Warning: this blog is not even mildly humorous

It's almost midnight, Thursday night, and since it's almost over I can definitely say that today has been the worst, but also one of the best, days of my life.  I don't really even know how to write about this day quite yet, because so much is still zinging around in my head and I keep having little mini panic attacks, but I'll just give the facts now and then maybe once I've processed it I can write a little more later.

So, this morning after we dropped Finn off at school, Gus, Ruby and I came back home to take care of a few things before heading back out to do some errands.  While I cleaned up from breakfast and paid a few bills online, Gus was watching cartoons, and Ruby was sort of milling around in the room with him playing with her toys, or coming in to visit with me, or chasing the cats.  Basically, just being her little whirlwind self.  At some point as I was finishing up, she came in and I detected that she needed a diaper change, so I followed her into the next room, where she had gotten up on the couch with Gus to watch a little TV.  I sort of teasingly told her that I was coming to get her to change her diaper, and she gave me an equally funny look that said "not if you can't catch me!"  She then proceeded to get off the couch going head-first.  The couch is only about two feet off the carpeted floor and she moves pretty slowly, so even as I went to grab her, I wasn't really concerned.  However, at some point in her descent, but before I caught her, her center of gravity must have changed and her butt and legs flipped over her head, causing her neck to bend backwards in a very unnatural-looking way.  It looked pretty scary, and I swooped down to pick her up and comfort her and make sure she was alright.  She cried for a second and then started inhaling before letting out "The Big Cry."  You know the cry where they don't make any sound for a minute and then all hell breaks loose and you have never heard someone cry so loud right in your ear?  That's what I was waiting for.  Except she passed out from holding her breath.

Earlier this summer she had fallen off of a chair, bumped her head and passed out from holding her breath. That time, I remember that she all of the sudden she just went totally limp in my arms, and I was so stunned that I just stood there for a minute, looking at my aunt who was standing with me at the moment.  We could each see in the other person's eye the rising panic and the thought that maybe we should be calling 911, but before either one of us could voice it, Ruby opened her eyes and started crying.  We were scared, and worried for a while, but then she seemed fine and happy and was eating and playing, and I remembered that I had heard of children holding their breath until they pass out, so I moved on to worrying about other things.

So today when Ruby started her crazy inhale before the big howl, I sort of knew she was going to pass out.  I stood there for a minute, waiting for her to open her eyes again and start crying.  But then it seemed like a long time had gone by, and she wasn't waking up.  I started trying to wake her up, pinching her and calling her name, running to the kitchen to run her hands under the faucet, increasingly frantic.  And then her eyelids came up a little, and I could see that her eyes were rolling around all over the place, going all different directions.  And then her arms and legs started jerking and her little body became rigid in my arms.  At that point, I totally lost it.  I was screaming her name at the top of my lungs, grabbing the phone to dial 911 and, for some reason, running into the front yard screaming for help.  I have never in my life been so terrified.  I knew in my heart that it was too late, that she had broken her neck in the fall and was now going to die in my arms.  My mind was doing 100 things at one time - figuring out how to get help, trying to remember any medical information I might use to save her life, imagining the future where I would always look back at that very moment where I watched my child die, simultaneously rejecting that it could actually be happening, blaming myself, imagining having done this to Matt and the boys, disbelieving that I could have let a child die when only 6 months ago we brought her home from Ethiopia in the hope of providing a better life for her.  I also sorted out other possibilities, like total paralysis, and had a vision of her as a teen, living in a wheelchair, hating me.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gus on the couch, watching without comprehension as his mother was transformed from a familiar part of his world to an unrecognizable wild animal, even as Scooby Doo sleuthed on in the background.  My body was just acting on its own, with my feet carrying us out the front door to scream for help.  Without deciding to do so, I laid Ruby down on the ground and stuck my fingers in her mouth to make sure her airway wasn't blocked (some vestige of CPR training), but I had to wedge her mouth open since her jaw was clamped shut.  At this point, neighbors began descending on our yard, and our giant, ex-hockey player neighbor scooped her up in his enormous arms and put her on his shoulder.  I was screaming into the phone at the 911 operator, watching her, when I saw her body finally relax, saw her take a breath, felt my own body and mind rejoin one another.  The whole thing probably only lasted 3 minutes.

After that, the ambulance came and took us to the hospital since Ruby was still very disoriented and dazed.  In my arms, her body kept flopping over to the side, like limp rag.  But thank God, slowly, slowly we both came back from the edge.  After three hours of being poked and prodded at the hospital, she was back to herself, doing laps around the ER, looking for stickers from the nurses, playing hide and seek with anyone who would take the bait.  Unlike Ruby, after three hours at the hospital I felt like an empty IV bag and probably looked like one too.  We left around 1, picked up Gus from the neighbor's house where he had been enjoying cookies and more TV, and went home to collapse.  Medically, the bottom line was that she has an iron deficiency, making her more susceptible to fainting, which then brought on the seizure.  Apparently it's not uncommon, and it does not mean she will have a seizure disorder, but I really, really hope that's the end of it.  Also, Matt was involved during this, even though I have left his part out, and he was wonderful and calm and did all of the right things (of course), but he wasn't there for the scariest part, so I don't think he shared my abject terror.

So now here I am, and Ruby is sleeping peacefully in the next room (I just checked), so that's the best thing that's ever happened to me.  Obviously, if I had known that she was going to be fine, I wouldn't have been so terrified.  But for a little while I really believed and knew in my heart that she was not going to be fine, so I feel like I just got a hideous glimpse of what my life might have been if things had been different.  I keep seeing little things around the house - Ruby's referral picture still taped onto the fridge, the poem and picture I posted last night, sippy cups, her favorite little shoes, dolls, thank-you notes with Ruby's name on them, and I can't stop myself from the morbid thought that if something much worse had happened today, seeing each of those little things would bring on a new nightmare.

I once read a quote that having a child is like going around with your heart on the outside of your body.  It's true.  They take it around with them, when they run away from you at the playground and for a minute you can't see them, when they eat something you didn't know they were allergic to, when they go to a friend's house or when they get on the bus and go to school.  They take it when they are 16 and start driving around town with all of their friends, when they go off to college and drink too much and don't realize that people don't always just sleep if off.  It's enough to make you not want to have them in the first place, but by the time you realize what they have done to you, it's too late.  And then today I was thinking that it's not just your heart they have, it's your entire self.  I guess I would go on living, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be all there anymore, and what was left of me would be a weepy mess.  Generally, when I hear a truly tragic story about a child, I say things like "I can't even imagine," and I really mean that I am not even going to let myself imagine because even thinking that something like that could happen to me is too painful.  And then today I felt like someone was holding my head in a bucket of water, making me go to that terrible place.  

But nothing terrible did happen, and we were very lucky, like we have been every single day since our first child was born.  But it's not every day that you realize how lucky you are, or how close to the other side of the coin you are at any given moment, and then all you can do is be so, so thankful for the blessing.