Keep those cardinals away

Brian Wilson

There are reasons members of my extended family don’t play the lottery or frequent casino gaming halls. If there is a way for things to go sour, we can be almost assured that it will.

On Wednesday, April 26, I got a message on my family group chat letting me know my younger sister Darci was going in for a surgical procedure.

I sent the obligatory response sending good wishes and fingers crossed that everything would go smoothly. Darci is a single mom with a son who is finishing up his senior year in high school and a daughter who is in middle school.

The procedure was expected to take a relatively short amount of time, and the doctors promised that she would be able to come home within three or four hours.

Darci came through the procedure like the trooper she is. However, instead of sending her home, the doctors decided to keep her overnight “for observation.” You know, just in case something went wrong, as if it was just a remote chance and they were being extra cautious.

The next day and following days saw my sister’s temperature spiking, a complaint about the incision area feeling like it was burning, a transfer into the intensive care unit, and a breathing tube being put down her throat and her being placed under heavy sedation. An infection raged through her system. Main lines were put in for IV antibiotics and a pump worked to clear her system of waste in the form of disgusting green goo.

My older sister Janet, who is Darci’s power of attorney for healthcare, was there with her and shared updates about Darci’s condition and prognosis.

They found that during the first procedure her bowel had gotten pierced. By that Thursday, Darci was in surgery to clear out the infection. The plan was to see if her fever dropped and then bring her back into surgery to close up the incisions.

My mother loved cardinals. She couldn’t get enough of the bright red birds. Since my mom’s passing, my family members have associated seeing cardinals with being a message from my mom.

On the morning of Darci’s surgery, my brother posted messages about seeing a cardinal in his yard and it then flying in the direction of the hospital. Given the average wing speed of an unladen cardinal, I calculated it would get from his house to the hospital about the same time as Darci would be going under.

My brother saw this as my mom going to be there to help. I suppose it could have been a sign of that, but I was worried it was my mom coming to bring her home. I shared that concern with my sister Janet, who assured me that she had talked at length to Darci that if she saw my Mom, Dad, sister Sharon or any other deceased relative, she should flip them off and run as fast as she could in the opposite direction. Darci came through the surgery about as well as could be expected.

It became a waiting game. My mother was a very strong-willed woman, a trait she passed on to all of her daughters. It became a family joke to refer to my mom as “making friends again” whenever she would butt heads with authority figures over something she felt they were doing wrong. Janet has spent the past week “making friends” with the medical staff at the hospital.

To her credit, Janet is more diplomatic than my mother and has given nicknames to each of doctors and nurses. She hasn’t been afraid to call out members of the rotating cast of medical professionals when she felt they weren’t doing enough or who were letting their biases get in the way of providing the best care.

On Monday, a tracheotomy replaced the breathing tube. They also eliminated the heavy hitter sedation drugs, allowing Darci to be Darci again. Given my family’s abysmal luck, I am still keeping my fingers crossed and will continue to keep cardinals away from visiting the hospital, at least until Darci is home where she belongs.

In the meantime, life goes on. There are meetings to cover, concerts and events to take pictures of, milestones to record and emotions to capture. I just wanted to let you know what is happening if you see me at an event and I surreptitiously check my phone and smile or frown.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.