDS online dating services and to make a rather long story short she found her guy.  He was a former attack helicopter and scout pilot in Vietnam and was serving in the stake presidency in upstate New York.  Bruce is a great guy and has been very good for April's mom.  The bad part was that she decided, rather abruptly, to move to New York and to sell her house - with us still in it.  I had one semester of school left and no amount of reasoning could persuade her to wait 6 months to sell.  We offered to pay rent and keep the house looking nice and stay in it until it did sell but she was determined to move on - all the way to New York and then on a mission to Paraguay.  The neighbors across the street felt so badly that they bought the house and rented it to us until we moved (the Luikarts are some of the best people on planet earth!).  OK, so they didn't just buy the house for us to rent it, but they did let us stay in it until we were ready to leave and then her elderly parents moved in.  They are still some of the best people I have ever met.  Anyway, I remember standing in the driveway with April, Haley, and April's brothers and their families watching as they drove off. Her older brother just kind of looked around and said, "well, have a nice life it was nice knowing you, mom".  It was weird.  Looking back I can't say I blame Pam for wanting to move on.  She had a lot of painful memories in that house.  Bob, April's dad, had passed away in the master bedroom.  The part that pissed me off the most was I literally got stuck, by myself, packing up 30 years worth of her crap when we moved out (and I am in the same situation now!).  Her family has still not gotten over the abrupt exit of their mother from their lives.  The only reason I mention this is because April's relationship with her mom would come back to haunt me just a couple of years later.
I also need to mention that April had 2 surgeries while i was in school.  One to correct a deviated septum in her nose and the other to treat endometriosis.  What's the point?  April and surgery do not mix.  Some people's bodies do not react well to anesthesia or pain meds and she just happens to be one of the unlucky ones to whom both of those apply.

Also, shortly after we moved to South Weber Haley was diagnosed with Tourrette Syndrome.  We had observed things in her behavior before this but we were, as many parents are, reluctant to come to terms with the possibility that something might be wrong.  She had very noticeable facial and other motor tics and would also make sounds that had progressively gotten worse.  She was also an intensely anxious little girl and as a result had a VERY hard time going to school.  I'm talking screaming-and-clinging-to-the-front-door knob hard time and yes she got that from me.  I have memories of hanging on to the steering wheel of the old Granada as my mom tried to pry my fingers off one by one to get me into preschool.  We did, however, get her to go by bribing her with a new puppy (the one I now sleep with every night).  It worked for about two years and then the anxiety got so bad that we pulled her out of school and attempted to home school her (Haley, by the way, now goes to a small private school in Murray where she has been thriving and her tics are all but unnoticeable).  I mention the home schooling because it would become a problem later on too.

TRANS ORAL NECK SURGERY

Yes, it is as bad as it sounds.  Some background is required here but I will try to be concise.  April has always been acutely aware of signals her body sends her.  She has, justifiably, after watching her father suffer the way he did with MS, always been afraid of getting a terminal disease and has been convinced from time to time that she had MS, cancer, or some other dreaded malady (I am not calling her a hypochondriac but she did worry frequently about such things).  For many years she complained of numbness in her extremities and pain in her neck and when we would get her checked out the doctors would shrug and tell her that they had no idea why she would have such symptoms.  Well, the symptoms got worse so she got more assertive with the doctors.  Why no one thought of it sooner I don't know, but fortunately for us a doctor at St. Mark's hospital decided to get a CT scan of her neck.  Viola!  there the problem was.  A normal top vertebrae (sorry I don't know what the technical name is) is shaped kind of like a golf tee.  Well April's looked like a golf tee you might sometimes find in a tee box that has half of the top broken off - it was malformed and lop-sided and it appeared to be rubbing on her spinal cord.  At last the problem had been discovered - that was the good news.  The bad news was that we couldn't find a surgeon who would touch such 'expensive real estate', as one of them put it.  I don't remember exactly how it happened but we were referred to U of U neurosurgery for a consult with a Dr. Apfelbaum.  This dude looked ancient and was kind of arrogant but I'm profoundly grateful that there are people out there who have the confidence to do what surgeons do - especially this guy.  It turned out that he was a nationally renowned neurosurgeon and really new his stuff.  He was very confident that he could help April so we scheduled the surgery for June of 2005.  Because of the location and delicacy of the area in which they would be operating they ended up taking multiple series of images so that the engineers could make a 3D scale model of April's anatomy.  This would be used to practice on so that once they got inside they would know how to proceed.  A LOT of consideration went into how to perform this surgery.
The first part of the procedure would involve going through the back of her throat through her mouth to remove the malformed bone, which was the most tricky part because it was touching her spinal cord.  One wrong move and she could end up paralyzed.  With the bone fragment removed they would have to support her head with some titanium plates and screws.  I always teased her about the Cousin Eddie (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) plate in her head and finally having her head screwed on straight - and we could laugh pretty good about it - or at least I could :).  So, the fun part was flipping her over on the operating table so that they could open up her neck and permanently secure it with said hardware.  This was a very complicated part of the procedure.  The operating table was specially made for this purpose and though I never actually saw it, the description made me think of those fancy waffle makers like they have in hotels where you put the batter on, clamp it shut and then flip the whole thing over at once - kind of an April waffle.  The photo below is the aftermath of the second part of the procedure.  It looked pretty bad at first but became barely noticeable after about 2 years.

