Every year around this time, I scour through my calendar, trying to recall what went on over the last 12 months. This time last year, I didn't have much to report because with the pandemic, things had been few and far between…2021, however, has been so significant, so life-changing, I didn't need to refer to the 12-month planner. While we faced many challenges, there were also some fantastic highs.
January kicked off with my first book, Tame My Racing Heart. It seems like ages ago now that I hit the buttons that would put five years of hard work out into the world. Publishing a novel had been a lifelong dream of mine, and while I never did it intending to make any money off of it — it sold 101 copies, way more than I anticipated — it was a proud moment. I still get a thrill looking at my bookcase and seeing it sitting there. Hopefully, it's the first of many.
Later in the month, we received a phone call from my mother-in-law's neighbor. Usually, they'd see her walking her dog or make her way to the store down the street. But when they hadn't seen her for a few days, and her newspapers had started piling up outside her door, the neighbors started getting concerned. When she didn't answer the phone, my husband went to her condo, where he found her lying on the floor in her hallway. She claimed that she had fallen and couldn't get up, but who knew how long she'd been there. Once he could get her upright, she seemed okay, and she said she was going to bed. The next day, when he called, and she didn't answer again, he raced back into the city, finding her on the floor in her bedroom. She fought him on it, but he ended up taking her to the ER, and after a few days of treating her at the hospital, they sent her to a rehab facility close to our house. But that was only the start of what would be a long road for her and us.
In February, I released the hard copy of my book and hosted a Facebook Live show to launch it. Of course, being a romance, I released it on Valentine's Day. I was thrilled by all the good reviews I was getting, and people were sending me pictures of themselves holding the book. I even signed copies for friends. All that writing, and general computer use over the past thirty years, had taken its toll on my hands. I had carpal tunnel. I could no longer ignore the pain in my hands, the numbness, and the tingling.
I had surgery on my right hand in March. My surgeon was great, and since the recovery wasn't too bad, we decided to focus on the left hand as soon as possible. But that surgery would never happen because the rest of the year got crazy.
In 2020, my father-in-law came from Thailand to the United States just as Covid-19 hit. For almost a year, he lived with us as doctors had tried several options to improve his health. He'd had a valve replacement, and they changed out his pacemaker battery. They even hooked him up to a machine to give him intravenous medications. The doctors realized there wasn't much more they could do for him, so in early April, we began hospice. The hospice staff was an extraordinary group of people who did marvelous work. I asked one of the nurses during that time, “how can you do this every day and be around death like this?" She said it was a gift. It was hard for most people, and she was glad that she could be there to give them some comfort. Eight days after my father-in-law started with hospice, he passed away. Those eight days were perhaps the longest in my entire life, every day watching him slip away — until October when we would learn what a "long time" really meant — more on that in a bit.
The same day my father-in-law passed, I found out I had Covid. I had just gotten my vaccine and thought I had a sinus infection. I had tested negative only a few days earlier. Since I was feeling worse, my doctor ordered another test. The result came back positive. For three weeks, I felt horrible, and the fatigue was no joke. I spent most of the month on the couch, but when I could finally go back to work, my husband snapped a muscle in his calf walking up the stairs. It was brutally painful. We went to the emergency room, and I ordered him a scooter to use around the house and worked from home to take care of him.
While all this is going on, we've been taking care of my mother-in-law's dog. Her little terrier came to live with us, and I was blissful in the thought of having three dogs. In May, that bliss became a nightmare when she started attacking our princess, Stella. Stella was more scared than hurt the first time it happened, so we considered it a fluke occurrence. But the second time it happened, we knew we'd have to keep the terrier on a leash at all times for Stella's safety. Then, one day, I made a mistake that changed everything. My mother-in-law's dog was walking around our house, and I was carrying Stella. I had set Stella down for a brief moment to fix the rug in the hallway when my mother-in-law's dog came charging around the corner right for Stella and latched on to Stella's throat. We couldn't get them apart, and Stella made a noise that would haunt me until the end of my days. I knew there was no way that we could go on like this. Stella ended up having minor surgery to repair the damage to her neck, and I ended up in the ER because when it happened, I dropped to the floor so fast to break the dog apart from Stella that I threw my back out. Within two days, we were at the vet, putting my mother-in-law's dog to sleep. We had talked about finding her a home, but I knew we couldn't put another person through what we had just experienced. I'm pretty sure I have PTSD from the whole event, and there are moments when I lay in bed at night with Stella, and I whisper in her ear, "nothing will ever hurt you ever again, my precious angel."
