Toni Anderson

This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

I saw the blood in the diaper and having already been through this experience with my older son I knew it was not normal.

I panicked, ran back to my hospital bed, grabbed the phone and called one of my friends who was a nurse. When she answered I told her that something was very wrong and that happy baby’s diaper was full of blood.

She told me to hang up the phone immediately and call the nurse on duty. She couldn’t help me from her living room.

I pushed the nurse’s button and waited forever (at least it seemed like forever) for the nurse to come to the room. When she finally arrived she had my discharge paperwork in hand and told me I could go home as soon as someone came to pick up me.

I told her I was not going anywhere until I knew what was wrong with happy baby. She peaked into his diaper and told me that was normal. I told her it was not normal and I wasn’t going anywhere.

She was obviously very frustrated that I was refusing to sign my discharge paperwork. Finally she told me she would call the intern to come and talk to me. I told her that I would not talk to any intern or resident and that I wasn’t leaving until I saw the staff doctor.

She was getting very irritated with me, but I stood my ground. It was all I could do to not burst into tears. I was exhausted, afraid, and very mad.

Finally the intern showed up. I politely told her that I did not want to talk to her, I wanted to talk to the staff doctor. She tried to explain what happened to happy baby, I told her that I wasn’t going to listen to her and that a staff doctor better get in my room or else.

Now, I’m not really sure what the or else meant, but when you have just had a baby, shared a toilet with another lady who just had a baby, and haven’t slept for three days “or else” means something.

Finally the staff doctor showed up. He explained to me that when they started the circumcision they noticed a possible malformation and the only way to fix the malformation was to use part of the skin normally removed in a circumcision.

They had to stop the procedure in the middle in order to save the skin for a possible future operation because the malformation could not be confirmed until our son was older.

Basically our son had half a circumcision and that was the reason for the increased bleeding.

I was aghast. I could not believe the hospital was planning on discharging me and happy baby without even telling me what had happened. When I shared my concern with the doctor he told me there was a note on my paperwork to NOT discharge me until he had come to explain the situation.

The ward was filling up and the nurse was in a hurry to put a new patient in my room so she ignored the instructions and had planned to send me home without any knowledge of the partial procedure.

I was livid. In fact I was so angry that I do not even remember what I said or did after that moment until Sailor arrived at the hospital.

Sailor arrived and I made a mental note to never have a baby in a military hospital again. This was our first military hospital birth and it was going to be my last!

Earlier that morning I called Sailor and asked for some clothes to wear home from the hospital. I requested my sweat pants and also asked if he would buy me some underwear suitable for wearing after you’ve had a baby.

In his hurry to get to the hospital he grabbed a skirt by mistake and bought the biggest, ugliest pair of granny panties you could imagine at Target on the way. I hesitated even putting them on because they went up to my neck (I’m only sort of kidding) but since I didn’t have any other options I wore my skirt and granny panties home from the hospital.

It was time to start our life as a family of five.

This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

It was hard to believe that the house was actually worse in the daylight than in the dark. The light revealed how dirty the house really was. I quickly got to work cleaning every square inch of that place before we moved in.

I remember cleaning the windows and going through two rolls of paper towels. Each window was covered with a layer of black dirt (which we later found out was soot). We cleaned the appliances several times over and I even ventured into the basement to sweep it out.

Thankfully I didn’t see any mice in my cleaning. Maybe it was just crazy coincidence that we saw a mouse the day we looked at the house?

The moving truck came, delivered our stuff, and we quickly got to work setting up our new home in Virginia. I think I had the whole house unpacked in less than a week. I wanted to be settled before the baby arrived.

In Florida, Sailor was told by the military not to take his nursing exam in Florida since he would be working in Virginia. This was a mistake (or maybe not). There was a problem getting the paperwork together for him to take the exam in Virginia and since he wasn’t licensed he couldn’t officially work as a nurse at the hospital. He was given a day job until the paperwork mess was sorted out.

The paperwork mess lasted almost six months. While all our nursing friends worked rotating shifts Sailor worked from 7-4 and had most weekends off. It was nice.

A few weeks after we moved in I went into the basement and it was filled with about two feet of water. Sailor tried to figure out the source of the water. The kids splashed and played in our basement swimming pool. I was worried that our washer and dryer would be ruined and called the landlord.

