The Far Side is sorta how we all try and roll around here. We snicker during prayers. We make fun of serious stuff. We roll our eyes while people are still looking at us. Sometimes we even say out loud what we are all thinking. It's a good stress reliever. It helps us remember not to take ourselves too seriously, which we are also much too inclined to do. To paraphrase my hero Marjorie Hinckley, you can cry at life or you can laugh at life, and crying gives me a headache.
So, when the opportunity presented itself, even with all the stupidity raging around us, we attempted to create opportunities to laugh, at ourselves, at the doctors, and at the circumstances we sat in. None of this is probably very funny really, but at the time it was these little moments that made life almost bearable.
So, I have six kids. It takes a lot to scare me. And, I've been to plenty of emergency rooms through the years. I know how they operate. And how they operate is SLOWLY. So slowly. So on the morning of January 8, when I found myself headed to the ER with my suicidal daughter, I did the only practical thing, at least in my mind. I stopped at the Wendy's drive-thru for a diet Coke and some breakfast. I tried to get Audrey to eat something too, but she refused.
I mean, it's not like we were having an actual EMERGENCY. There was no blood and everyone was breathing just fine. And I knew that the day was shaping up to be extremely long, exhausting and painful. It would all go much easier if I wasn't starving and was properly caffeinated. I actually didn't even think this was funny. I thought I was being really smart. Audrey thought it was pretty funny though, and she told Dan who wasn't surprised. He knows me.
Later, after Audrey was admitted to the inpatient unit, she was not doing well. There were very few things that would bring a real smile to her face. At the entrance to the unit where all the parents lined up to get in during visiting hours, there was a window that you could look through and see the kids if they happened to be coming back to their rooms from the common area. Audrey hated walking past that window and having all these strangers staring in at her. She would occasionally make eye contact with one of the parents, and have a stare down with them. That made her smile. What she really wanted to do however, was to get a hold of a pen,(which was next to impossible) write the word "HELP!" on the palm of her hand in big black letters, and then, as she was walking past the window, slam her hand against the window while staring out at everyone as insanely as she could muster. It would have been a great plan, but pens were nowhere to be found.
Treats of any kind were off limits on the unit. Every day when we would go visit, we had to lock up all our belongings in a locker and then the staff would "wand" you to make sure you weren't taking anything in that you shouldn't be. It only took a few days for us to realize that it was not that hard to smuggle in chocolate. I would just stick it down inside my bra right before going in, and when we got to Audrey's room, I'd unload. We had to be careful though, 15 minute checks and all. I think it made me feel better than Audrey to do that. It was my way of harmlessly thumbing my nose at the stupid rules.
When Audrey moved to Provo, we smuggled in lots of things too. One day, we snuck in some tic tacs and by this time she had figured out how to get things back to her room. The security measures in these places are well intentioned, but not very hard to circumvent. Anyhow, she got the tic tacs back to her room and that night, surreptitiously "dropped" one on the bathroom floor, then watched innocently as panic ensued when staff thought that someone had smuggled in drugs.
There are more, and as we remember them, we will add to this post.
It was a survival tactic to see my girl not lose her rebellious spirit throughout all she was going through
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