Day 4 - Your Sibling

So I know this post is way overdue, and out of order, but I feel like today is the perfect day to do it.  I'm going to tell you a little bit about my younger brother Camdon, with some back story at the same time.

My brother Camdon and I are just two months shy of 4 years apart.  Him being the younger brother he was always doing things to drive me crazy.  As the years went by though, and all the older siblings moved out and on with their lives Cam and I were left at home.  During my high school years when it was just him and I living at home with our parents we got really close.  He would act like a tough guy and my protector around the guys I dated, and in truth he was very strong, and fearless (being the quarterback meant he had to be!)  I in turn would give him rides to whatever places he wanted to go, give him some (often ignored) dating advice, and we would confide in each other the things we didn't always feel we could tell our parents.

When he was 15, with the encouragement of several of my older siblings, (or possibly just lack of discouragement, I'm not completely sure which) Cam started drinking.  And drinking, and drinking and drinking.  It killed me to find that out, because for so long I had been trying to be the perfect LDS older sister who could be a good example and influence for him, where I knew my other siblings couldn't.  To be honest I went through a period of time after that where I didn't care about church or being good anymore, because I felt like there was no reason to work so hard to be so good if it had no effect on the one person I was trying to be a good example for, I would never be good enough so why try.  But really that is a different story for another day...back to Camdon.

So shortly after Cam started drinking he started partying too, also with some encouragement/lack of discouragement from siblings.  He started dating a very pretty young girl, and they got very serious.  Without going into too many personal details I have to say that between the drinking and off again on again relationship with this girl I was ALWAYS very worried about him.  Then my senior year of high school during a spring break trip to Northern Idaho for skiing/snowboarding my parents, Cam and I were given a very special experience. 
Our last day on the slopes my mom ordered us to make sure and get plenty of pictures, and definitely get one or two of Cam going off jumps.  Well we got to the end of our day and hadn't taken any pictures of Cam jumping, so on our last run we set it all up.  We got off the lift about 5 mins to 4, which was when the lifts shut off.  So we knew we were on the last run of the day and needed to be quick about it.  Well just a few yards down the run we had chosen to take that time around there was a little jump that we figured would be perfect to get pics from.  So I skied down a little ways below the jump and set the camera to record.  Well, in the video you see Cam go up, much higher than this little jump should have sent him, then fall, much too far much too fast.  You hear the impact without seeing it.  Had it not been for his instant screams and groans I would have been very scared for him.  But as it was, my first reaction after hearing his hollering was that he was joking around, because he had played pranks like that all week pretending to be hurt after going off a jump.  So it took me a few seconds to really believe him.  "Cam be serious, are you really hurt? Because if not we need to get out of here fast."  "Nichole, I'm not joking, I think I dislocated my shoulder get the ski patrol!"  So I ran, faster than I would ever have thought I'd run in ski boots.  Back up the hill to the top of the lift to call for ski patrol.  I got to the lift right as two ski patrol were getting off to check and make sure there were no stragglers anywhere...They came back to Cam and radioed the accident into the lodge where my parents were, told me to go ahead and meet them at the medical room in the lodge.
I skied that run faster than I think I've ever skied before or since.  When I got up to the lodge and into the medical room I was the only one there.  Then my parents came in with the ski patrol that had found them.  Shortly after that the snowmobile brought Cam in, writhing in pain with every slight movement.  They told us what they would do to help, gave him some over the counter drugs for the pain and we waited there in the lodge while all the other resort goers rode the 15 minute gondola down to their waiting cars.  Once the last people were to the bottom they put my family in a gondola car (not sure what they are actually called) and sent us down on the slowest possible setting, to minimize the movement and jostling that would cause Cam so much pain.  45 minutes later we were at our car, carefully helping Cam strip out of his ski gear and down into his street clothes beneath so we could take him across the freeway to the insta-care clinic.
When we got to the clinic the first thing they did was run an x-ray to see where any possible damage would be when putting the shoulder back into the socket.  What they found though, none of us were expecting or prepared for.  The x-ray showed that his arm was not, as we thought, dislocated.  It was completely broken at the joint where the ball of his shoulder meets the shaft of his upper arm.  He needed surgery, and the clinic didn't have a surgeon on call.  So we were sent to Coeur D'Alene which was a little over 45 minutes away.  I think at the clinic they gave him a small dose of morphine for the pain, just enough to get him to the other hospital.  We got him to the hospital in Coeur D'Alene and the surgeon on call said he could do the surgery, but that he would be required to go back up there every 6 weeks for post-op followup appointments which would be and 8 hour round trip drive.  So the doctor gave us the option of checking for surgeons closer to home.  Well my dad and the nurses started working on that while my mom and I started trying to contact someone who could come assist my dad in giving Camdon a blessing.  Well we were successful on both fronts.  My mom and I found someone in an LDS family history center who said they would come over, and my dad and the nurse were able to reach the orthopedic surgeon who had previously treated my mom.  The surgeon said he could fit the surgery in if we had Cam at his clinic by 9 am the next morning, if it was any later than that he wouldn't have time to finish before his normal schedule started.  By this time it was nearly 11 pm.  While we were trying to make the arrangements the men from the church came in and Cam was given a priesthood blessing.  In it he was promised that his pain would ease, and he would be able to sleep peacefully through the night and that the surgery would go according to plan.  He was also promised that he would gain a full recovery and have full use of his arm with no last damage to interfere with his love for sports.
Immediately after the blessing the nurse came in and told us we would have to take Cam home with us that night, because they couldn't admit him for pain management unless they were going to be the hospital doing the surgery.  So they gave him a double dose of morphine and a prescription for vikodin.  But her comment was that he wouldn't be able to sleep that night, because the morphine would wear off in under an hour and he would be in too much pain for the vikodin to really help enough.
Well by the time we left the hospital it was almost midnight, and we needed to get his prescription filled, go back to our condo and pack everything up to go home, and drive the 6 hours from the condo to the clinic all before 9 am.  When we got back to the condo Cam was out cold, so with a little help from my dad I carried/half dragged him into the condo and onto the pull out bed in the small living area so he would be out of the way for all the packing.  Then my parents and I had a race against time to get a weeks worth of stuff cleaned up from EVERYWHERE and packed into our suburban.  When we finished packing Cam still hadn't woken up from the morphine coma, and we couldn't get him to wake up for a dose of vikodin so that it wouldn't be so bad when all the morphine was out of his system. So instead we all took a short nap until it would be time to get on the road for the Tri-Cities.
Unfortunately, since we were all so tired none of us heard any of the multiple alarms we had set, and we left over an hour and a half later than we needed to.  And still Cam hadn't really woken up, we got him awake enough to walk himself to the car with help, and take a dose of the pain meds then as soon as we put him in the front seat reclined he was asleep again.  Which was such a blessing, because at that point my dad FLEW.  I think he set the cruise control around 90-95, and surprisingly there was not a single police car in that stretch of highway that is normally very highly patrolled.  We made it to the clinic 15 minutes late, so we were all very worried that the doctor wouldn't take him in.  But when we got inside the people at the front desk said the doctor was there and ready to make it happen.  So they took some more images and then the doctor came out to explain to my parents the complications that he had found.  Normally he would have just put in a plate but Cam's growth plates hadn't closed, meaning he was still growing, and a plate would stunt the growth in that arm and make the lengths of his two arms measurably different.  So the other option was more complicated, and to be honest I don't know how or why it worked, but instead of a plate they put in screws.  And Cam had the fastest recovery the doctor had ever seen.  Now he has a scar from where they cut him open, but he can use his arm just fine, and he doesn't have any problems with it at all.

