I took an emergency trip up to Holland earlier this week. My sister-in-law landed in the hospital with blood clots in her lungs. The good news is that she is back home now, and resting well. The bad news is there are no definite answers for why this has happened, and they're running more tests now to see if they can figure it out. I drove up Monday afternoon to make sure that she was in good spirits, and also to keep my brother from collapsing from his sleep-deprived state. While he was originally insistent that I didn't need to make the trip up there, he eventually conceded that he was glad that I took the time to come up and see them
This is my second seriously ill in-law in as many months. Fortunately, my mother-in-law is in much better shape, and currently finds herself somewhere near Greenland on a cruise ship. The threat of a pacemaker has abated, and the new scripts seem to have taken care of the problem for the time being. I'm am once again convinced that she will outlive us all. A few more bionic bits and pieces, and she will elude our probing phone calls and pleas for her to take it easy well into her 90's.
Even though they are super-cool, my boss must be increasingly suspicious of my reasons to leave work early. However, when that call comes in I'll be damned if I'm going to sit there while the world takes gut-wrenching turns around me. I suppose almost anyone would have the same opinion as I do, so I feel justified in dropping everything to make whatever hospital visit is necessary.
There's a lot of road construction going on from South Haven all the way down to Michigan City, and I happened to get pinned behind a truck doing 40mph for the entire stretch. It took me more than five hours to get back home. I spent a good portion of that time near tears. I don't think I would survive very well if something was to happen to Ann. The 28th was our 4th wedding anniversary, and while I can intellectually understand that is not a long time in the larger picture, my life has become irreversibly entwined with hers. I hold her closer than I thought I could ever be with anyone.
I'm not sure what happened to make the world so much scarier to me. I guess it must be that I have more to hold onto than I did a decade ago. I don't like this aspect of getting older.