Craig’s temp position ends in May and he will be the primary caregiver during this time, though I will jump in when I can to provide relief and all three of us will be at the hospital together. Then he’ll have to wear a total body splint for six weeks, three of them only lying down, and then three of them with minimal sitting up, no standing or walking. At this point, we will be in the hospital for a few days, and it’s scheduled at Lurie just a few days after the end of the school year. The second surgery would only be on his right hip, cutting out a wedge from his femur and inserting it around the pelvic bone to force that hip into proper alignment, called “Varus Derotation Osteotomy of Femur & Pelvic Osteotomy”. One to cut his fibula and tibia, turn them in a proper direction, then re-attach them with a metal plate and screw to get that right leg in proper alignment, this is called the “Deroatation Osteotomy of the Tibia”. His right leg is way turned out, his right hip is not in proper alignment, and if we want to add stability to his walk and prevent him from painful arthritis in his 30’s they recommend two surgeries for over this summer. On February 28th we had our meeting with our surgeon about the results of Aleck’s gait study ( see last blog post for details) and what she and her partner’s recommendations are going forward for Aleck and surgery. “Our souls go with God,” he responded and I praised him for his answer as I wiped away my tears. I told him how some people believe that when we die our bodies die but our souls leave us and go someplace else. He asked why people die and I said, “People die for three different reasons they lose too much blood, they can’t get enough oxygen, or their organs fail.” “Or people kill them,” he responded, after all, it wasn’t even a week after the Parkland shootings. On the way to school, he wanted to keep the conversation going. “But what if we see someone who looks like Bubbie and sounds like Bubbie…” and I explained how she wouldn’t be Bubbie because she wouldn’t have been Aleck’s grandmother and she wouldn’t have been Craig’s mom. It prompted him to ask if we’d ever see Bubbie again. Even Aleck, who either didn’t quite understand what was going on or simply had trouble processing it, was struck by the candle. When we lit the memorial candle the night of her funeral it all became very real. Clearly, Sherri didn’t want the painful surgery and the arduous recovery that would have followed and chose to leave us all on February 16th.
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The team was gearing up to ween Sherri off her pain meds so she could make the decision regarding surgery since her condition didn’t make her an ideal candidate. Sherri had been struggling with her pulmonary fibrosis but it was truly a series of falls that were the beginning of the end, first a broken arm, then a shattered shoulder. On February 12th we got a call from Craig’s brother that Craig’s mom was in bad shape and he needed to go see her right away. The best we could gather is that it became an issue of money, almost $20K over what their ceiling was for this position that Craig had skillfully negotiated them up to might have been the main reason for it all to come crashing down, but truly we didn’t have a concrete answer. Since a colleague of his from Keno Kozie was the one who made the initial introduction, Craig began picking his brain for information and sending out an email to the woman who he would have been working under, thanking them for the opportunity and looking for explanations.
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He read me the email from the partner, a glowing review of Craig and his character along with an offer to connect him to other firms, but no explanation.
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I felt like I got kicked in the gut, the wind knocked out of me even though I hadn’t moved a muscle. After 3.5 years of job hunting to finally snag a position that he was qualified for and excited about and then have it all plucked away in an instant is devastating. “They rescinded the offer, I don’t have the job.” At that moment I knew we had been jinxed. As he marched into my doorway he announced, “the worst thing ever just happened.” At that moment I felt like Fred Sanford, clutching my chest and waiting for the big one. On February 6th I was in my office, a bedroom on the lower level of our duplex down in Lincoln Square, working on projects and scheduling upcoming conference calls when I heard Craig’s footsteps coming down the stairs.