Sundays & Injurversary

Man oh man. This last week has been quite ...draining.

July 8th was Emma's 10 year injurversary. I try to celebrate it as a second birthday but internally, I am heavily mourning. I should have taken the day off from work but I didn't have enough PTO because Em had an appointment with her rehabilitation specialist (physiatrist) on the 9th and Monday I had a meeting with her developmental disabilities case manager to make sure all her programs are in place. These are all routine but I am just exhausted from the emotional toll that her anniversary brings.

Each year- it's a reminder of two things: betrayal and survival.

10 years ago - the child I gave birth to died and was revived.

Exactly 30 days before her first birthday - her skull full of comminuted, diastatic and linear fractures. Her brain was oozing out of her skull. Her brain had herniated, had subdural and epidural hematomas, she had a midline shift greater than 1 cm, she was without oxygen for an unknown amount of time and was being rushed into emergency surgery. The surgery that saved her life by removing her right frontal and parietal lobes of her brain. Three weeks in a coma, a full month in ICU, numerous surgeries, and then a whirlwind month living in neuro-rehab.

Released to an unknown future.

Not a day goes by that I wish that this had never happened but at the same time, I am not sure I would change anything.

The Emma I gave birth to died that day when her brain was brutally murdered. She was able to rise like a Phoenix from a head trauma so severe that not many people survive. She was never given a prognosis and we were just told "we will watch and wait". I thank her doctors for that. We did- we watched. We waited. We lived. We breathed. For the degree of insult to her brain not only from the initial trauma but from the lack of oxygen, the crowding of her brain and the surgical removal of parts- she has shown her constant will to fight and survive.