222 - The Pause Button

I'm going to postpone the 10-year post one more time... at this rate you'll get to see it as it happens...

My uncle is not doing well. Have been getting text messages from my cousin throughout the day, now she's calling the family in. They transferred him to a different hospital on Friday, put in a trach, and his lung collapsed. Apparently there's a hole in it now, so the gases they're giving him to level out his O2, are causing him to swell.

On my mom's side of the family, he's my favorite uncle. He's the reason I'm alive, because he's the one who introduced my parents. He and my dad were in the Air Force together.

The way mom tells it, she once joked that he was on a base with hundreds of men and never introduced her to any of them (she's all huffy when she says this). She never thought he'd actually do it. Knowing Uncle Harry, I don't see how she couldn't know... he's a prankster and he loves to watch people squirm. I would have totally expected it. =)

So one summer when my mom was on break from nursing school, my uncle Harry invited my dad over to play cards... poor schmuck never knew what hit him. Nine months later they were married. A year later I came along. Or as dad likes to say, they found me under a rock on Galveston beach (really I was born at the University of Texas Medical Branch Hospital in Galveston, where I later attended college and got my degree in healthcare administration... fat lot of good that did me). It kind of surprises me... my mom isn't a risk taker, but she had a long-distance relationship with my dad, and moved to a different state, away from her family and everything she knew, to be with him. Totally unlike her. They've been married 37 years now. I'm guessing aunt Brenda and Uncle Harry have been married for 40. They have three kids, and seven grandchildren. He's got a lot of love in his life.

I hope Uncle Harry gets better... he's a stubborn man and I'm sure he isn't ready to leave just yet. But I'm worried that he's not going to leave that hospital. All I can do is hope and pray that he beats the odds.