SOS

Ok, because I'm tired of repeating myself over AIM, IRC, and IRL.

I am sending out an SOS to anyone that could provide goods/services in helping with a situation.

My sister, Michelle, just had her baby yesterday. I did not know about this until 2 PM today. Michelle isn't really my sister, but my ex-step-sister, and one of the closest things to family that I have besides Nathan. She's been my best friend since I met her. I love her to death and would do anything for her. She lives in Alton, IL, the same area I used to live in. That's about a 9 hour drive from here, not that it matters, since I have no car. I called her today at lunch because I hadn't heard from her in a week, and she dropped this news to me. She is in the hospital, in pain, and groggy as hell. It turns out they had to induce because she went past her due date (Jan 1st). She was in labor for a really long time (more than 12 hours). At the end, they had to do an emergency c-section because the baby was head up and her pulse was dropping. From what Michelle is telling me, it doesn't sound like they had given her adequate pain medication for this. She's usually not a whiner, so I'm inclined to believe her. The baby seemed ok, she was acting normal, but then this morning she started having seizures and brief bouts of apnea (apnea is where she stops breathing).

So now I've got to get to IL. My boss is so completely awesome, he cleared me to take off pretty much as much time as I need. I'm probably going to take 2-3 days off next week. I've got a ride from the STL airport to the hospital (thank you, Vratha!), and I may have airplane tickets taken care of. If anyone has frequent flier miles or a buddy pass available, let me know, because the help would be much appreciated. Any help you can give at all in this situation would be a great help to her and myself. People have been great so far. Unfortunately, I broke myself giving all of my money to Mike - I owed him for the help he was giving me before, and he's had a lot of emergencies come up lately. So yeah. Whoring out for goods/services on my blog. I can dig it.