11/21/25

I got the day off last minute today. As I was about to walk out the door Becky texted me and said I could be off. Later Lucas and I were sitting at the dining room table and we heard a big bang and he was like “what’s that noise” and I said “that’s someone hitting a car, a car accident” so there was a fender bender in front of our house. It was the highlight of the morning. Lucas went into Don’s room, (he was on a work call) and said “there was a car accident outside!” people on the call were like “oh no I hope it’s ok” 😂

When we walked outside to do the walk to school Lucas wanted to look at the street to see if there was any “evidence” of a car accident. We did see part of a license plate border thing. Then on the walk to school we were talking and got on the subject of car insurance. He said “oh I’ve seen plenty of commercials for car insurance. I definitely know what that is” 😂😂

Little did we know Gigi would be in a terrible head on collision on route 45 a few hours later.

I had a headache coming on around noon, so I decided to lay down to hopefully get it gone before 2:30 when I was leaving for happy hour. My mom called me at 1:30 PM saying she was OK but she was at the hospital. She had been in a car accident on route 45. It was bad. She had called Vicki Eichelberger and she was there with her. She told me dad was on his way from the property, and she wanted me to call Kelsey. She explained a bit of the crash how another car was trying to pass and hit her head on going 60 mph. I started to lose it crying with fear and anger. I feared she wasn’t ok, and her body was working all on adrenaline. She told me she walked out of the car and into the ambulance. The other car had to be cut open. Her vitals were good they were going to do a work up. I called Kelsey, she didn’t answer. Don told me to call Uncle Eric. He knew already. Mom had called him. I called Marty to get Vickie’s cell. I cried a lot. I started a group chat with Kelsey and Vicki after Kelsey had called me back and I told her. I called my dad he was driving. I decided I wanted to go to the hospital. Everyone kept saying it is probably OK she might even be discharged by the time you get down there. We had a flight the next day to New Jersey to visit Don’s family. I decided to go down to Champaign anyway.

The drive was excruciating. I was receiving so many texts that I couldn’t answer or look at. My cousin Lindsay called. Then Marty called. Marty was saying my mom’s bp was dropping. I was getting worried about internal bleeding. My dad called. He was surprised I was coming down. I stopped in Manteno to get gas and get updates. They were worried about a liver laceration but now maybe a bowel bleed. She had a small subdural but the neurosurgeon wasn’t concerned. My worries were heightened. I called my dad. I called Don. I kept driving. Around Rantoul it was so foggy and rain, the visibility was terrible. The GPS said a better route was to take 45. I thought “ok good, 45 is 4 lanes at this point and Carle is closer to there”. I was worried about the visibility on 57 and construction coming up. I got off the interstate at Rantoul not realizing this route would take me briefly on a country road to get to 45. It was awful I couldn’t see anything. I made it to 45 and visibility was better.

I made it to Carle. I went in and had to take my mace back to the car that was in my coat pocket. My uncle Greg was there. He took me to my mom. There was a patient transporter there ready to take her to surgery. It was like a movie, I made it just in time. My mom said what I thought was “I’m gonna die” and I said “no you’re not” she said “no, someone died in the other car” she was crying. Her eye was bruised. She told me she was ok. I told her I loved her and kissed her on the forehead. I glanced at the consent on the bed while in the elevator. “exploratory laparoscopy possible open, possible bowel resection, possible splenectomy” I felt my stomach drop. This is happening.

She got taken to surgery and the 3 of us went to the waiting room. It was a giant, nice waiting room. There was a screen with a number to follow your family member thru surgery. We could see when she was intra-op and when surgery done. The concierge told us it would turn tan when they were finishing up. Surgery started between 5:30 and 6. My dad and I talked to a couple whose son was having surgery. They heard us talking and asked if our family member was in the crash on the news. They were working on a puzzle. My dad told them I was really good at puzzles. It was nice there were puzzles all around the waiting room.

