A Year After

A Year After 

Autumn @ Cunningham Park, St. Johns Hospital in background

 May 22nd, 20012 marked the one year anniversary of the single most worst day of my life.  If you follow any sort of national news, you no doubt would have heard about the tornado that ripped threw Joplin, Mo. on that date in 2011.  That was the day my ten year old daughter and her mother were picked up while inside their car & thrown a city block onto what was left the Pepsi building (My daughter was ejected from the car after a few rolls and thrown another estimated thirty feet). 
After a sixteen day stay in the hospital, 5 surgeries and a ton of peoples well wishes, donations and help, she finally started to re-live life.  This story is mainly about her.  But I also want to take a little bit of the time to talk about a few other things.  We will get to them later. 
Autumn was ten when she was in the tornado.  She was covered head to toe in cuts and bruises.  This has all been documented in my first blog "My Survivor".  Since then she has rebounded unlike anything I could ever have hoped for.  Her scars are smoothing out and her leg is starting to have a somewhat normal texture.  Her leg will never look normal, the amount of meat and skin loss prevents that, but compared to what it looked like, it looks wonderful.  If you remember, her leg had a chunk of meat removed all the way to the muscle.

My Survivor

My Survivor
The story of my daughter's tornado experience told threw my eyes

 It was a very normal Sunday.  I was playing my on-line game and hoping the thunderstorm would politely go around us.  As it neared I was finally forced to shut down the computer system and go downstairs to listen to the weather band radio.  We had a TV in the lowest room with radar, which we monitored from time to time.  Dad and I kept walking out on the front porch and at one point joked about the hail.  I remember sending my friend Jeff in Chicago a text telling him I was sending him some killer storms.  That was right before my world changed.
 News came in that St.Johns hospital was hit by a tornado.  This was my wake up call.  The storm had produced a tornado and now there was proof that it had hit Joplin.  I ran upstairs to google the hit.  Sure enough there was a lonely blog with a crude picture of St. Johns and the debris from the disaster.  I called my ex-wife (Melody) to make sure she and my daughter (Autumn) were OK.  No answer.  I texted, "are you guys OK?  please let me know".   I waited.   At 6:19PM I wrote "news says St. Johns Hospital on 26th was leveled by a tornado", as my Facebook status. I waited some more, while I paced and listened to the radio broadcasting weather.  I sent her another text and waited.