Please pray for her

A friend of the family, Nicole posted this blog about my sister on myspace. It’s the best way for people to know what is going on with my sister. Please pray for her. It’s not her time to go and I can’t lose my sister. I unfortunately am in Kansas and this happened in California.

Just the other day I was complaining because I really wanted a pedicure. I remember saying "I haven’t had one in forever" – I was irritated that I hadn’t the time to go get one, and that I had to paint my toes myself. I remember saying I wanted to have someone rub my feet for half and hour and use all the lotions and creams and the whole "kit and kaboodle" so to say. This was one of my major complaints – a pedicure.

 

I started thinking about my pedicure plans last night again, when I went to visit a friend in the hospital. Her toes were painted perfectly, she had gotten the perfect french manicure.  She must had gotten it right before she walked across the street and got hit by a car.

 

Crystal and her husband Mike were going out Wednesday the 21st, the day before Thanksgiving when she was crossing the street and got hit by a car.  She went up and over his car, shattering his windshield and denting his hood.  The damage she did to his car was nothing compared to the damage his car did to her.

 

Crystal has 2 broken shoulders, a broken pelvis, both her hips are broken, her back is broken, her spline ruptured, and she has 2 severely broken legs.  She is in ICU at Loma Linda hospital, 9 days and counting.  She so far has had 3 surgeries, and many many blood transfusions. It will be a surprise if Crystal is out of the hospital by New Years.

 

When I went to see her, she was in and out of "it" struggling to speak, occasionally waking up to mumble something about going to work tomorrow, telling us her name and that it was November 9th (it really was the 29th),  and also still giving me a hard time with her famous "Crystal the Pistol" attitude.  One time I told her "You’re not in Kansas anymore Toto." and she replied with "I knooooow, TOTO." She has been managing to give the doctors hell, telling them to get her out of the hospital and that she is fine – but she is not.

 

When you first see her, amazingly (thank someone upstairs) her head and face are intact and look comparatively great, she suffered no major head injury…but then you see her legs all in braces, and wraps, stiff, still and in pain.  But sticking out of those braces and wraps are her perfect manicured toes, and I can’t help but feel guilty. Guilty that my feet were my complaint, guilty that if I wanted to I could get up and go to the nail salon and get my toes done, while Crystal is going to have to learn how to walk all over again and it is going to take her months. She will not be able to sit for long periods of time, and will most likely lose some range of motion in her shoulders; Crystal will have chronic pains the rest of her life.  And I was worried about my toes??

 

I guess the point of telling you all about Crystal’s experience is that it is so important to realize that we are all just one walk across the street away from having our lives as we know them ripped away.  We may complain about our bills, but need to remember that the very mouth we complain from  we could struggle to use one day,  our arms that fly up in the air when we are frustrated could be fastened to the side of a hospital beds, the hips that we complain are too big to get into those jeans may hurt so much you think someone is sitting on you (Crystal thought this last night) and that pedicure you want so bad could at any moment be on toes that can no longer move .

 

 You never know what could happen, so be grateful for each moment you are living and moving and breathing.

 

Please keep Crystal in your thoughts, she is by no means "out of the woods" completely.

 

XxOo,

Cole