At 7 the concierge left. We had received no updates other than surgery started. It was us 3 and another woman in the waiting room. Soon she left so it was just us with no updates and no one to ask. Around 8:20 I saw her number on the screen turn tan. We still waited about an hour for the surgeon to come talk to us. She was very nice. There was a bleed in the omentum. She had to have 20 cm of bowel removed and then they put it back together.

Once I knew she was OK, I started to head home. I stopped at my parents to feed the cats. On the ride home there was a mass casualty text. That was weird because in my whole career that has never happened. Luckily it was canceled almost immediately. My parents called so I could hear my mom. They both wanted us to continue onto our trip to New Jersey. The drive home seemed like it took forever. Luckily it wasn’t as foggy. A semi overturned on 57 near Chicago. It was a terrible crash. Later found out about shooting downtown that had caused the mass casualty text from work.

I got about 2 hours of sleep. My parents said we should go to New Jersey as planned. I FaceTimed my mom at O’Hare. We had told Lucas about the car accident on the way to the airport. While waiting for our plane I found out about a 17 year old girl in the other car. I tried to sleep on flight. We landed around 11 and got our rental car, a Kia soul. We drove to queens and I was so hungry so we got Burger King near the cemetery. We were able to go to the service for Roy. Khris was there with Hanalee. After the service we went to a Chinese restaurant in Flushing for a dinner. Ethan, Pia, Miguel, Khris and Hanalee were there. It was good to see people and see Cat but not great circumstances. We will all miss Roy.

On Sunday we had breakfast at the hotel then we went to Jonathan’s. Estelle was there. Khris, Jess and Hanalee came. The kid had fun playing all day.

On Monday I woke up at 4:30 am again with a runny nose, so annoying. We got a small breakfast at the hotel around 730. It was kind of a lazy morning. I was able to talk to my mom for a bit. Things were looking up because it seemed her bowels were starting to work again. We went to Lola’s house around 9. She made breakfast, so second breakfast. Then we just hung out for awhile. She later made pasta. Then we left around 1:30. We had planned to go to the mall near Khris’s house for awhile because there was a kids play area. I had noticed something suspicious in Lucas’s hair earlier though. There was a lice scare in his class the weeks before thanksgiving, so I had been checking him all the time. I had even bought Nix and had it in my luggage. I was so paranoid of getting it and giving it to everyone. I thought I saw something in in his hair at Lola’s so in the mall parking lot I looked again and Don looked and it realy looked like we could see a few lice eggs attached to his hair. I have no idea if it was a real thing. We googled it and thought it may be so we decided to go back to the hotel and do a lice treatment since we had a couple hours before dinner at Khris’s. We told Lucas not to talk about it. We had dinner at Khris and Jess’s. Lucas and Hannalee had fun playing.

On Tuesday we woke up around 7. We got ready and then hit the road for Port Imperial. We took the ferry over to Battery Park. It was very cool. We walked around downtown. Lucas got a R2D@2 sweater at a shop in the WTC mall. We looked at the memorial pools and talked about 9/11 a little with Lucas.

We walked to Chinatown and played at parks on the way. Lucas got pooped on by a bird and I had to wash him up in a park restroom. We were supposed to get dim sum with Cat but she canceled last minute. We still got dim sum and Lucas had a fun experience. He enjoyed using chop sticks and he was pretty good. Next we walked to Jonathan’s work. Lucas played at a playground while waiting. We saw Jonathan’s office at Disney. After the tour I really wanted a slice of pizza, so we found a place and Lucas got his first real NY slice. He told the workers there he was from Chicago but NY had better pizza. After pizza we started walking back to battery park to get the ferry back to NJ, but it started raining like crazy. We were worried we were going to miss the next ferry and make us very late getting back so we got in a cab and made the ferry. Once back to NJ we drove to Jonathan’s to hang out on our last night. My mom was discharged from the hospital this evening.