A Tough Couple of Days

I've been tied up the past few days. My uncle was admitted to the hospital on Monday. He and my aunt have been like a second set of parents to me all my life, and we are very close. He's had circulation problems for years, and in the last 30 years has had a couple of surgeries to keep the blood flow going to his legs. On Monday, his left leg became cold and painful, and they admitted him to the hospital for tests. He had a five hour procedure on Monday to try to clear the blood vessels in his leg and restore circulation, but it wasn't successful. This morning, the doctor told him there was nothing else they could do to save the leg. This afternoon, he had his left leg amputated above the knee. He took the news better than I would have expected. At some level, he probably knew this was a possibility, so maybe he had prepared himself more than we realized.

He's 81 years old, so the chance of him being able to use a prosthetic leg are not good, and he will probably spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair. We're all still sort of in shock, and just beginning to realize how this is going to affect their lives, and what kind of help they're going to need.

We're a close and resilient family. We'll all pull together to deal with whatever it is we need to deal with. We've done that before, and we'll do it again.

Tonight, I'm just sad, and I'm going to let myself be sad tonight.

And tomorrow, we'll lift up our heads, and do what needs to be done. Because that's what we always do. That's all we can do.

Terri