The official holiday from hell
It's Christmas time! Tis the season for Victoria's life to get unabashedly shitty.
This year's Craptastic Christmas Extravaganza can be read
As anyone who knows me knows my Christmas' are always, traditionally less than idealic. In fact they flat out suck serious ass. This year though…. It was the most horrific experience of my life and I honestly think I am suffering from post traumatic stress. In fact I know I am.
Monday, Christmas Eve (day) Ken (my brother) says he isn't feeling well and thinks he's getting a cold. That night before bed he takes Nyquil.
Christmas morning the twins wake up at 7:30am totally stoked as all 8 year-olds would be. They are truly amazing kids and it's so fun to see their little faces when they dig through the presents trying to guess what they got. My parents are up and my brother's wife comes out of their bedroom and says Ken doesn't feel good at all. She's going to make him a green tea and he'll be out in a minute and we can open gifts.
We're all in the family room/kitchen (open concept) and we hear this HUGE boom sound. His wife goes running into the bedroom and comes out screaming at the top of her lungs yelling "Oh my god! Oh my god! I need to open the door! I need to open the door!" My brother is in the bathroom with the door locked. He's obviously fallen/passed out/something. We can hear him moaning but we can't get in.
His son starts bawling. His daughter curls up in a ball on the couch and says nothing. His wife is still screaming throwing stuff out of every draw. My mother calls 911. I grab the dog (who is freaking out and trying to bite my dad who is holding him) shove him in his crate and grab a big knife (a bread knife that doesn't have a sharp tip) and give it to his wife to open the door with. My mother gets 911 to send an ambulance. His wife gets the door open.
I keep the kids in the living room because now his wife is screaming louder than ever. "Oh my god no! no! no! Ken! Ken! Ken!"
The kids want to go see daddy, obviously. But I tell them they can't. To stay with me. I keep saying "listen. Listen, you can hear him talking." (cuz you could. He was conscious at this point). "He's okay cuz he's talking. It's okay."
His daughter agrees with me. Says her daddy will be fine. The son isn't so convinced.
The paramedics show up and the fire department. I tell max to look at the trucks out the window. (Tell me, are the lights flashing? Are they big trucks or little trucks? Thank god he loves trucks, it distracted him).
The paramedics clean Ken up a bit and put him in a gown, give him oxygen and take him away. My sister-in-law and mother go too.
I let the kids open the gifts from me (which were things they could play with thank god), feed them breakfast, let them open Gus' gift for him. Then, while they are playing with their gifts from me and my dad is with them, I go into my brother's bathroom and clean the blood and vomit and diaherra off the floor, toilet, bathmat and wall.
I have never seen so much blood in my entire life. Not unless it was on TV.
I do the laundry - blood, vomit, shit soaked bathmat and towels they must have tried to clean him with.
I call Jack. Because I want to hear someone's voice who loves me. I want to tell someone what happened. I don't know why, but I do. What I really want to do is breakdown into a shaking, crying, ball of incoherency, but I can't. I can't shed even one tear because I have to look like I'm not the least bit worried, so the kids stay calm. I tell Jack I love him and hang up.
I go back into the family room all smiley faced and get the kids to organize the gifts into piles so when every comes home we can dive right in.
My mother calls. His teeth aren't broken and his nose isn't broken. They have to stitch up his lip because his teeth went through it and his nose where it was split open and check his blood pressure and do blood work etc. But it looks like he is coming home soon.
I give the kids the update. Daddy is going to be just fine and coming home soon….. But he'll look like he got into a fight with Spider-Man and lost. Max responds with "Duh. Nobody beats Spider-Man up. He always wins."
They are getting antsy and start asking more questions so I give them scratch-and-wins that I had attached to the adult gifts and they happily scratch away. (a little white-trash but whatever. Don't judge. I was desperate). Sadly no one won $10,000 - but we definitely deserved it after all this. Then I have them tell me what they think each of their gifts might be. No matter what they guess I answer with "No, it's not a (ipod, spider-man movie, video game, hoodie, etc) it's a baseball bat!" Which is HYSTERICAL to them especially when the gift is in a square box or flat like a calendar.
My brother has extremely high blood pressure and that, in combination with the flu and the cold medication (which you are not supposed to take when you are on blood pressure meds), made him pass out. I never did figure out if he was on the toilet or just sitting down or getting up but judging by what I cleaned up the toilet was involved - anyway he fainted. Thank GOD it wasn't anything more serious. But because there were head wounds there was so much blood it was horrible.
He was home by 11am and the kids got to open their gifts and have a fairly okay Christmas, considering.
I hope I made it as trauma-free for the kids as possible. They honestly seem okay. I on the other hand, am very traumatized. I thought he was dead. I seriously thought he was dying. And I didn't get to react. I didn't get to freak out. And now I feel like I still have a freak out coming but…. I don't know. It's weird. I'm in shock or something. It was just so…… freaking horrific. Last night it was all I could see when I closed my eyes - the boom, the screaming, the pools of blood. I can't hug Jack enough. I want to tear up all the time.
*sigh*
Then Jack and I decide to go away the weekend before New Years - a quick jaunt to Birch Bay. We leave Friday and by Saturday Jack had the exact same flu as my brother. Didn't leave the bed until Monday when we drove home and he went straight back to bed. I was so stressed out that he would faint too or something. i spent new year's eve running around town trying to find an open grocery that had his favorite soup. So 2007 - which for me was a year of very high highes and very low lows, ended on a very traumatic, shitty (no pun intended) low.
But he was well enough that I could leave him New Year's Day and dip my bikini-clad butt in the pacific ocean for the annual Polar Bear Swim! Yay!!!! It was so much fun, yet again. Even though I think I am just regaining feeling in my toes now.....
I hope everyone else had a lovely, calm, relaxing and happy holiday season. Next year I will be celebrating mine in Los Angeles so it will be fucking fabulous!