Our landlord sent over a repairman who couldn’t figure out the source of the leak but managed to get the water out of the basement. While cleaning up the mess we found a large piece of plywood under the stairs. Scrawled on the plywood were the words… “the basement floods….”

Of course that would have been nice to know before we put all our extra boxes in the basement, but fortunately only a things were ruined. We bought cinderblocks to put the washer and dryer on in case of future flooding and put anything worth saving on makeshift shelving.

The basement flooded several more times until a plumber finally figured out that tree roots had grown into the underground pipes in the yard. Our basement had been backing up with sewage!

I hated that basement and hated that I had to go down there almost every day to do the laundry.

Spring arrived in Virginia and the kids were enjoying the nice back yard. We met our “back yard neighbors” and we even built steps so they could climb the fence.

One night in the back yard Sailor saw a rat running across the power line. A few weeks later there was a dead rat under our car in the driveway. I still hadn’t seen any in the house but was starting to get worried.

At seven months pregnant I strained my back moving furniture. It was so bad I wasn’t able to walk our daughter to school. I went to the doctor and he gave me muscle relaxers but I refused to take them. It was getting so bad that I was unable to do basic chores around the house.

The doctor kept telling me that I needed to rest for a few days in order to get better. I told him that mom’s don’t have time to rest. He told me if I didn’t he would admit me to the hospital for some forced rest. It got so bad that my daughter came home from school with a picture she had drawn. It was me moving the coffee table and she was standing in the background crying, she had a bubble over her head that said, “No mommy, no!”

I decided I would take the muscle relaxers and rest for a few days. My back finally started to feel better.

One evening the kids woke up in the middle of the night screaming. Even though they had their own rooms they always slept in the same room. They loved being together! We ran in the room and they both told us they saw a mouse run across the room and under the bed.

They knew about the rats in the yard, so we wondered if it was just their imagination. They were sure it wasn’t. Sailor searched the room for a mouse but couldn’t find anything. They wouldn’t go back to sleep so we all ended up sleeping together.

I started to worry about our new baby, I didn’t want mice crawling all over them as he or she slept in the crib. I had never seen a live mouse in the house (except for the day we signed the lease) but I was starting to believe they were everywhere.

May arrived and the temperature started to rise in Virginia. We turned on our odd wall a/c unit and it made some horrible sounds and then died. We called our landlord and he said he didn’t think it could be fixed.

Now, everyone knows you don’t tell a woman who is nine months pregnant that the a/c cannot be fixed. They will hurt you. I didn’t even last 24 hours, I told Sailor he needed to go straight to Home Depot and buy a window unit for our bedroom. We could all sleep in there until the landlord did something about the air.

Since the unit was so old it couldn’t be fixed so the landlord decided to put window units in a few of the rooms. It wasn’t ideal, but at least I wasn’t a big, hot, sweaty mess.

Memorial Day weekend Sailor’s family came to visit. We had a great time and on Memorial Day Sailor had to work. I woke up feeling a little funny and since last time I felt funny I had a baby a few hours later so I decided to head to the hospital.

Sailor was already there working and my doctor was on call. He decided I was in early labor so I was admitted. We were going to have a Memorial Day baby.

We still didn’t have a name picked out so we joked with the doctor and nurses about baby names, played cards, and hung out with our friends (all who worked at the hospital). It was weird knowing most of the doctor’s and nurses, but it was also kind of nice.

Our healthy and happy baby boy was born that evening, just in time for our doctor to make his Memorial Day party. I felt great until I was taken to the post partum floor.

Apparently the people who redesigned the hospital thought it would be a good idea to have people share rooms (and bathrooms) after they have a baby. (These people had obviously never had a baby) So there I was with our baby, and on the other side of the curtain was another lady and her baby. I didn’t sleep a single second that night. If my baby wasn’t crying her baby was. It was horrible. .

When Sailor came to visit the next day I cried and told him he had to get me out of the hospital. I couldn’t stand to be there one more second. Unfortunately our baby needed to circumcised and that wasn’t going to happen until the next day.

Fortunately my roommate was discharged that afternoon and I think Sailor pulled a few strings so I didn’t end up with another roommate that night.

The next day I couldn’t wait to get home see my other kids. They took happy baby off to be circumcised and I started packing up my stuff. They brought him back all bundled up and sound asleep. I waited for my discharge paperwork and Sailor to come take us home.

