I had to turn around and cancel a vacation tonight. I'll get to why shortly, but let's start here…
I love to travel. I have to get that out at the beginning of this post because that's what it's fueled by. Before my accident I got to travel all over the country while attending Indiana Wesleyan-hundreds of church camps coast-to-coast for multiple years. I traveled to England multiple times with my family, and I grew up with mom and dad that loved to vacation... even if it was tent camping to a state park. I've also lived all over the country… That fuels my travel desire as well. But there's one hitch,
I've become a quadriplegic since all those travels. It doesn't mean I can't travel. Physically I'm usually up to it. But it means that the logistics are a lot more complicated, and it means that I have to take a full-time personal health care aid.
For the past couple months, my parents have been planning on taking our kids to Montana for a grandma/grandpa vacation. Since Shelly and I have had so much going on at home and with our nonprofit, we didn't even think much about the vacation.
Then, last week, I decided I wanted to try to go. Crazy I know. But I started calling a couple of my aids to see if they could swing 10 days off for an all expense paid trip to Mount Rushmore, the Rockies, Yellowstone, etc. Nobody could. So Shelly and I waved goodbye to my mom and dad and the kids on Sunday morning.
Then two hours later… I got a phone call from my main person saying they could go. So Shelly and I decided that I would go surprise the kids in Montana, and she could have some much needed alone time. I love watching my kids learn, and I love to travel. It's the perfect combo. We loaded up, I got my air conditioner fixed (a must if you're going out west!) and we got on the road about 5:00 yesterday.
A little backstory here… I've been dealing with a small pressure sore underneath my left butt bone for the past four or five days. My cushion was a little flatter than it should've been, so there is just a little inflammation. No big deal. Except the last three days it's been getting progressively worse. I figured if I did a little extra pressure relief throughout the day it would be fine.
...So four hours into our trip last night… Beloit, WI if you were wondering, we grabbed a Hampton Inn.
This morning when I got up, we checked out the pressure sore, and it had gotten quite a bit worse on the road yesterday. So I struggled with the decision... do I get on the road west to Montana or east to home? I thought about it over breakfast, I called Shelly about it for a half hour, and I prayed about it as well. There's just no way I could continue on to Montana. The pressure sore was getting worse, and even if I got there I would have to spend a lot of time with my chair tilted back and all the pressure off my butt.
A trip through Chicago later, around the tip of Indiana, back up to Grand Rapids… tonight I sit at home alone. I sent Shelly with her parents on a couple day trip out of town.
I really don't know what to do with my emotions tonight. I had already made peace with staying here when the kids took off in the first place. But then I got really excited about the prospect of spending a bunch of time with my kids watching them see all these fantastic places for the first time… Not to mention some actual time out of Grand Rapids for once in about the past year and a half..
I'm really disappointed, I'm sad, I kind of have peace, and now I'm lonely for my family… Who has only been gone for a day. I'm a bit of a mess. Way way way way way worse things have happened, but it doesn't help how I feel tonight.
