When Everything Is on Pause

There’s no adequate introduction for what has happened over the last week. I’m still reeling, haven’t even begun to process the emotional whiplash, and we have no clear answers. But I’m just going to dive right in—hopefully getting this all out will provide a bit of catharsis and help me organize my thoughts.

On June 3^rd, I woke up at 1:45 a.m. to a loud crash next to my bed. I looked over, and my husband was no longer next to me. I quickly got up and hurried to his side, where he was lying on the floor, unresponsive. He appeared to be asleep, and would occasionally make these labored snoring sounds and groan. After vigorously pushing him and rubbing his chest with my knuckles, I was able to get him to sit up, but he was completely out of it. I asked him if he felt sick, and when he nodded, I assumed he was having a blood sugar episode related to the dinner we’d had earlier where we’d each had a couple of drinks and a dessert. When I asked him if I needed to take him to a doctor he shook his head. I asked him if he wanted to sleep, and he nodded. By the morning, he was a little groggy but otherwise totally fine. He immediately made an appointment to get checked out by his doctor, who did lots of bloodwork and an EKG, all of which came back normal. We chalked it up to a fluke episode.

Fast forward exactly one week to the following Tuesday. I went to bed close to midnight after spending the majority of the day prepping our home for packers to come the following morning. We had already sent a big shipment of our belongings into storage, and on Monday evening, a truck had come to take away our express shipment, which included basically everything we use on a daily basis—all the things we knew we would want immediately upon our arrival in Japan in July.

I dragged myself into bed absolutely exhausted from running around the house, doing endless loads of laundry, packing suitcases with two months-worth of clothes, and sorting all of our remaining belongings into piles or Ziploc bags to be easily consolidated and packed. I had garbage bags of clothes to donate in the back of my car. I had thrown out almost all of our spices and condiments and anything in the freezer or fridge. There are still “Do Not Pack!” signs on our laundry room and an upstairs closet where I had collected all the things that needed to stay or not be packed.

Around 2:20 a.m., my husband woke me from a dead sleep to tell me our son’s alarm clock was going off. He got up to help turn it off and I groggily followed behind. Once I saw that everything was fine, I meandered back to our room while my husband helped our son get settled back in bed. I went into our bathroom and suddenly heard a sickening crash. It was the sound of a body in complete free fall, with no effort to slow or control the landing.

I bolted out of the bathroom and ran down the hall toward the stairs. We have a landing halfway down where my husband was lying on his back, eyes tightly closed, hands at his sides, unresponsive. His legs were shaking at one point, he was making labored breathing sounds similar to snores, and groaning periodically. I immediately dialed 9-1-1 and was transferred to the EMS team on base, who came with a stretcher and took him by ambulance to the closest hospital.

Fortunately, he is now stable and doing okay, just really sore, tired, and banged up from his fall. He has a cervical sprain and an excruciating headache, so we’re monitoring him closely.

As of right now, we have no answers. His bloodwork has all been normal, and he had CT scans done of practically his entire body, all unremarkable. He has referrals to neurology and cardiology, and of course, the next available neurology appointment with military medicine is in September. We have started the referral process to hopefully be seen by civilian providers sooner.

So now we start the process of solving this medical mystery, while also trying to navigate a 180-degree pivot in our overseas PCS. We were literally supposed to turn in the keys to our house on Tuesday, and it had already been offered to an incoming family. Fortunately, the housing company has allowed us to stay as long as we need. Our express shipment is on hold at a warehouse, and as inconvenient as it is to not have a lot of the things we use on a daily basis, we’re grateful we have all of our furniture. When the packers showed up Wednesday morning after I got back from the hospital, they were extremely understanding and compassionate when I had to turn them away.

We have no idea what this means for our move to Japan. I am so glad this didn’t happen when we had already given up the house, or on a plane over the Pacific Ocean, or when we had just arrived in country. But now we are back in limbo, which is agonizing.

We have been preparing for this for 6 months now. We’ve been through the emotional rollercoaster of unexpected orders, navigating an exhaustive overseas medical screening, scheduling international flights and shipments, making accommodations for our animals, getting all the necessary documentation, and jumping through every imaginable hoop. We’ve had to come out of pocket for everything from getting our cats to Japan to new rugs and dehumidifiers in preparation for a home built mostly out of concrete to withstand typhoons in a tropical island climate. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of school ending, saying goodbye to dear friends, preparing to sell our vehicles, and separating and packing our entire house for three different shipments.

Now everything is on pause.

If there is one silver lining to all of this, it’s that we have some amazing people in our lives who have shown up for us with so much love, concern, and support. I am beyond grateful to every single person who has reached out, checked in, made us a meal, watched our kids so I could go to the hospital or take my husband to appointments, and let me cry on their shoulder.

We are taking it one day at a time. Just trying to keep our heads above water.

I’ll keep you updated.

Yours in floating,

Em