The Botched Blood Draw Part Three

When all the world is a hopeless jumble
and the raindrops tumble all around.
Heaven opens a magic lane.

When all the clouds darken up the skyway,
there’s a rainbow highway to be found,
Leading from your window pane
to a place behind the sun,
just a step beyond the rain.

— Nora’s favorite bedtime book, “Over the Rainbow,” Lyrics by E.Y Harburg

The summer before I started fifth grade, my cousin Hillary and I flew to Virginia to stay with Aunt Leslie. The three of us stayed in a hotel on our way to Chincoteague and Assateague Island off the coast of Virginia. In the middle of the night, I woke up to the rumble of thunder. But it wasn’t the thunder that made me sit up, move to the edge of my bed, press my feet firmly on the ground and stare out the window, it was the lightning illuminating the hotel courtyard, clear as day. Between the intermittent darkness I could see a tree in the center of the courtyard. The branches were spinning and twisting in the wind. Rain, bark, and leaves flew through the air, swirling through sheets of flying drops. “Jesse, haven’t you ever seen a thunderstorm?” My Aunt asked groggily from across the room. “Not like this.” I told her. I remember watching lightning splitting the sky and realizing, I’ve never seen anything like this.

Aunt Leslie told me to “Close the curtain and put your head on your pillow…. we have a bike ride tomorrow.” I remember keeping the curtain cracked just enough to see the night sky from my pillow. The storm was alive, the lightning flickers electric beating veins across the sky, the thunder an audible heartbeat. I remember sliding the curtain back another fraction of an inch to see the tree in the hotel courtyard, wondering if it would still be standing in the morning, wondering how any living thing could stand the tortures of being whipped about by an electric, thundering storm. I lay awake for a long time, wondering what type of place Virginia was, and if lightning strikes were common, and anticipating all the directions the tree in the courtyard could possibly fall, and worrying about the people staying in the rooms on the ground level below the tree. I eventually fell asleep wondering if Aunt Leslie would still make us ride bikes in the rain tomorrow. But, I knew she probably would.

Two months ago, just a week before our family flew to Washington for Hillary’s wedding, Tyler, my husband, called me from my five-year-old daughter, Nora’s, hospital room to explain: “Nora’s veins are completely scarred. They won’t heal. The IV access team did an ultrasound assessment to see what placements sites are left, but they are recommending a port moving forward with infusion therapy (IVIG) next month. I know it’s not ideal, but a port could save her a lot of pain.” He continued to talk, about ultrasound guided IV placements and ports, but all I saw, in my mind’s eye, was a lightning storm off the coast of Virginia. I saw spider- vein lightning streaks across a thick night sky and a tree, in the middle of a hotel courtyard, being bent and pulled, tugged and torn by the rain and wind.

And as I thought about my daughter, her scarred veins, Tyler’s words, “They won’t heal” all the things she has endured these last five years as she’s overlapped with the world of medicine — needles through her veins, suction tubes down her nose and throat, catheters placed in an effort to collect urine samples, and enemas for constipation, I also thought about her now clear and intentional, behavioral response to the possibility of pain: she falls asleep to avoid the storm of medical people and environments. Suddenly I understand: The tree in the hotel courtyard was hunkered down, rooted – and helpless – the tree was, in its own way, sleeping out the thunderstorm. When living things can’t run and hide, when their leaves are torn, bark is shredded and branches bent, there isn’t anything to do but to hunker, turn inward, and wait – the tree fell asleep in the middle of a lightning storm.

Over the phone, Tyler told me he felt hopeful because we were ending the day knowing more about Nora’s veins, and thanks to an IV access team, we were moving forward with new information and a possible plan to help avoid pain and discomfort for our daughter. Hopeful because, “Someone is seeing what Nora and our family are going through, and someone cares enough to make her life better.”  

I thought about waking up the morning after the lightning storm on the coast of Virginia; the tree in the courtyard was still standing. And as I stared out the window at blue skies, at a hotel courtyard filled with remnants of leaves, branches, bark and mud, I could see part of the tree’s roots, thick knots throughout the dirt, lifting the concrete sidewalk.

I realized all at once, there were mighty things happening beneath the soil. Beneath the tree there was a storm breathing and beating in the ground as the tree’s roots cut through the earth like lightning slicing through the night sky. Tree roots were digging, pushing and plunging through the soil. Roots were toiling, surviving, all while steadily and faithfully holding the tree upright.

And today, as I write this, I know I can’t control lightning across the sky, the wind and the rain, the strength of a tree or even how many more times a person will dig through my daughter’s scarred veins. But I hope when she falls asleep to avoid the reality or possibility of pain, that she sleeps because she feels held by her roots and by God and all His angels, her mother, father, family, friends, and community.

And I hope trees really do sleep through thunderstorms because they know that when they will wake up, they will without a question, be standing tall, under blue skies.

Photo Credit: Caitlyn Nikula

Click to read “The Botched Blood Draw Part Two,” or “The Botched Blood Draw Part One”