The paperwork took longer than expected and I ended up waiting for over two hours. Finally happy baby woke up and I went to change his diaper. I unwrapped him from the blanket and saw blood running down his legs.

I took off his diaper and it was filled with blood.

This the story of how I became “The Happy Housewife.” You might want to start at the beginning.

I was really starting to get worried. It wasn’t like Sailor to not call even if things weren’t good. To help pass the time I took the kids outside and started swinging on my parent’s porch swing. We hadn’t been swinging very long when I heard a familiar sound. It was the sound of our old Volkswagon’s brakes squeaking.

I smiled, but then I realized that our Volkswagon was somewhere in Virginia! I guess someone else had squeaky brakes too. The next thing I knew there was Sailor in his white uniform with a bouquet of flowers walking up my parent’s driveway. He had missed us so much he drove straight from Rhode Island to Florida to see us!

I couldn’t believe my eyes and neither could the kids. We all ran and hugged Sailor. I was still a tiny bit mad at him for making me think he was dead or stranded in a snow bank, but mostly I was glad to see him.

Sailor decided that it would be better if we all went to Virginia together. He had vacation time available so we would enjoy one last week in Florida then caravan up to Virginia together.

During the week in Florida I realized I had made a bit of a packing error. Instead of not packing the kids’ winter clothes, I packed them all in our shipment. Our kids had a few pairs of pants, no coats, and we would be moving to Virginia in February.

I didn’t think this would be a problem until I headed to the stores to buy them coats. What I forgot was that in February all the stores are gearing up for Spring Break and the winter clothes selection was severely limited. I finally found a few winter things that could hold us over until we found a house in Virginia.

We arrived in Virginia and checked in to the Navy Lodge. We had ten days of “free” lodging, so that meant we had exactly ten days to find a place to live. We were also in a hurry because we had pulled our daughter out of school and we couldn’t enroll her in a new school until we knew where we would be living.

Sailor also had to check-in to the hospital and start working. I spent my days at the Housing Office getting lists of rentals and driving around town checking out different neighborhoods.

We looked at house after house and just couldn’t seem to find the right house for us. They were either too far away, too small, the school district wasn’t very good, or the neighborhood seemed sketchy. The pressure was on to find a house because we were running out of time.

We fell in love with an area that had great schools and seemed very Navy friendly. Unfortunately the houses were way out of our budget. I kept hoping we could find a “fixer upper” that would be priced a little lower. On the seventh or eighth day I found a house for rent in that neighborhood. We called and made an appointment to look at it.

Since Sailor was working most of our appointments were in the afternoon or early evening. We arrived at this house around sunset.

The first problem with this house was that it was on a busy street, a six lane road that seemed to be buzzing with traffic. We did notice that the house had a nice big backyard so we rationalized that as long as the kids played in the back yard they would be safe.

The second problem with the house was that it didn’t have a garage, carport, or shed. Not that a garage is a necessity, but we wondered where we would put any extra boxes, bikes, toys, and Christmas decorations.

The landlord met us at the house and we headed inside. Problem number three, the house didn’t any electricity. It was wired for electricity, but because there was no one living in the house it wasn’t turned on. We were now inside a fairly dark house so it was hard to see what everything looked like.

I could tell the carpet in the house was older because it was kind of “crunchy.” The kitchen was big, but the appliances were older and dirty. It didn’t seem like anything a good scrubbing couldn’t fix. The linoleum in the kitchen was cracked in several places and very dirty, but I rationalized that  dirty floor would probably have to be cleaned less often.

There was a small half-bath under the stairs. It was one of those bathrooms that was so small that you could sit on the toilet and wash your hands at the same time. In fact you couldn’t really even stand up all the way in the bathroom if you were over six feet tall.

On the way upstairs I noticed a big box on the wall in the stairwell. I asked what it was and the landlord said it was the air conditioning. I had never seen six foot air conditioner unit mounted to a wall, but I figured it probably was similar to a window unit. He said it worked and since it was forty degrees in the unheated house I had to believe him.

Upstairs there were two huge bedrooms and two small bedrooms. The walls were dingy but the landlord said we could paint them. (Selling point number one)

There was one bathroom upstairs. The tub was cracked and peeling but it at least there was a tub to wash the kids.

