Balancing The Bakers

I never went to sleep that night.

I was exhausted, and this is where my memory of the days that followed starts getting a little foggy. I can remember the day before surprisingly well, but the timeline after that is harder to piece together.

If there’s one phrase I heard often while Jeff was in the Army, it was hurry up and wait.

That was the understatement of the century.

At some point, Jeff called. He had made it to the hospital at Bagram Air Base.

This time, we didn’t have to rush through the phone call, but Jeff was on so much pain medication that he didn’t really have many answers. He’d had X-rays and a surgical washout on his left arm and knew he needed surgery. He couldn’t really explain what was wrong or what the surgery would involve. What he did know was that he would be transferred to the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

That sounded easy enough to me. He’d catch the next flight to Germany, have surgery, and come home.

Wrong.

An ice storm kept Jeff at Bagram for several days. While he waited, he underwent two surgical washouts.

I also wasn’t sleeping because I was afraid I’d miss an important phone call.

I think it was December 5 when Jeff finally called and said he was getting ready to leave for Germany. By then, I had decided he couldn’t have surgery until someone called me and explained what they were actually doing.

Jeff, knowing good and well how things really worked over there, made no promises.

When he reached Landstuhl, things moved quickly. Almost as soon as he arrived, they were prepping him for surgery.

So much for my demand.

After surgery, Jeff called when he was awake and slept a lot in between. We were incredibly fortunate that he had access to an iPad and we could FaceTime. For the first time since that phone call in the middle of the night, I could actually see him.

By this point, Jeff had been treated at Bagram, flown to Germany, and had surgery, and I still couldn’t get a clear explanation of what was actually wrong with him.

Around that time, I received a call from Rear D—Rear Detachment, the group managing things stateside. When I asked about Jeff’s injuries, I was told they couldn’t discuss what had taken place.

But that wasn’t what I was asking.

I didn’t care what operation they had been on or what had caused his injuries. I wanted someone to tell me what his injuries were and why he’d needed surgery.

I can promise you I didn’t sound so nice on the phone.

Apparently losing my cool was exactly what I needed to do, because I soon received a call from the regimental surgeon stateside. He hadn’t treated Jeff or spoken directly with the surgeon in Germany. He was working from the medical report he could access, so his information was limited.

But it was more than I’d had.

He told me Jeff had a compound fracture of his left arm. Hardware had been put in to essentially rebuild the area around his elbow.

And somehow, I truly believed one surgery and a little recovery was all he would need.

Boy, I used to be optimistic.

Before we got off the phone, the surgeon asked if I’d been sleeping.

Ha. Sleep? What’s that?

He reminded me that Jeff would eventually be coming home and I’d need to be rested enough to take care of him. I was prescribed a week’s worth of a sleep aid to help get me back on a normal sleep cycle.

And sleep I did.

Jeff was still in Germany waiting for a flight home, but I finally slept. I still have a voicemail our security company left that week after our back-door alarm was triggered. They called to ask if I wanted them to send the police.

It was my mom letting my dog out.

I slept through all of it.

Looking back now, there’s something else about those first few days that stands out to me: how many times Jeff was put under anesthesia in such a short period of time.

It wasn’t something that would have crossed my mind then. His arm needed to be cleaned out and repaired, and those procedures weren’t exactly optional. But knowing what we know now about the extent of his TBI, I can’t help but wonder if being put under anesthesia so many times, so soon after the blast, could have had any effect on his brain or his recovery.

I don’t know if it had any effect at all. It’s just one of those things I wonder about now.