:) this is my favorite mug in the entire world
my sister joanna.
This is a personal essay i have to write for school. but i figured some people who car about joanna might want a more detailed run thorough of what happened. and i know its long. but if you care youll take the time to read it. reading back through it to edit made me cry.
Stretched Thin
It is so different now seeing Joanna lying in her hospital bed. As I write this story I am sitting on the foot of her bed watching her as she is watching me. Looking at her is much easier now because she does not have IV’s or tubes coming out of her nose. My mom is on her right holding her hand and my dad is standing behind me and the same thoughts are going through all of our mind- that we want her home and well again and to see her smiling and singing through the house. She is looking straight at me and I can finally look back at her without being really sad. I love her so much and I am so thrilled to see her awake.
There are a wide variety of relationships between sisters. I have always felt that my sister’s and mine has been one of the lucky relationships in which we can be very close. We grew up around art, music, and with our wild imaginations on farmland in California. Joanna and I would spend hours in the basement building castles out of blocks where our toy horses could live and we would play out stories and battles that went on in their kingdom. We have this one tree in our yard here in Ohio that we would pretend was a spaceship and run around killing enemies on the moon. Although we have our ups and downs like everyone does, we have been best friends since I was born.
On June 14, 2008, a month before her sixteenth birthday, Joanna was at a National Speech and debate competion in Las Vegas. She was in the Drama section of the team and did a speech in which she played a little girl who met an autistic boy whose mother let her take him for a walk as long as she did not let go of his hand. The girl accidentally let him slip and he ran away, climbed a giant fence and tried to fly. Whenever Joanna preformed ‘The Boy Who Ate Stars’ most people could not keep from crying because of the emotion she put into it. Joanna was taking a nap in the hotel room. She woke up and started to walk over to where she could see all her friends, but when she got to the doorway she collapsed and was unconscious for about a half a minute. Everyone rushed to her and helped her to an emergency room. The doctors took a CAT scan of Joanna’s head just to make sure that everything was OK but they found a lesion in her brain and they were not quite certain as to what it was.
My mom, dad, and I were actually together and watching a movie when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Doyal, my English teacher and Joanna’s speech and debate coach, telling us what happened to my sister who was across the country. We decided that right then Mom was going to fly to Las Vegas to be with her and make sure everything was OK and that Joanna was properly taken care of.
A year went by filled with tests and scans and numerous doctors’ appointments, until the doctors at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital concluded that Joanna needed brain surgery so they could take our whatever was in her head. The pain had gotten so bad that she could not even open up her hands. The surgery was scheduled to be the weekend after she finished staring in Les Miserables as Eponine in Vandalia. So we all spent the summer making her feel young and loved and preparing her for the struggle of her recovery.
I had to wake up at three in the morning to drive with Joanna to the hospital for her surgery. My aunts Judy and Wisty had flown in to help out with everything and so that I wouldn’t have to be home alone because I was not allowed to stay in the hospital over night with my sister. We got there and Joanna’s boyfriend, Coleman, and her two friends, Rebecca and Amy, were already there waiting for us. They took Joanna back to get prepped for the surgery and we sat and talked to the doctor. After awhile we were all allowed to go back and tell her we would see her as soon as she was done. Joanna told us all she loved us and gave everyone hugs and we all could not stop crying. I love my sister so much and I hated walking back to the waiting room without her.
The surgery was scheduled to be around seven hours because they had to go deep into her brain. Judy, Wisty, and I played three person Hearts and Mom and Dad sat holding each other. After an hour my mom and aunts were in the cafeteria so my dad and I were just talking when a nurse called us up to tell us something. My dad and I started freaking out, thinking something bad had happened because the surgery should have taken six more hours. The nurse just smiled at us and told us that we looked like a big family who was going to be here a while and that there was a private waiting room that she lets big families wait in so they can be by themselves. We were so relieved and gladly accepted because the room looked a lot more comfortable than where we were. I sat myself down onto the couch and fell asleep.
I woke up a couple hours later and everyone was there and talking quietly, and I remember that my dad looked like he had been crying a little bit. This was probably the hardest thing that I had to sit through in my entire life. Finally the surgeon came in and told us everything went really well and that the lesion in her brain was a low-grade benign tumor and it had been successfully removed. We all were smiling so much because Joanna does not deserve this pain and we all want it to end. Then to doctor explained to us that she had not woken up yet so they cannot move her out of the operating room but she seems really sleepy. I remember saying, “ Oh my goodness! She just had brain surgery, of course she is tired! Give her a break!” I think that the doctor was kind of offended that I said that cause he left really quick after that but I was OK with it because it’s true.
After about another hour of waiting in a different waiting room in the ICU (intensive care unit) the nurse told us we could go in groups of three to see her. My two aunts and my mom went back first which left my dad and I to wait again restlessly. Dad pulled out his iPod and played the song ‘Adventures in Solitude” by the New Pornographers. This song is now one of our favorites because of this moment. Dad and I started uncontrollably crying when the chorus came around.
We thought we lost you
We thought we lost you
We thought we lost you
Welcome back
If you were there in that moment, and new how sweet and loving my sister is, and how much of an effect Joanna can have on people she only meets once, you would understand how we were feeling. Even as I write this I am crying because it hurts to remember the next section of my story.
It was finally my turn to go in and see my sister. My dad led me to her room and I naively was expecting to see her sitting up and smiling at me. But I could not walk any farther than the doorway because what I saw was an image that will probably stay with me for my entire life no matter how hard I try to get rid of it. Joanna was lying on the hospital bed with her arms and legs strapped down because she was struggling to get all the IVS and tubes out of her arms. She had one giant breathing tube in her mouth and her jaw was to opening and closeing repeatedly trying to get it out. She had another feeding tube in her nose and her eyes were wet with tears. She looked like she was in so much pain and I just could not stand there and watch that. I told my dad I wanted to go back to the waiting room and that I would sit by myself until it was time to go. He took me back and left me alone where I just curled up and cried.
I remember that about a week after the surgery, we went to visit Joanna. The tube in her mouth was out because she could breathe on her own now. I had my head on her knee, Mom and Dad were sitting next to her, and Judy and Wisty were standing behind me. We were singing to her as she looked up at the ceiling. After a couple of songs she looked straight into my eyes for the first time and she made the first unasked for connection with anyone since the surgery. She reached her hand out and tried to push my hair out of my face and when I started to cry with joy she tried to wipe my tears away and smiled at me. Everyone in the room was crying because this showed how much she loved me, and it really explained the relationship that we have and how much Joanna and I really mean to each other.
The last six weeks have been really hard not having Joanna or my parents at home. My sister is the one person that I can tell almost everything to. And I am starting at a new school with new people and its high school so it is hard. Plus, my parents are not home half the time because my dad has to work and be at the hospital with my mom and sister. So its been really tough for all of us, especially my parents because it must be so hard to watch their daughter go through so much pain. Someone said that they ‘don’t want to live in a world where a sweet girl like Joanna doesn’t exist.’ And I agree. Joanna is such a wonderful person and does not deserve this at all. It is not fair. The whole family and our neighbors and friends are all trying so hard to get her back on her feet and to be herself again. We still have a long journey ahead of us and we are all stretched thin.
