Waiting Room Reset

Hello, my dear, dear quadri sphere. Hi. Welcome. Hello, hello. It's Wednesday. 30 Central Time. We are about to get some storms here in Minnesota, which is good. We need it. We need the rain. We need the moisture. Our lakes are low, so we need all the rain that we can get. However, does create a gloomy atmosphere outside and the clouds come and go and they get dark and then they get light. And so we'll see what happens today. But I'm Christy Larson. I am here with you live. I'm excited to be here.

Sometimes I'm up north, sometimes I'm in my office back home here in the cities in Minnesota, sometimes I'm in my kitchen. You never know where I'm going to be, but here I am. with you. Always excited to see you. Hopefully all is well in your world. For those of you that have followed my path from back when I started almost a year ago with Cadre Sphere, at that point in time when I started, my mom was going in for brain surgery. She had lost blood flow to the left or the right side of her brain, which controls the left side of her body, which is the side that she uses the most because she's left-handed.

So she went in, she had a fantastic team at HCMC, a fantastic neurosurgeon who sewed a vessel to a vein to try and increase that blood flow. And unfortunately, it didn't work. It blocked again. So she yesterday was back in the hospital with the same amazing team at HCMC, the same amazing surgeon at HCMC doing the same thing, only hoping for better outcomes. So she is currently there. My dad is sitting with her right now. I am going to be on my way after I visit with you all. But yesterday was a really long day.

We sat in the waiting room. m. to get her prepped, get her checked in. And my sister who flew in from Colorado arrived at the kind of the check-in space about 7:15. And so we were able to kind of do a quick catch up and before we were moved to the next spot where you wait. But she was checked in at 6 o'clock and then we finally got to see her last night at 8 o'clock coming out of the anesthesia and pretty groggy. She was in the ICU. but aware, aware of who we were. And so we were very, very blessed.

We felt the love and the prayers from everybody that was sending them. And now she's on the road to the next hard thing, right? So, but as we were sitting in the waiting room yesterday, there were so many things that for any of you that have sat in a waiting room before, there's so many things that you maybe you think about or you hear or you see that unless you pause to look in your normal day today, you don't necessarily catch those things. And so it kind of got me thinking about this kind of waiting room reset of what I wanted to chat with you all about today and in thinking about the things that happen when you sit in a waiting room, especially for an extended period of time where you're almost kind of not a forced probably isn't the right word, but you're kind of like stuck, right?

You're stuck there because you're waiting for news or you're waiting for an update or whatever it might be, whyever you may be in the waiting room, waiting for something in a hospital room or in a hospital. There's a zillion different reasons, which I learned yesterday, but it was we were sitting in the waiting room, which was both the surgical waiting room for families and the burn unit waiting room for families. So there was quite a mix of people coming in and out and families that were there supporting their loved ones and sharing stories and laughing and crying and praying and all the things that you would expect to see in a waiting room at a hospital.

But the world outside moved on. So at HCMC where we were, there's kind of a courtyard almost in the middle of HCMC where you sit and kind of are able to see the outside world without actually seeing the outside world. So lots of pigeons looking up at the sky. You see clouds come, you see clouds go, you see a little bit of blue sky. Every now and then you see a little rain, but you really don't see the world outside of that little space. And every now and then you can look down at the streets and you can hear, you know, sirens going by or see a bus slowly passing by.

You see some people walking in and out of the hospital, but there's not a lot you can see outside of that little courtyard that you're looking at. And so we watched a lot of pigeons. We watched pigeons chase each other. We watched pigeons show off for each other. But, you know, the world kind of kept moving outside of that space that we were in. And because we were there in that waiting room for so long, I think we finally arrived in there in that waiting room and mom went into surgery at about 8:30.

in the morning. 30 and waited for mom there. But there was a lot that happened in that space. A lot of people in and out. You hear a lot of stories. You see people crying. We had a social worker that was visiting with a mom and dad whose son was badly burned. And so they were talking through, you know, next steps for things like that and workers comp and And you cry even though you don't know who they are, you know that they're going through something really tough Anybody in that waiting room is sitting there waiting for good news or bad news or any news at all And so we waited and we waited and we took a couple walks around we went down and grabbed a salad in the cafeteria We laughed at videos on phones.

We shared memories. Like I said, I have a sister who came in from Colorado. And so, we get to kind of play catch up at that point too, and really hear about how my niece and nephew are doing and what they've done to their house since we were last there. And so things like that, you really don't necessarily get to do until you're kind of stuck in that space to be able to do that. And so it was a, we shared memories, we shared stories, we laughed some, we cried some. probably laughed more than we cried just because there's so many great memories that we have just from growing up.

And my mom is a big ball of wit, so we get to laugh with her often, which is really fun. And tried to keep my dad's spirits up and really make sure that we were doing things that weren't making us just sit and think and wait and anticipate the news that was coming. 15, our neurosurgeon came in and kind of sat with us What a sweet, sweet man, an amazing human, incredibly brilliant mind. This is the third brain surgery he's done on her and he remembers us and he remembers my mom and her resilience and her grit and her determination to get better.

And so it's always a blessing to have someone like that in your life to be able to share that. And he, you know, I shared that with him and the surgeon said, you know, Like you're blessed and your mom is blessed to be able to have each other in your lives. And so it was a sweet moment where he shared with us kind of what transpired during the operation and kind of how, why it had taken longer than he had expected. And there was some scarring on her brain tissue that they needed to clean up and they had to resew a vein to the next open or resew a vessel to the next open vein.

And so it was a lot of learning. It was a lot of understanding. It was a lot of, I don't know that there's a word for it, but honest. I was in awe of some of the things that he was speaking to that he did to try and make her life better at this point. So all that said, there's a lot that you can learn from sitting in a waiting room, a hospital waiting room, any waiting room where you're kind of just stuck to be there, blessed to be there with the people that you love. blessed to have the support, the prayers flowing in, even though those people couldn't be there.

And, you know, you, I will tell you, when we got to see her last night, the moment was, you know, walking in and saying, hi, mom, like we're here, we're here for you. She was really groggy coming out of that anesthesia. She was not feeling good, of course, in her side of her head. But, you know, when you say that, and she kind of opens her eyes and we said, we're so proud of you. Like, we're so happy to see you. We're so happy you've opened your eyes and we love you. And then to hear her say, we love you back, you know, I love you.

I love you too, was really, really special for us, even though we were in there for probably 10 minutes, just because we knew she needed the rest. We knew she needed to be able to kind of close her eyes and not worry about the world around her. But I'm off to see her this afternoon. Dad has been there all morning. I'm feeling anxious but excited to be able to sit with her even though I know she's going to be pretty much sleeping in and out this afternoon. But being able to know that I'm there for her and being able to see her is something that we weren't 100% sure we were going to be able to do yesterday.

So we pray for her strength, for our strength. For those that are caring for her, the doctors, the nurses, the surgeons, the janitors, you name it in that building, I pray for them every single day. They have a hard, hard job, a very human job. And we are all, whether you've used those services in healthcare or not, we are all very blessed to have them. So I know things are gonna be good. God is good. I'll keep you posted. Thank you Cadre Sphere. Take care Cadre Sphere and be well and tell someone, even if it's just yourself, that you love them today.

I will see you next week with updates. Take care.