We left Oregon one day earlier than we had planned because we had gotten bad news about Madigan's baby horse, Summer Wynd (Wynn). Wynn had pulled up lame in her front foot a few days earlier. It progressively got worse, so we were treating it as an abscess. Some of our dear friends took her to the local vet clinic more than once and they were treating it as an abscess too. It finally became apparent that the local vet clinic did not have sufficient equipment to really diagnose what was going on. So, the same friends and more friends jumped in to help us, and drove her all the way down to a specialty clinic in Phoenix.
On Friday, the boys and I left Grants Pass to make the journey home. Uncle Mark, Linnea and Kris had an early morning donut breakfast with us as we headed out. Kris was planning to fly from Oregon to Boston for work, so he did not accompany us on the trip home. During the first 5 hours of the journey, my cell phone service was off and on, but mostly off. I was trying to coordinate with the vet in Phoenix about what tests to run on Wynn, then what her prognosis was and what treatment we should pursue. At hour three the vet had finally determined that Wynn had an infection in her coffin bone, that treatment would cost us nothing short of a fortune and that she probably only had a 50/50 chance of survival because she'd already had the infection for so long. He said I needed to make a decision promptly whether I was going to pursue the treatment or put her down because her pain was so intense. Then, my phone lost service. I did not regain service for almost an hour and it was the longest, most agonizing hour I can remember. We cried. We prayed. Madigan was a wreck and all bottled up inside. When I finally had service again, we talked about it as a family and Kris made the final decision to pursue treatment in spite of the gloomy odds. And now, we wait... she will be in treatment for another 2 days, at which time the vets will reassess and we will have to make more decisions.
Feeling emotionally battle weary, we kept driving toward home. Just after dark, we encountered a serious accident where a broken down car had been slammed into by Semi truck at approximately 65 mph. The car had been broken into pieces and sent spinning across the highway dozens of times. The driver of the car had been incredibly smart and exited the vehicle when it broke down, so he was unharmed and the truck driver was also okay. We set up flares around his vehicle because other cars (including us) kept almost smashing into it in the darkness. When our help was no longer required at the accident scene we carried on with our trip and about 1 hour outside of Tonopah, Nevada, my GPS cheerfully offered an alternate route which would save 3 WHOLE minutes. I declined her offer, but unbeknownst to me she powered forward with our new field trip. At that same moment I realized that our trailer lights had gone out. The connector for the lights had fallen off and we had no way of remedying the problem. I lost cell service again. Then, my GPS decided that she no longer wanted to be a part of anything and so we solo ventured along our field trip, which we still didn't realize we were on. Then, the paved road ended and we were on an incredibly narrow gravel road. In Area 51, probably. :-)
Turning around a truck and trailer on a narrow gravel road took some doing and assistance from two boys, but we did manage to accomplish the task. As soon as we got the rig turned around, Declan heard a whistling sound coming from the tire on the trailer. I just wanted to scream! It was flat in less than 5 minutes. So, we rummaged through our very packed truck and found the jack - well, PARTS of the jack. The jack was missing pieces, so it was mostly non-operational. Kelton started crying in total exasperation. We were in total darkness. I looked up and the sky was FILLED with bright starts and shooting stars were dashing across every couple of minutes. I just started laughing. I don't really know what I was thinking, but it was all so ridiculous and somehow it just didn't matter. We put our heads together and figured out how to Jerry rig the trailer into the air enough to get the tire off and put our spare tire on. It took us about 2 hours, but we did it and it was exhilarating. Then, we headed back through the darkness in the direction we had come from. We decided to retire the GPS for the night and just followed road signs to Tonopah. We pulled into a hotel around 10:30, so nothing was open. The kids rounded up a can of chicken, a can of black beans (which we couldn't open) and some chips, so that was our dinner. Lochlan flooded the bathroom. Madigan threw up. We all slept well and started day 2 with some trepidation in our hearts. What could go wrong??????????
Day 2, however, was without incident. We limped (due to our spare tire) 4 hours to Las Vegas where Kurt and family got us back up and running properly. Kurt found a shop with the trailer part I needed to fix the lights, and we found a tire shop to replace the tire. They fed us a wonderful lunch and let us rest while the tire was being changed out. We got home close to 11:00 PM and our beloved home felt so welcoming and splendid.
I have felt really out of sorts since arriving home, but I think it's just from fatigue, re-adapting to life as we know it, and the overarching concern about Wynn, who's fate is yet to be determined. I find peace in the knowledge that we have done everything we can to give her a fighting chance at survival. If God chooses to take her, it is His will and His plan. But, I am praying He has mercy and does not take her.