I asked where the laundry room was and the landlord told us it was in the basement. The fact that the house had a basement solved our storage problems so the house was starting to seem like a possibility.

It was too dark to actually look at the basement so we headed back to the living room to discuss the rent and move in options.

Although the house was definitely a wreck, we were running out of time to find a place and I hoped my dad would be able to come up and help us improve the place a little. As we were talking in the living room a mouse ran across the carpet.

Now, let me interrupt this story to say that if you are ever considering renting a house and a mouse runs across the floor while you are looking at it, DO NOT RENT THE HOUSE.

In my heart I didn’t think we should rent the house, but it felt like our only option so we signed the lease. We could move in the next day.

The next morning I picked up the keys and headed over to see what our new house looked like in the sunshine.

If you haven’t followed Our Story, you might want to start at the beginning.

My father was on his way to the ER with Sailor. Apparently all the laughing and a reaction to the tape used on the incision had caused “stuff” to start seeping out from the bandages.

Since I’m not one to back down from a threat, I made my father take Sailor to the ER while I tended to our daughter and tried to get some sleep.

Sailor was fixed up at the ER and sent home. He spent the next month recuperating from his surgery.

The surgery put Sailor in a strange situation. All his nursing school classmates graduated that May, but because he had to withdraw from the spring semester he didn’t have enough clinical hours to graduate and was missing a few credit hours. The problem was the classes he needed were only available in the Spring and the Navy wasn’t going to pay for Sailor to spend another year in school.

We spent several weeks in limbo trying to work something out where Sailor could still graduate with his nursing degree in a time frame that was acceptable to the Navy. This was extremely stressful because we were now strapped with three years of student loans and looking at the possibility that Sailor might have to return to his old job in the Navy without a degree.

Finally, the University came up with a special program that would allow Sailor to finish his degree in November. It was something that hadn’t been done before but everyone wanted him to graduate rather than drop out.

He began independent study work and also picked up a part time job as a tech in the burn unit at the local hospital. Not only would it give him medical experience it was extra money every month to pay the bills.

While it was great experience working at the burn unit, every day at the hospital made Sailor more and more certain he did not want to be a nurse. He felt like the entire thing was a huge mistake and he wanted to give it all up and go back to his old job.

We spent hours talking and arguing about his situation. While it was a possibility to quit and go back to his old job it would most likely end his career in the Navy and then he’d be without a degree or a job. I told him once he graduated it would get better. Being a nursing student was not the same as being a nurse and I was sure he would find a place in nursing he would enjoy.

We were excited to find out a few months after Sailor’s surgery that we were expecting another baby. Since we had such a terrible time with baby boy Sailor was pretty much convinced he didn’t want any more children. I really wanted three and it took over a year to convince Sailor that not all babies were as sick as our little boy.

A few days after we told everyone we were expecting we lost the baby.

I couldn’t help but think it was because we bombed the house for bugs a few days earlier. I’ll never know for sure, but we’ve never bombed our house for bugs since.

Our cute little house on the tree lined street was wonderful, except it was always crawling with bugs.

First there were the carpenter ants.

During a bad storm a tree fell on our roof. The roof was repaired but not before the wood got wet and made a great home for the carpenter ants. We started seeing them here and there and told our landlord. He said he would send someone out to take care of it.

They didn’t come soon enough. One evening we were eating dinner with friends, spaghetti with clam sauce (I’ll never forget), and a carpenter ant dropped on the table. We all dismissed it as a random bug and then another fell, and then another. They started falling out of the light in our ceiling like raindrops.

We all started screaming and I was frantically trying to protect the clam sauce our friends had prepared. By the time they stopped falling there were several hundred ants on our table and dining area. We did what any other poor college students who had splurged on an expensive meal would do. We spread a sheet down on the living room floor and ate our dinner there.

We also had bees. The giant oak tree in the front yard had a massive nest and on certain days it was like a game to get into the house without letting a bee in with you. Once evening Sailor had gone to get a sub for me. He walked into the house and headed towards the kitchen to get a plate for the sub. After a few seconds I heard a scream and then a crash. I ran into the kitchen to find Sailor standing with his shirt off and my sub all over the floor.

