Many families will experience times of trial when one of them is confronted with health issues that are so dire that hospitalization is required.

The blessing of family is experienced at its most wonderful zenith in the dark days of trial.  In our family, I started calling it the Way Army.  My daughter Crista is the Communicator, my daughter Jamie is the Medic, and my wife Teresa is the Atomic Bomb.  When something went wrong in care, I would tell the nurses, everybody better watch out because my Army will be showing up.  There was the night when human error turned my nose into a fountain with blood shooting up above my face more than three feet into the air.  When I awoke, I was in ICU with the Communicator by my side asking the male ICU nurse what happened over at that rehab?  The ICU nurse was saying you have swallowed a lot of blood into your left lung and we are going to have to suck it out as they ran this tubing down my throat and started vacuuming.  I could hear Crista calmly saying, “I don't know what happened, but somebody is going to get killed tonight.  ( The nurse just chuckled and acknowledged things were a mess).  I told them I see The Medic coming ( and Jamie had her Medic pad with all the details of meds and treatment for all the prior weeks).  I told the staff to get ready for a drilling of medical questions on what has occurred.

A Hospitalist arrived and made an appearance of claiming to treat me, although it appeared he was treating the hospital.  Right behind him came the Atomic Bomb and I told everybody you better pay attention now.  The Hospitalist tried to calm Teresa down, but she said, “What did you people do?”

The Hospitalist said, “Well you wouldn't understand,” and the Atomic Bomb said something like, “You better try to explain.”