What do I have to complain about?
You all know that I squeaked out another birthday about 11 days ago. The culmination of my oldest brother Dan’s birthday and mine is almost always leads to a time-honored tradition, The Drunken Brother Open. Dan and I golfed 54 holes with my good friend Eric Gowans on a hot, rainy, sticky day last week. It was a great day and, yes, I’m still sore.
In my last post I told you about my son, Grant. He has a sister, now there is a story. On September 13, 1997 Connie was 10 days overdue and the doctors had decided to induce her labor. When they did that nothing seemed to happen, so they took pictures of the baby inside the womb and determined that she was breach (backwards). During the pregnancy Connie had always said, “I think it’s a boy, but I wish it were a girl”. For that reason we had not picked out any girl’s names, until that morning while they prepared the operating room … she would have to have a C-section. Connie took out the baby name book and we landed on a girl’s name that we both fell in love with more for the meaning and the way it sounded. The name was Jessica – which means God exists.
When Jessica Ann Wagner was born she weighed 6 lbs 10 oz. At the following Christmas Eve party at Grandma and Grandpa Wagner’s house that year, she weighed just about 10 lbs. That was a little more than 3 lbs in over 3 months, not enough for a newborn baby. The day after Christmas we got in to see Dr. Schaff, my sister Marlene’s pediatrician employer in Bowling Green, OH and it was quickly determined that Jessica had a heart murmur. We would soon find out that the murmur was being caused by three heart defects.
One of the defects, commonly known as PDA (Pulmonary Ductus Arteriosis), could be fixed somewhat easily. Another was much more life threatening and would take surgery that required the blood flow to her heart to be stopped for 18 minutes. This defect is named Coarctation of the Aorta. The third defect, which she still has today, is known as a Bicuspid Aortic Valve. Because of these defects and her surgery that she had on January 29, 1998 her blood pressure may seem high.
She remains petite and will always be known as “My Angel”. Shortly after she turned two, I was tucking her into bed when she look up at me and said, “Daddy, I love you”. At that moment my heart swelled up and I almost started to cry. Then she went on, “like a puppy dog” and crying turned to laughter.
Now she’s 14 interested in many other things like Harry Potter, hanging out with her friends (The Nerd Herd) and reading. Outside of yearly checkups there are no lasting reminders. Let’s keep it that way.
- UPDATE – The old and the new - July 18, 2023
- Rehab is work - April 14, 2023
- I lost my wallet - April 6, 2023