Apparently a bee had flown up Sailor’s shirt and stung him. He threw the sub in the air while frantically trying to get his shirt off. I could not believe he had dropped my sub because of a bee sting! I mean don’t get between me and my Subway! He went back to Subway and explained what happend. They felt so bad for him they gave him a replacement sub for free!

The roaches were the worst. You have’t experienced roaches until you live in Florida. For some reason they liked our fireplace, and a few times a year they would launch an attack. Once the fearless exterminator was at our house when an ash covered roach dashed out from our fireplace. He smashed it with his bare hands. I was grossed out and impressed all at the same time.

We loved our little house but sure was buggy!

We kept busy that summer throwing birthday parties for our kids and getting them ready for the school year. Our little girl would be starting kindergarten, I couldn’t believe it! She was always a social and outgoing girl so we knew she was just going to love her class.

The first day of school we dropped her off in a room full of kids we didn’t know. It didn’t feel quite right, but I didn’t think there were any other options. Christian school was too expensive and the only homeschoolers I knew were weird.

Just as we started our school year routine we found out we were expecting again. We were excited but didn’t want to tell anyone because of what happened before. We decided we would wait until I was farther along before we spilled the beans.

Sailor finished his classes in November and was commissioned. We had a big ceremony and his parents threw a large party afterwards. It kind of felt like the wedding we never had. Except Sailor was the center of attention, not me. 🙂

The movers came to pack up our house three days before Christmas that year. I couldn’t believe we would be leaving our little house on the tree lined street. For some reason I thought we would always live there, we had put down roots and it was hard to think about leaving our friends and family.

We wouldn’t be leaving quite yet though, Sailor was going to school in Rhode Island for six weeks and I would stay with my parents while he was gone. Moving back in with my parents felt strange, but I didn’t want to stay by myself for six weeks so it worked.

Sailor and I talked frequently while he was in training, mostly we talked about how cold Rhode Island was in January. It was so cold the door handles of his little red Volkswagon snapped off when his roommate tried to get into the car. I couldn’t imagine such cold weather, but I didn’t have to. In early February I took a trip up to Rhode Island to see Sailor. When I wasn’t freezing to death it was fun.

While the kids were in school I spent my time researching our next duty station, Portsmouth, Virginia. We were only given three choices and Portsmouth seemed the most affordable out of the three.

My number one priority was finding a house near a good school. Before my kids were school-aged I didn’t realize that your entire life revolved around school districts. I grew frustrated as I started to realize that all the houses in the good school districts were out of our price range.

The plan was for Sailor to finish school in Rhode Island and then go to Virginia to find us a place to live. The day he graduated he called to let me know he was on the road. I told him to call me when he arrived in Virginia. He was getting a late start, the weather was bad, and his car was old, plus Sailor had a horrible sense of direction. I was worried he might not make it to Virginia until the middle of the night.

I heard from Sailor several hours later. I was worried because he should have been very close to Portsmouth but he told me he was at a gas station in a city nowhere near his route. We only talked for a few minutes and he said he had to get back on the road. I was sure Sailor was totally lost.

I went to bed very worried.

I woke up the next morning with no word from Sailor. I was sure he would be calling any minute. But he never called. It had been almost sixteen hours since he left Rhode Island and it was only a ten hour drive to Virginia. I told myself that he probably checked into the hotel late into the evening and was still asleep.

The day went on and still no word from Sailor. I was growing more and more concerned. I called the people we knew in Virginia to see if they had heard from him and they hadn’t.

It had been almost twenty-four hours since he left Rhode Island and except for our brief phone call, no one had seen or heard from Sailor. Where was he?

If you haven’t followed Our Story, you might want to start at the beginning.

I panicked when I walked into the house. I couldn’t tell who was hurt. I checked our toddler first and once I realized he was okay I tried to figure out what was wrong with Sailor.

He kept mumbling something and finally I realized he wanted me to check his blood pressure. I did and thought I made a mistake. It was 220/115. I took it again and it was the same. Sailor said he thought he was having a stroke. First a heart attack now a stroke… I couldn’t believe this was happening.

My mom arrived and I rushed Sailor to the ER. They took us right back (note: crazy high blood pressure will also get you right in to the ER) and Sailor was freaking out. He was sure he was dying. His cries of pain were so loud that the nurse asked him to hold it down because there were children around.

They admitted him to the hospital for tests and once again could not find anything wrong with him.