Having had serious surgery myself I was apprehensive for her, especially with how she had reacted to less severe procedures.  This one, I knew, was going to be a doozy.  I, along with her two brother's and step-dad, gave her a blessing and I felt strongly to say to her that the surgery would go well and that she would be better off for having had the surgery.  Both came true but it was a rocky road.
The day of the surgery we got there early, I want to say 6 a.m. or so.  It was supposed to take about 6 hours and ended up taking more like 9 to 10.  At the beginning of the day there were probably 75 people in that waiting room. We (Brady and his fam and I) were literally the last people to leave the waiting room as it was getting dark outside - and this was in June.  She was in horrible shape when they brought her out.  She had had a very hard time coming out of the anesthesia as she had with other procedures because it makes her nauseous - which is a bad thing if you have a large, fresh incision in the back of your throat.  They kept telling her not to be nauseous (as if she could help it) and I kept wanting to punch them in the face.
The doc came out and assured us that he had done his best work ever and that she would be up and around in no time.  Boy could he not have been less right about that but it wasn't his fault.  He really did some great work.  April was not supposed to regain as much range of motion as she did.  She was initially told she would have to look at things like Batman, where he has to move his whole upper torso to look around but she doesn't.  So in that regard, she was very fortunate.  In other areas, though, she had some challenges that took almost a year to get over and for me, looking back, it would prove the beginning of the end.

When we first got the diagnosis April's mom and step-dad were in Paraguay on a mission.  April's sister-in-law, bless her heart for recognizing the severity of the situation, took it upon herself to convince them to return home early to support us in this - which to their credit, they did. 
They came home and bought a house in South Ogden 5 miles from us so that they could be close by to help if need be.  Little did her mom know she would be coming over almost every day for months.
April spent a few days more in the hospital than expected due to a couple of minor set backs but was finally released to go home.

This is where I need to be very careful and, actually when I first got to this point I debated not going any further.  I'm not sure how to proceed so I will just say this.  That year after her surgery was the second worst year of my life (second only to the current one).  She had severe reactions to her pain meds and also became anemic.  Some nights I would come home from work and just hold her quivering body on the couch until I fell asleep.  At one point she didn't sleep for days and was hallucinating.  I felt very badly for her and the worst part for me (and I think most husbands would agree) was that I couldn't do anything to make it better -powerless sucks.  The worst was watching Haley's anxiety grow over the situation as she wondered if her mom was going to be alright - and I honestly wasn't sure if she was.  I am grateful for family and neighbors who would just come and sit with her while I was at work, take her to her dr. appointments, help with meals and clean the house.  I would have been lost without all of those wonderful people.  There is more to it than this but I am not comfortable saying more because I'm afraid to put it in the incorrect light.  Needless to say it was a very rough time.  Anyone who wants to know more will have to ask me directly and even then I will be reluctant to add to this. My purpose in writing this is not to pile on April or make her look bad.  She suffered a great deal and frankly, still does.  I only wanted her to get better so she could be happy again - indeed that is all I have ever wanted - for her to be happy...

(I know that's unfair to build up to something and not finish it but it is my blog, so too bad!)