The Tradegy That Occurred On Our Fifth Wedding Anniversary

I had picked out the perfect outfit. I had gotten my hair straightened,  and my nails done. I wanted to look perfect for him. My husband Trenton.

Trent said he was taking me to my favorite restaurant The Miller House. Its the most expensive restaurant in town. Its well worth the amount of money you pay to eat there. Service is top notch and you get an AMAZING Appitizer called The Southern Sampler. It has fried cheese grits, fried green tomatoes, sweet potatoe chips, and delicious bree. The scenery is amazing and they play beautiful music in the back ground as you romantically hold hands. 

We were sitting there talking about our dreams for the next five years, we had ordered our tea and the southern sampler and it was all just -perfect.

And then –
Trent’s dad called. You see, Trent’s identical twin brother had been in surgery while we were there.

We had decided to go to the hospital and visit him the day before, so we could have our anniversary all to ourselves.  And we weren’t planning on coming to the surgery because, well, it was just a regular proceedure that they had done two other times that week.

It had gone fine the rest of the week. Heck, when Trent and I visited him the day before he was spelling people’s name on a piece of paper and he was VERY responsive.

We talked about their 30th birthday and how its about to be next month and Travis motioned that he wanted us all to get drunk.

So, we are sitting there at The Miller House and Trent answers his phone thinking that his dad is going to tell him that the surgery is over and they had him closed up.

Instead Mike told Trent he wad on his way to The Miller House and he needed to talk to him. I looked at my husband from across the table and I knew something was wrong. He had lost all the color in his face.

I started to cry and everyone in the restaurant was looking.  “Trent, ” I manage to muster from my throat. “What’s wrong, your starting to scare me…”

Trent hung up the phone and told the waiter he needed to pay because we had an emergency we had to take care of. He told me to go to the car.

I went outside and Mike was standing in front of the restaurant. 

Trent followed and the color still haden’t returned to his face.
Mike started,  “Travis had a really bad infection. They are putting him back into the ICU, they may or may not have to put in a trechea, and they putting him in a paralyzed coma.”

I stood there in shock. Trent fell on the ground in long deep sobs, “I know its scary son. Its okay to be scared, I am too.” Mike says.

We drove to the hospital. We waited until it was our turn to see him.

We walked into the ICU and we saw Travis. Trent held his hand, “Bubba, I need you to get better. We love you…” Trent broke down and started to cry.

We left the hospital around midnight.

We went to sleep and the next day we went to work and visited Travis at nine when we got off. Trent had dropped me off at the door and I actually went up to his room without Trent. Travis’ leg was hanging off the bed! I screamed for the nurse to get in there.
“Nurse! His leg is almost completely off the bed!” I said.
“Yeah, ” She says nonchalantly. “He’s been doing that all day.”

I pause for a moment, “Is that normal? With him supposed to be paralyzed and all?”

“We have given him as much pain sedatives as humanly possible,  he just keeps fighting it.”

I go and sit in the chair next to him. I hold his hand, “Hey buddy.” He opens up his eyes and opens his mouth. It looks like he’s trying to say something. It looks like he’s trying to say, “Help me!” I jump up startled. I sit back down and I grab hid hand.  “You’re okay Bubba. I need you to calm down and stop fighting this.”

I see Trent walking down the hall and I decide to keep it to myself what it looked like he had said.

Trent is holding his hand and I decide to give them a moment alone.

Trent meets back up with me at ten when visitation is over. He us just as disturbed as me at how restless he was.

I get home and talk to Dana.
“I’m a little fucked up after seeing Travis.”
“I know! Me too! It was like he was fighting it!”
Later on we are talking and she says that when she worked at the Nursing Home she only had three residents that had sepsis.
” None of them survived,” she said.
We talk about how he has his age on his side but each time we think something is going right, it has turned out horribly wrong. Should we be preparing ourselves for the worst? 

I go upstairs.

“Trent, we need to talk.” I say.
“Okay.” he responds. There is an awkward moment as if we ate both thinking the same thing but neither wants to say what that is.

“Trent. I think you need to get off from work tomorrow.  I am having a hard time processing my thoughts right now about this whole situation, so, I can’t imagine how you’re feeling with him being your twin brother. I don’t think working with the public is a good idea right now. I think you need to take tomorrow off and go be with him and…I think you need to really try and process what happening. Distractions at work are good, but after a while its going to hit you what’s happening, and you aren’t going to want to be there at that store.”

“What will we do about the bills? If I’m not working we can’t pay the bills.”
“Let me handle it Trent. I’ll pick up extra hours if I have to.”

Trent nods his head and says, “Travis opened his mouth when I was up there tonight like he was trying to say something …like he wad trying to say help me.”

“I know honey, he did that to me before you got in the room, I just thought it was my mind playing tricks on me!” I cried.

We both started to cry and hold each other and the release of the tears and of the uncertainty were the only thing that felt right in that moment.

A Day In The Life

Update on Travis: They are feeding Travis Through his tubes and they had a proceedure done on him today to clean out any sepsis that had gotten into his body.

I went to take a nap today before I made dinner. I couldn’t sleep but I felt exhausted.  I was tossing and turning and all I could think about was work and minimum wage and how am I going to start our life off when we both are hardly working 40 hours a week and making minimum wage. We can barely make rent on our one bedroom walk up.