Anyway, he finished high school and had a very clearly laid out plan for school and the rest of his life.  He had told me on more than one occasion that his life after high school wasn't going to involve the church we had grown up in.  He didn't feel like it was a part of him, and he wasn't interested in changing his partying ways to make room for it.  Regardless of his views toward religion, he chose a very good private Catholic school in Montana, for its rigorous program that would help him be qualified for top choice dental programs.  He finished his freshman year there with lots of struggles and considered dropping out a time or two.  But he stuck it out and finished, then returned home for the summer.

Now this is where the story gets a little more crazy.  At the end of July my 15 year old nephew drowned.  The death took a deep toll on my family, but especially on Camdon.  At the viewing he couldn't talk to anyone, he was so torn up, and I could tell he was really questioning life.  I was worried again, thinking that he would turn to anger, and push even farther away from the church.

Well here it is about a month later, and life has gone on.  Cam was scheduled to go back to school and start classes this week.  Last Thursday he left for school, yet Tuesday he was back at my parents house.  This is the story I was eventually told:  He couldn't stay at Carroll, he had a very strong feeling that he didn't belong there.  He also felt that he needed to be home, where he can get his life back in order and go on a mission.  So that is what he is doing.

Now you might not find that to be a big deal, but for our family that is HUGE.  I've always hope Cam would come back to church, as I'm sure my parents have as well.  And when Jayson died I couldn't shake the feeling that something good would come from it.  I understand now what that feeling was.  Jayson's death shook up Cam's world, and I have no doubt that it was shook just enough to let our Heavenly Father in.  Between Cam letting Heavenly Father in, and Jayson being on the other side working on his whole family to get them all back, this is a victory for us all.  I know Camdon will be an AMAZING missionary with all that he has experienced, and I know that this is just the first of many miracles that will have come from Jayson.