While Louisiana spends some time at the hospital with her husband, Bill, who had an asthma attack, Michael and Jenna get to know the two kids, Johnny and Ronee'. Jenna tries to treat the two kids as kindly as possible, but in her mind, she is worried that one or both will become sick on her unexpectedly, and she is having trouble dealing with what she might do if this were to happen.
I have got to admit, but Louisiana WAS right when it comes to her kids, Johnny and Ronee': although they BOTH have serious physical disabilities, they are still good kids who love life and live it to the very fullest.
This is Jenna. I am here at the apartment with my fiance', Michael, and right now we are entertaining Louisiana and Bill Sandusky's two kids, Johnny and Ronee', who are both 11 years old. We are trying to figure out what to do with them while their mother spends time at the hospital with their father, Bill, who got sick and had to be hospitalized due to a serious asthma attack. We are currently making them something to eat..hotdogs and buns, potato chips (NOT fried in peanut oil; Ronee' is highly allergic to peanuts and ALL nuts; any contact with nuts, and Ronee' will blow up like a balloon and will get deathly sick; so we have to make sure that what we give her does NOT contain ANY nuts of ANY kind; we don't need TWO people in the hospital!), and for dessert, apple sauce. I also whipped up a tomato and lettuce salad, and right now, the kids are waiting for their food. Doing all this cooking isn't very easy on me, especially since I have to do it one-handed (my one arm doesn't move much; right now it is functionally useless), plus I AM still recovering from my injuries and wear a brace on the one leg...right now, I don't move all that well, and I am afraid if I move wrong or suddenly, I will fall, and I will need to have help getting back up...so, as a result, Michael is standing guard over me, in case I DO topple over unexpectedly!
Johnny and Ronee' are both very cute kids. They are 11, as I just mentioned, but they look no older than eight or nine. Both are very small for their ages, and you couldn't tell that they are brother and sister because they don't look anything alike. Johnny is fair with blue eyes and hair so blonde it is nearly white, and he wears glasses, while Ronee', his sister, has black hair and eyes and is very dark-skinned. Ronee' does NOT wear glasses; her eyes are perfect. Johnny is in a wheelchair most of the time because of muscular dystrophy, which is making him weak, and his sister walks with the help of braces on her legs and forearm crutches. She has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis that causes her neverending pain, and if she is hurting, she will have to take some of her medication to help control the pain. Johnny is shy in nature while Ronee; will talk your ear off. Since they have been here, Ronee' has been talking a mile a minute, but Johnny has barely said more than half a dozen words.
Ronee' also laughs a lot; but she hasn't laughed all that much since her daddy went into the hospital. I don't blame her for being so upset; I would be upset too, if it were MY father who was in the hospital; but my father is dead (he died last year; he got harpooned by accident). But according to the latest news from Louisiana (she just called not even a half hour ago, to let us know about Bill), Bill will only be in the hospital for overnight; he is expected to be released from the hospital sometime tomorrow morning. That is good news because then, tomorrow, after he is home and he rests for a while, we can take the kids (and Bill and Louisiana) sightseeing and show them our city of Anchorage and maybe take them all shopping. We can even go to the Heritage Museum and maybe even to the Northern Lights movie they have playing at one of the local movie houses; I know Ronee' would enjoy that!
Johnny is hard of hearing; he wears hearing aids, too, just like I do; but he can talk quite well for his handicap. It turns out that he was NOT born deaf, like I was: when he was a little baby, he got sick with meningitis, and it affected his speech and hearing. He has a "stammer" to his speech, and without his hearing aids, he is quite hearing impaired; but with them on, he can hear almost as well as a person who ISN'T deaf. He knows sign language (as does Ronee'), and right away, I somehow feel somewhat "connected" with Johnny's situation because we both hear in a silent world, and we know how it is not to be able to hear well (or not at all, like in my case). Ronee' is not hearing-impaired, nor does she have any vision or speech problems; she seems normal, and she acts like a normal little girl, but one who lives with chronic pain and chronic physical disability. She gets around quite well on her braces and crutches, and she gets around better than most people. If she accidentally falls or loses her balance, she will get right back up and laugh about her mishap; and will continue with what she was doing before she fell. She does have asthma, and she DOES wheeze some as she breathes, but she takes medication for her asthma, and she knows how to handle any attacks that she may have. She also wears oxygen at night, just as a precaution (Ronee' has a portable oxygen unit set up by her bed); but Louisiana has informed me that her breathing is improving, and if she should happen to have any problems, Louisiana knows how to handle it and alleviate her daughter's sufferings quickly and efficiently. As long as she takes her medications, and as long as she avoids the things that give her breathing the most trouble, then Ronee' should be fine, and there is NO need to worry about her. Ronee' is a big girl, and she can take care of herself. (Johnny wears oxygen himself; in fact he wears it a lot more than his sister does; he will wear it during the day whereas his sister wears it only during the night time. Thought I had better mention that too; it isn't just Ronee' who wears oxygen.)
I try not to worry so much about Johnny or Ronee' 's health problems, but I really have not been around kids that much, especially kids who happen to have chronic or special health needs; and whenever I see the oxygen tanks sitting by the beds in the guest room, or see the medicine bottles or inhalers sitting on the dressers by the bed, I somehow tend to start worrying, for fear that Johnny or Ronee' will get deathly sick in the middle of the night, and when morning comes, I will find one or both of them lying in their beds, dead. I am afraid what I would do or how I would act lest Johnny or Ronee' have a problem with their breathing; and I am trying my best not to make myself sick about worrying over that. I will have to learn to treat them as normally as I possibly can, and try to make the best of their being here and try to make their stay in Anchorage as pleasant and as memorable as possible before they continue on with their Alaskan Adventure and their cruise.
First Kindle eBook edition of the literary memoir Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind. Explores a certain author's "Adventures and Misadventure of Literary Savannah" upon encountering, in one form or another, authors Flannery O'Con
Expands beyond the safety of pages bound by predictability to explore and often confirm exciting creative possibilities. A shimmering collage of memoir, creative nonfiction, literary journalism, and dizzying flights into poetic observation, this is t
