Friday the 13th

Posted On May 13, 2011

Being Friday the 13th, it brought to mind some of the strokes of luck, both good and bad that have crossed my path.

One day while I was on the playground with Timmy, he had to use the restroom. Of course the park we were at did not have a full facility, but did have a port-a-john. As I was helping him, I heard the plunk of metal. I looked down to see my gold necklace was in a heap on the floor and the claddagh charm that my husband had given me when we were courting was mysteriously absent. It had a lot of sentimental value and I had rarely taken it from my neck in the ten odd years that I had worn it. I searched all around, and of course it wasn’t on the floor–pretty much left only one place for it, and I wasn’t inclined to go in after it.
I’m pretty notorious for not being the most timely person on the planet. I don’t often leave much, if any, spare time for anything. If I’m not late, more likely than not, I am right on the nose. This certainly rang true when I was a teenager who valued sleep a great deal. I had getting ready down to a science, laying out my clothes and stuff the night before. I could get dressed and ready for school, chow down some breakfast and be out the door in 20. Will never forget the stroke of luck when the driver on our city bus route actually held the bus for me when he saw me racing the two blocks towards the bus stop. How lucky was I?
I can remember hopping into the log flume at Great Adventure when I was there on an eighth grade trip and found a wad of cash on the floor of the flume. I think it was like 18 bucks, which being a teenager, I thought I had found a gold mine. I think I splurged on some ice cream for my friend and I right on the spot. Cool.
Won’t soon forget the stroke of luck–or divine intervention for that matter–when the hospital was calling to ask us to pull the plug on Tommy for a full 4 hours while he was coding–coding meaning dangerously low oxygen saturation and heart rate numbers. By the time they reached us, he stabilized. I later checked the file to see what number they were calling and it was indeed correct. Now if that wasn’t a big fat sign that he was meant to be on the planet, I don’t know what was. Talk about an extreme stroke of luck.
Also related to Tommy’s precarious preemie history, due to the high levels of pure oxygen he was receiving in order to survive, it was causing bleeding in his brain. Because there are enzymes in your blood, it more or less digests your brain matter when blood is present. They warned us of the seriousness of this affliction and even called him swiss cheese brain at one point. They prepared us for a severely handicapped child–more than likely exhibiting any or all of the following: severe cerebral palsy, blindness and/or mental retardation. Not sure when it happened exactly, but it cleared, and showed no overt impact on his little body then or over time.
Moving on to munchkin number two. We have unfortunately lost two children with early delivery. A little girl named Jessica at 22 weeks, and a little boy named Adam at 18 weeks. Tommy alone was a miracle child, but we also had incredible luck with Timmy’s delivery. I had been on bedrest with 3 out of 4 of the children, and 3 out of 4 delivered early. Luckily my body had created such scars from the other three kids on my cervix, that the doctors think that it actually helped keep Timmy in there for the long haul. My doctor scheduled a c-section as she thought there might be a danger that I might go into labor and my uterus might rip. Well, no problem there, cut me open. Not only was Timmy born just one day shy of his official due date, but after delivery my doctor mentioned that it was lucky that we picked to deliver when we did as my placenta was starting to fail. Wow. Awestruck again.
Even though it’s not really my luck, but Tom’s, I figure being married to him I get part of it by default. We had signed up to attend a company picnic at Six Flags. It was a warm night, and there was a chance of thunderstorms. Being a night we’d planned out without the wee ones, we were overjoyed to have a night out and not so concerned with the weather. The park was pretty empty and we got to ride several awesome rides before heading over to the common area to get some grub. The company held a great picnic and gave out scads of door prizes at their functions. As we were finishing our dinner the skies opened up. Not just rain, but torrential, sideways pouring rain. They had started announcing the door prizes, but due to the weather and being so far from the mike, we couldn’t hear very well. I could swear I heard Tom’s name called, so I told him he should check to see if he won. I totally had to cajole him because I can’t hear that well, and he thought I was nuts. Turns out he won a weekend away at a local resort. Yay! Shortly after we hear the PA system announce that tornado watch has been announced and they were closing the park. So much for date night. As we were leaving they handed out consolation fanny packs for everyone, along with tickets to come back again for another full day. Awesome! So not only did we get a fun date night–albeit cut short, we won a door prize, got some free fanny packs, had a swell dinner with free drinks, but we also got to come back on their dime another day. Lucky we went after all…

What are some of your favorite strokes of luck?