The Poop Heros

In this heartwarming and sometimes hilarious episode of the Just Waiting for You podcast, Cherese Lee recounts her eventful trip to Johns Hopkins with her young son Luke, who was about to get his cochlear implant activated, and shares the unforgettable moments that made the journey so memorable.

Hey, friends, this is Cherese Lee, and you're listening to the Just Waiting for You podcast. Whether the sun is shining where you are in life today or you're walking through a crappy storm, and you really wish you had some rain boots. The power of a story is sometimes all you need for that perspective shift. Hang out with us for a few minutes and find out what happens when you realize that someone is just waiting for you.

It's a story. It's just a story. A couple of weeks ago, Luke had surgery to replace his cochlear implant. The details around that are long. And for those who haven't followed the Instagram journey of that over the last year and a half, we'll have to save the story for another day. But suffice it to say that because of a really rare infection, Luke had to have his cochlear implant removed almost a year and a half ago and a couple of weeks ago had surgery and was able to get a new cochlear implant, which has just been so, so exciting.

This last week, I went to pick Luke up from school and drive him to Nashville where they activated his cochlear implant at Vanderbilt. And on Activation Day, as we're getting ready that morning to head over, I had a flood of memories from Luke's first activation and that was so crazy you couldn't make it up.

Now let me set the stage first. Activation of a cochlear implant basically means turning it on. It's much more scientific and technical, but that's the short answer. Now, you've probably seen videos of the first time a baby gets hearing aids, or someone's cochlear implant is turned on or activated and the excitement in the room and seeing their face light up when they first hear sound.

So this is what I was expecting for my toddler, Luke, when he first got his cochlear implant. Now, mind you, he couldn't have the surgery locally because of course he couldn't. We had a hard time finding a surgeon to do it…for a multitude of reasons. And finally, we found that person at Johns Hopkins (which is not where we were living).

In those days, you would have the surgery to place the cochlear implant, and then it would be about two months before they turned it on. Well, when it was time for the activation appointment, we were actually in West Virginia for a rotation that Brianna was doing, which was really nice, so that we could spend the holidays and sometime after with our families.

What that also meant was that we were a good six hours from Hopkins, and it was the dead of winter. So I leave the other two kids with my mom and dad, and I load up my toddler Luke, in just his jammies, sound asleep, dark in the morning to head out. The weather was pretty crappy that day, but we had our (new to us) old Volvo station wagon that was all wheel drive and we were bound and determined to get over the river, through the woods, over the mountains to Baltimore.

Well, about halfway into this trip, I start feeling not so great. At first, I think I'm just nervous or excited. And then that rumbly in the tummy and the tell-tale of, oh, no. So I pull off quickly to a truck stop. And Luke at this point was too big for an infant carrier, but not yet walking.

So I can't just un-click the carrier and run in. I'm unbuckling the child who still has on no socks or shoes (not that it would have mattered). I run in and proceed to be very sick and realize, yeah, this is definitely a stomach virus. Clean myself up and continue on our way north and proceed to stop every 20 to 30 minutes to be sick.

That poor child running under my arm into all these rest areas, bathrooms, just setting him on these gross floors as he stood in horror, holding on to the wall, watching his mom. I keep a close eye on the time because I'm so afraid that we will have come all this way and miss this appointment.

We didn't really have any other options than to just push through because considering it started halfway into the trip, I was going to be sick driving either way. I didn't have a place to stay. The roads weren't great. I didn't want to get trapped somewhere. And this poor kid had waited two years for this to happen.

I just wanted to keep going. As we come into Baltimore. For those of you not familiar with Johns Hopkins, it's in Baltimore and in the city, the heart of the city.

I pull off the exit and realize I'm going to be sick again. So I speed into a gas station where I stuck out like a sore thumb in my used Volvo Station Wagon. And people start walking over towards my car as I pull into the parking lot. And about that time I open the door and just puke everywhere.

And those guys turned right around and started walking away from my car. I slammed the door, pull right back out onto the road and head on to the hospital and I realize by this point, not only did I just puke for the 87th time, I've also crapped my pants. So we're maybe 10 minutes from Hopkins, and we are cutting it close to get to this appointment.

And I'm kind of a puddle at this point. I don't really know what to do. I'm so weak, I'm not sure I can get out of the car. I have this kid who I just want to give hearing to so badly and I'm in a town that's not mine and I'm sitting in poopy pants.

We get there. (Also, if you've never been to Johns Hopkins Medical Center, it's huge and sprawling.) We park the car. I grab a bag of clothes that I had brought for the night, grab my baby, and start kind-of running into the hospital looking for the nearest bathroom. I finally find one. And at this point, it's time for our appointment, but I cannot go up to the second or third floor (I can't remember which) in my current state.

I find a bathroom. I go in and strip down and basically just take a stand-up bath in this bathroom. And I decide, really my best course of action at this point is to just throw my clothes away. They're not salvageable. I don't know what I would do with them anyway at this point. So I throw them in the trash, get dressed, and probably change the kiddo and head upstairs.

I check in a few minutes late and they take us right back, thankfully. And as we're walking back, guess what? That's right. My stomach starts rumbling again. We get to the door where Luke's audiologist was. Her name was Jill, she was so sweet. And I just hand her this toddler, and I said, “here, I have to go be sick”, pretty much throw the kid at her and run to the bathroom, get myself cleaned up again, takes a few minutes.

At this point, I'm so weak. I just am in slow motion. I'm crying, I wash off my face. I'm like, “Get it together. You can do this. This is such a big day and a big moment. You can just sit in the back corner, not get anyone sick and just be there and see this magical time of Luke being able to hear”.