June didn't give us much of a reprieve, as my dad ended up in the ER for dehydration. He'd been under the weather and was talking nonsense, so he spent a few days in the hospital on fluids. Then, in a blink of an eye, things got incredibly worse.
By the time my dad celebrated his 82nd birthday in July, he was having some pretty bad pain in his hip. He'd had a hip replacement back in the late 90s, and the parts had been deteriorating over the years. With his advanced age, previous heart surgery and knee replacement, dementia, and kidney issues, a revision hip surgery was not an option. A few days after his birthday, he ended up in the hospital because he couldn't walk. They kept him in the hospital for a week, gave him some fluids and pain meds, and released him to a rehab facility. That week in rehab was brutal due to his dementia. I will take any physical issues over dementia and Alzheimer's any day of the week.
My dad was in isolation. He was confused, angry, and even aggressive. We were so happy that he could come home after just a week in rehab because it was mentally draining for us. The day he was released, I set him up in his family room to watch TV, but he was in a lot of pain from sitting on that bum hip when I returned four hours later. When I finally got him out of the chair and made it to the bedroom, he was out of breath and had almost fallen twice. So the ambulance came and took him back to the ER, and he spent a few more days in the hospital and was back at rehab. We knew then that my dad would never be able to live alone again. After a few days in rehab, he transferred to the second-floor nursing home. During this time, his dementia was off the charts. He screamed at me many times to get him out of there; he said they were trying to hurt him, that the guy in the bed next to him and nurses were strangers in his house trying to rob him. It was a brutal August.
My husband and I decided to take a quick vacation after Labor Day. I knew that my dad was being cared for at the facility, so we went to Florida and spent the first week of September at Universal and Disney World. I'm the last person to ever get on a roller coaster, but with the year we'd had so far, I needed some sort of release. I needed that loss of control. I needed to scream my head off, cry my eyes out, and laugh my head off. We went to see the Harry Potter park, and it was just magical. We went to Epcot and were able to see our picture on the legacy wall that we had taken back in 2003. It was one of the best trips we'd taken in a while. I got on several rides and let go of all the stress of 2021, anticipating that the next few months would be even more stressful.
Then October rolled around, and my dad got worse. He had pneumonia, a UTI, and he was septic. He went back to the hospital where the doctors said my dad was now on the merry-go-round of hospital visits, and it was time to consider hospice. The team would come to the facility and make him comfortable. They took him off all of his medications except for the most important ones and started anxiety meds.
A glimmer of good did happen that month concerning my mother-in-law. After months of being miserable at the nursing home, she was doing so much better, and we were able to find a supportive living facility that she loves. She's made new friends and has a cute studio apartment. I would almost say things are better for her now than when she lived in her condo by herself. At least now she's able to get out and socialize.
By the beginning of November, my dad was basically in a coma. On November 8, we were both at his bedside, marveling that he was still alive. I kept thinking how my father-in-law only lasted eight days, and now here we were a month after he'd started hospice but knew the end was near. I went home and started writing the obituary to distract myself from the reality of what was happening. I sent my sister the obituary to see what she thought. At 7:45 pm, she responded, saying that it looked good. At 7:58, she texted me again and said he was dying. Then she texted that he had died. My sister was there when my dad passed, and I can't express how happy I am that she was. She held his hand as he took his last breaths, told him it was okay, that he was okay, and that we loved him. He passed holding her hand. I raced up to the facility, still somewhat in denial of what had just happened. After everything calmed down and hospice came to make arrangements to transfer him to the funeral home, I walked outside with my husband and finally had a moment. After 21 years of caring for my dad, sadness and relief flooded through me. The life he'd been leading in his last few years wasn't a life at all. My dad has always been very social; he often talked about going back to work even in his early 80s when he was physically and mentally incapable. He just wanted to get back to helping people. We had an outpouring of calls, texts, and the wake and funeral passed in a blur. But, we were glad he was finally at peace.
Much like after my husband's dad passed and I had Covid, after my dad died, my husband got Covid. It seems only fair, right? He ended up getting the antibodies and started feeling incrementally better. We skipped the pomp and circumstance of Thanksgiving but made up for it in December, with a turkey dinner on Christmas.
Now, as we near the end of the year, I begin to wonder what 2022 has in store for us. It's got to be a hell of a lot better than what we just went through these last twelve months. Although we faced many challenges this year, there's no doubt it puts so much into perspective. Was it a crap year? Indeed it was. But we had glimmers of peace, blessings in disguise, and we've been given so many reasons to remember to enjoy as much as you can because life is short.
I wish everyone a safe and happy new year and wish you all the best. And remember, as Warren Zevon said, enjoy every sandwich. XOXO