So, I started breathing heavier and I couldn’t imagine what would happen if heaven forbid I get sick again like I did this summer, what happens when I have medicine that I need that will keep me alive? So I’m breathing heavier and I start thinking about how Travis got sick and Dana got sick, and what if Trent gets sick? And the anniversary of Dad’s death is coming, and so I got up and I ran downstairs.

I ran down the block and I kept running until my side hurt and I found myself on a street that looked unfamiliar and I had no clue where I was so I fell on the ground crying. Long deep sobs until I could finally breathe again. I cried until I felt right again. I cried until the world stopped moving and the earth and everything around me could dance around me. And I laid there.

I picked up my cell phone and called my husband. “Hey, honey.”

“Hey!” he says.

“I went for a run and I’m kind of lost.” I start to laugh and that makes him laugh too.

“Where are you I’ll come pick you up?”

Ten minutes later Trent was there and he was smiling, “How is it you could get lost after living here for almost half of your life now?”

“I just have no sense of navigation I suppose. ” I smile and get in the car.
Trent and I get home and Trent has put up the tombstones and added pumpkins to each one.

I go into Dana’s and she’s made dinner and Jenn has gotten Snow White and the Huntsmen. Life feels right again. 

My Husbands Identical Twin Brother

The relationship I have with my brother in-law Travis has always been a complicated one. See, I married his identical twin brother, Trenton.

When Trent and first started dating Travis and I had a pretty good time. I remember Trent took me on a date to a Japanese restaurant and I soon discovered that it was also a date with his twin brother. Later I would come to find out that this was the first test of many. Trenton was seeking Travis’ approval.

I loved Travis. I thought he was funny and eccentric and someone that I would LOVE to party with.

After Trent and I were married, things got a little weird…

When I started dating Trent I knew I was going to have to always share my life with another human being. But – I didn’t know that it was going to have to be TWO human beings. It was almost as if I had to always seek his approval for if I was being a good wife to his brother. MY HUSBAND.

So, I had to compromise my entire life, but he wasn’t willing to compromise that Trent was my husband, and the first year of marriage is always hard, but it’s even worse when it seems like a million people are in your lives.

And somedays I had off I didn’t want to have to share my husband, my first year of marriage.

So, the years went on, and the resentment grew deeper and deeper because I also felt like sometimes Travis thought he was was better than us. We kind of stopped talking COMPLETELY  for a year.  Trent also was suffering from depression at the time.

Trent was hospitalized and that was brought Travis back into my life. I realized I needed Travis. Travis could help me figure out and process the thoughts I was having over my husbands depression. 

Back in July of this year Travis was hospitalized with a sepsis that had developed in his body. Part of the process was having to go into surgery and put on a colostomy bag that would carry his poop in a bag on his body.

The weeks following the surgery was torture.  I saw Travis have issues with embarrassment, self esteem. He really just wanted to have the thing taken off!

About a month ago I did start distancing myself because he would say really hurtful things that was making me feel bad about other people in my husbands family.

I don’t have a family of my own. The Hagans are my family. My Dads dead, so I think of Trent’s dad as my dad. I never had any sisters, so I think of Dana as MY sister. I’ve really grown up a lot the last few years, but because of things that happened in our very FIRST year of marriage I am still on shaky grounds with a lot of people in Trent’s immediate family. I feel like where Dana LOVES me, others just tolerate me. And, to be quite honest, when everyone notices these changes and you still are on shaky ground with people it does make me think, “Well, maybe its not me?”

This is such a complicated situation that I have digressed, and I apologize.

Travis went in for his reversal on Monday. Wednesday they started feeding him clear liquids, Thursday- his incision came loose from when they reattached it. They had to send him into emergency surgery.

I haden’t been up to visit Travis at all that week. I was worried Wednesday because Trent had told me that he was slightly pneumatic. 

The emergency surgery didn’t go as planned. They have induced coma on Travis for seven days so they can clear up an infection. They also placed him on a ventilator.

My husband is a complete wreck. He is beside himself with grief. He doesn’t know what he would do without his brother.

Trent was back there and the surgeon that worked on Travis came in. He was holding Travis’ hand and he said, “I don’t know how much of this is your fault, or how much is just bad circumstances,  but he BETTER WAKE UP!”

I was sitting in the waiting room hearing everyone tell stories about when they went back there, (Dana said he smiled when someone pointed out that she was coming because you could hear her heels clompping down on the ground,).
They asked me if I wanted to come back and I made up an excuse about having a cold and not wanting to make him worse.

The truth is, I was scared. I didn’t think my mental state could handle seeing someone I love and someone that means SO much to my husband…I just couldn’t do it.

I snuck in there today. He looked really good. His color was really great. I held his hand. “Hi. Its me Mae.” He grabbed my hand. “I’m here Travis, and you have a whole lot of people thinking about you right now. There’s a ton of people that are lighting you white candles on Facebook and …” He grabbed my hand.  I started to tear up, “I need you to be okay because my husband doesn’t work without you. And I love you too. You are my brother. ” He grabbed my hand. “No more pettiness.  Just parties when you wake up. Okay?” He grabbed my hand.

I love Travis and I just want him to wake up and I want everything to be better. If you’re reading this, will you send prayers and thoughts his way?