So I make my way back down the hall and into the room where she is with my little one. And I open the door and she says, come in! He's turned on! It's working! I was like, “oh, you're kidding me!!” I missed it. I missed the whole thing. And Luke just turns around, waves at me like, “Hi, Mom”.

Oh, man. Now, really? Of course, all that matters is that it was working, but..Ohhhh.

We finish off this session, and by this time, there's no color in my face. I am as dehydrated as they come. And I have this kid on my hip who can't walk. All the stuff they give you at activation, which is like a big (now they have these cool backpacks) but then it was like a suitcase. They give you, plus my diaper bag, all of that.

And I'm just wondering how I'm even going to get back to the front door of this place. And as I start walking as slow as a turtle, I'm feeling around for my keys. They're not in my pocket. I go in the diaper bag. They're not in there. I'm looking around. I'm thinking, did I leave them in the audiologist office?

Like, what is going on? And then it occurs to me, that's right. My keys were in the pants that I threw in the trash and the sobbing just comes and I think “I can't-I can't do it. I cannot walk with this baby and all this stuff to that bathroom”. But I realize that I have no other choice.

And so we trudge all the way back to that first bathroom and I go in and the trash has been emptied. Now, listen, I feel sure that that was very necessary, considering what I put in the trash, but I just lost it. I thought, this is it. I'm done. I'm out. I got nothing. Oh, man. I get the kid and the stuff, and I go out of the bathroom and I find the first chair and I call my husband and I am sobbing so hard at this point that he can't really understand what I'm saying.

And poor guy, he's like, “What's wrong? Is there something wrong with Luke? Is there something wrong with the implant? Did it not work? What's happening?”

So I get to tell him, “luckily, everything with that is great, I guess. I missed it, but he seems fine. But you know, I lost my keys and I pooed my pants, and I have a stomach virus and I'm just stuck here, and I don't know what to do. And I have the baby and the stuff, and I can't walk. I can't walk one more step and I don't know what to do. And I just need someone to talk some sense into me who is of sound mind at this moment and tell me what to do.

And he says, “I want you to not move. Stay where you are, and I will call you back in 5 minutes”.

That part was easy. He calls me back and he says, “I just got off the phone with Gina. She said, don’t move, she’s coming”. Gina is one of our very best and dearest friends from forever from high school. And she lived in Baltimore. And we were actually supposed to stay with her that night and she was coming to rescue us.

In the meantime, I found a security guard who was lovely. He helped me track down my keys from the trash, which is a miracle in itself. And by the time Gina got there, Luke and I had made our way to the front doors of this medical office building, and they're sliding doors. And it's Baltimore. And it is a frigid January day.

And I'm telling you, I can honestly say I have seen a superhero in my lifetime because I'm sitting (well kind of half lying) on one of these big plastic benches with my kid playing on my lap. And I see Gina coming towards the doors and they slide open, and the wind from this Baltimore day is just swooshing. And she, of course, has on a trench coat and it just flaps in the wind, and she comes straight over to us.

And if you're blessed enough to know Gina, you know that when she shows up, she's about to handle a situation and you don't even have to say anything. I just held up my keys and she kind of giggled and said, “well, that's a miracle that I didn't expect”. Great. She has someone come get my car and she drives me and Luke home

At that exact moment, I probably had never in my life been so happy to see someone and never, ever felt that I had just been waiting for someone like I was waiting for Gina. She took my sick self to her house and my kid and never once was afraid that we were going to give her what we had or that I smelled like I had puked and pooped all over myself for the last 10 hours at that point.

She just took care of it and took care of us and loved on us and cooked for us some lovely broth and cookies, of course. And fixed us all up. Brandon said when she answered, there was no hesitation. All she needed was details. It was a day full of people who showed up for just their ordinary schedule. An audiologist who let me throw her a kid when I was sick and still invited me in. A security guard who tracked down a trash bag full of nastiness for a sick, exhausted, hopeless mother. And a friend who never hesitated.

Now, this time around, activation was a little less dramatic and oh-so night and day different This time. My Luke is 19 and a half. I picked him up from college to take him to the appointment. We actually had never met the audiologist that did the activation until that day, and Luke's very favorite audiologist and director of the L was with us minute to minute on the phone as he was activated the second time.

Luke already knew what sound was like, but the excitement from all of us in the room was just as palpable because sometimes you don't know what you've got until it's gone. And that definitely was hearing for our guy. There's so many stories surrounding this journey of hearing with Luke, and I'm sure that they will come out in episodes over time.

But I think it's summed up best in an answer that I gave one of my girls recently. We were talking about prayer, and she said, “Mom, here's the part I don't understand. How do you know God's answer. When you need advice or you have a question or you pray for knowledge like about what to do or which path to choose or something like that, how do you know the answer?”

And I said, “well that is a very good question and an age old one that humans have been asking forever. And I think the answer is probably different for everyone. But I'll tell you how I know. If I'm looking at two different paths and I'm wondering which one God is leading me to, it's always the one where the people are, because I don't think there's ever a guarantee, no matter what your beliefs or how devout your faith, that that path or the journey will be easy.”

“It probably won't have a flashing neon sign that says “Come this way.” But I truly have experienced that the path I am to go on is the one where all the people show up to help me on it. That's how I know that God chose that one. He can't pave the road and make it smooth all the time, but he can line it with people.”

Thanks for joining us. I hope you allow yourself to feel the things today and then have the courage to ask. But what if it looks like this? Go forth and show up for life? My friends, someone is just waiting for you.