After he was discharged I didn’t feel comfortable leaving him alone with the kids. There was something wrong with him, but no one could figure out what it was.

A few weeks later his doctor at the VA Hospital tested him for a rare tumor. The test came back positive.

We were unsure what this diagnosis would mean for our family. What we knew was that Sailor had a rare tumor and that most people die from the tumor before it is found. We were fortunate.

They did an ultrasound to pinpoint the exact location of the tumor. During the ultrasound the tech asked Sailor if he had ever had cancer. He said no, he then asked if he had any previous abdominal surgeries, once again no.

Unbeknownst to Sailor he only had one kidney!

Thankfully this would have no effect on the tumor, but it was definitely unexpected.

The only cure was to remove the tumor, but the surgery was extremely risky. One mistake in the operating room could kill Sailor.

The VA Hospital wouldn’t handle such a complex case and he was assigned a surgeon at the Naval Hospital in Jacksonville. He was given medicine to reduce his blood pressure for the surgery. A spike in blood pressure during the surgery could result in a stroke or even death. To complicate things the tumor needed to be separated from his body completely before they could touch the tumor – if not he could die.

The blood pressure medicine had some serious side effects and Sailor had to withdraw from nursing school. He was unable to drive and even walking became difficult.

He had to take the medicine for four weeks before they could operate. During that time Sailor grew very depressed, he thought was going to die during the surgery. The night before the surgery we drove up to Jacksonville and stopped for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Sailor said he wanted Mexican food for his “last meal.”

That evening Sailor ate like I had never seen him eat before. He was so stuffed that he couldn’t even get out of the booth. I anxiously sat in the booth waiting for Sailor to digest his last meal, I’m sure all my fidgeting finally convinced him he could make it to the car. We left and I dropped him off at the hospital and checked into a hotel to spend the night.

The next morning I hurried with Sailor’s parents to the hospital to see him before the surgery. We walked into the hospital room to find a half-dead looking Sailor lying in the bed.

We rushed over to him, thinking they had already given him a sedative before the surgery.

We were wrong.

Apparently the night before Sailor had been given two bottles of the stuff that cleans you out prior to surgery drink. The drink combined with enough Mexican food to feed a Mariachi band meant Sailor had spent the entire night in the bathroom. It got so bad that he finally just slept on the toilet.

He wasn’t drugged, he was exhausted.

I figured I would be sad before saying goodbye to him, but the thought of him sitting on the toilet all night with his IV pole made me giggle so I left feeling more happy than worried.

I don’t remember how long the surgery lasted but I do remember receiving occasional updates from the nurse. Things were going well but they ended up having to do a more invasive procedure than they initially expected. Instead of a few small incisions Sailor would have a fifteen inch incision across his stomach and recovery would be long and painful.

Finally the surgery was over and they allowed me into the recovery room to see him. He didn’t look good, but he was alive. I said a few things and then had to leave and wait for him to be transferred to the ICU.

When we were finally allowed to see Sailor in the ICU I was shocked. He was hooked up to so many tubes and wires you could hardly tell it was him. He wasn’t in a regular bed, he was in a chair that inflated and deflated with his movement.

Sailor hated the chair. Every chance he could he would try to move his body away from the chair, but it would inflate and press against him. He was frustrated and in pain.

It was hard to see Sailor in the ICU but it was better than the alternative.

After a few days Sailor was moved out of the ICU and into a regular room. Sailor was anxious to get home because the hospital was two hours away and visits were difficult. Finally after ten days he was released.

Our daughter ended up needing surgery on the same day Sailor was released from the hospital so his parents brought him home since I was at a different hospital. After I brought our daughter home I set up two hospital stations in the living room. Our daughter got the love seat and Sailor got the couch.

That evening my parents came over to visit. Sailor laid on one couch and we sat around talking. My father, who had major surgery a few years earlier, started cracking hospital jokes.

They were funny, really funny. I was glad to be laughing after so many months of stress. Sailor was laughing too… but he didn’t want to laugh. He asked my dad to stop the jokes, but my dad couldn’t, he was on a roll.

I finally told my dad that if he didn’t stop telling jokes he would be the one taking Sailor to the ER when he busted a stitch, or two.

My parents went home.

An hour later my father was on his way to the ER with Sailor.