We are overwhelmed

Thank you for the love you've sent to Adeline

Last week, my niece and her husband took their daughter, Adeline, age 4, the one holding the fish, to her Iowa pediatrician. Adeline had been having light seizures, but she’s a piss-and-vinegar kind of kid (that’s a compliment in Missouri), and of course you expect a routine check-up.

From afar, my oldest granddaughter, a nursing student, says these might have been absence seizures, which can go unnoticed because they’re so brief. Anti-seizure medication usually takes care of them.

But not this time. From the pediatrician’s, things moved fast, culminating in a mad dash to Iowa City and University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, after multiple MRIs found a golf-ball-sized tumor in Adeline’s brain.

If you’ve ever had a loved one receive a rough diagnosis, you know your next step is to enter a tunnel that can get really dark. Adeline’s folks put the word out to family, friends, loved ones, and hunkered down for a series of tests and bad news and not-so-bad-news, while their sprite of a daughter charmed her medical staff.

Did I mention that any day now, Adeline’s mother, my niece, is due with her third child?

Adeline’s is the type of neurosurgery Stead doctors perform 20 times a week, but most of those surgeries don’t last a grueling 14 hours, which is how long it took an A-team of doctors at the top of their game to remove 70 to 80% of the mass in Adeline’s brain. The tumor was then sent off to be biopsied.

We await that news.

Meanwhile, Adeline was intubated and sedated to give her a few days to heal, but she started breathing on her own, so doctors removed the ventilator. A nurse suggested Adeline go back to sleep, but Adeline shook her head. She also demanded chicken nuggets. She then spent Mother’s Day in the arms of her exhausted parents, who refuse to leave her side.

Though such language is native to me, I don’t use phrases like “prayer warrior,” but I posted Adeline’s situation on social media and asked for thoughts, love, prayers, whatever any one felt moved to share. This family runs on prayer and I was hoping if someone out there had a direct line, that someone could put in a good word for my grand-niece. I love her mother inordinately. She’s strong and brave and tender and beautiful, and I don’t think I could like her husband more if I’d picked him, myself.

During down times, Adeline’s parents would scroll through the comments, and draw strength from people they most likely will never meet — Christians, Muslims, Jews, Bahai, agnostics, pagans — everyone offered support. (Thank you, Sherry, for having your church, the Newington Church of Christ Congregational UCC, lift Adeline up in prayer, at about 41 minute in on this video. I added Janet Stoddard, the woman mentioned just before Adeline, to my prayers, for what it’s worth.)

I mostly only cry at pretty things. For the ugly things, well, you get through the ugly things, and you cry later. But the pretty things include strangers lifting up this little heller and holding her directly in whatever light they thought most healing.

Adeline’s grandfather, my brother, was a talented boy-preacher who grew to be an incredible man-preacher. A long time ago, when I wrote about growing up fundamentalist, I stole all the book’s best lines from him.

He and his wife raised three wonderful adults, and if my brother and I sometimes feel like we’re in a life-long argument about nothing, trauma always makes us forget why we’re arguing — if we even are arguing. He and his wife are pillars in a little non-denominational church near their farm. The night after Adeline’s operation, he told me that the next day — a Sunday, Mother’s Day — he thought he’d preach a hellfire-and-brimstone kind of get-your-ass-to-church-of-Christ sermon for his Sunday message. He ran through the highlights of it and it was the kind of powerful, fist on a page sermon we grew up hearing — and he grew up preaching.

My brother, Dan, the best family speaker in a family of public speakers

On Sunday, I logged in to attend virtually, but then standing there in that l little church, my brother apologized to me by name, and instead of fire-and-brimstone, he wanted to talk about love. He then led the congregation in the song, “Love Lifted Me.”

Sitting at home, in Connecticut, I sang along, like a doofus.

It was the perfect thing, talking about love. His granddaughter is surrounded by it.

This week, we have learned that it is possible to be scared, sad, happy and hopeful all at once. Sometimes, the answer to a prayer is no, but we have so appreciated the light and love coming from all corners, and we continue to stand, arms locked around this fierce little girl.