"When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile."

You know when you find yourself exhausted at the end of the day and you drop the line "I just had the worst day EVER"... well on May 22, 2011, a good day turned into my worst day ever. I have not updated many people following my blog for months, so I will catch you up to May 22nd then we will go from there! I had some job interviews down here in Joplin back in March and April... they went great and I was offered a job on the oncology unit of St. Johns Hospital. Not two months later I graduated from WIU with a bachelors of science in Nursing!! The stress was not over yet, however because I still had to take NCLEX-RN before I could legally call myself a Nurse!! Kevin and I finally moved all of our stuff into our beautiful new apartment in Joplin, and I was ready to start studying for my exam. On May 22, 2011 after finishing an exam  online, we sat to watch a movie. Tom had set up weather reports on his phone and said that we were on a severe thunderstorm warning... this I was excited about, because I had always loved thunder and lightening, however a few minutes later he mentioned that we were then on a tornado watch. had been on tornado watches at school in Illinois only a couple times, and nothing ever happened, so this is what I expected. I went to the bedroom and looked out the window at the thunder and lightening, and called my father to tell him I was on my first tornado watch at our new home. I told him that we were prepared to go into the bathroom if it became necessary, but it was just a  watch at this point. A few minutes passed and Tom checked his phone to see a tornado warning had been issued for Joplin. The boys stepped outside to see which direction the tornado was in town and that was when the power cut. I went to the bedroom and looked out the window to see an eerie black/brown/green sheet heading towards us. The boys came back in and all of us stood by the window watching when we saw the trees outside bend down towards the ground and debris fly by the window. It was time to get into the bathroom. Our timing couldn't have been better. As soon as we shut the bathroom door I sat against the inner wall too afraid to sit in the bathtub that was attached to the outer wall of the apartment. The boys were holing the door shut when we heard our bedroom being torn to shreds and felt plaster and water shooting through the cracks in the door. The pressure of the imploding mass on our ears was only comparable to being in a plane when there is a pressure change... but worse. The sound was like we were laying feet from a train track while one ripped by. I had never thought about dying in my life ever until that moment. I repeatedly tried to call my father from the bathroom but there was no service. I was simultaneously screaming at the top of my lungs "Please lord I don't want to die". Kevin was telling me it was going to be ok, and Tom was saying hang on keep holding on guys... Though it was only a minute and a half... it seemed like 10. The pressure was gone, the roaring noise had stopped and the door was on its hinges but the frame was disconnected from the wall. The boys had held the door shut with just millimeters before it would be disconnected fully. We opened the door to complete wreckage. There was no window or frame just a huge hole in the wall looking out to what used to be the main building. It was a pile of rubble. There were hundreds of fire alarms sounding from every apartment complex, but what was more ear piercing were the screams of survivors and people stuck under rubble. I was in shock screaming and crying, not knowing if the storm was over when I called my dad screaming. On about the tenth try I finally got through to him crying hysterically that everything was gone and there are people screaming and that I didn't know what to do. I mentally slapped myself in the face when Kevin told me "your a nurse Torie, people need your help". I hung up the phone and grabbed as many towels as I could find in our apartment and my first aid kit. The staircase was covered in vinyl siding, brick, plywood and two by fours... we had to maneuver our way down to get to people. Kevin went to the aid of an elderly woman while I went inside an apartment to check for injured residents. Many residents had migrated towards this one apartment that was centrally located. There were children with visibly broken arms, separated shoulders, broken ribs and many lacerations. I had learned about triaging in school and for the life of me I could not think of the "right" thing to do. It took me a minute then I explained to everybody who I was and that I was going to start with people who were injured the "worst" first. I went to the aid  of a man who had covered his wife and dog protecting them from matter. He had a laceration to the back of his head that was inches long and had already saturated a full size pillow he had been give to lay on. He was simultaneously experiencing chest pain, numbness to certain parts of his body and he was deathly cold. I had a heat blanket in my first aid kit that I covered him with and was applying pressure to his head wound, when a physician who lived by me came in and took over. I moved onto the limb injuries. We had heard that some people had been able to get their vehicles near our complex and could take people for medical help. We made a makeshift stretcher with a broken poolside chair and two by fours. I stepped out to search for more items that might help make splints and stretchers when Kevin's boss showed up to help us and "take us home". We couldn't leave yet though, there was too much going on, too many people needing help. A couple lived above us on the third floor that was completely wiped out. They were trapped in their bathtub that had a wall collapse on it protecting them. The staircase to the third floor was impassable, except for a small hole that only a child could fit through, so that is what we had to do. A nine year old boy volunteered to climb up to the third floor and look around to find a way to the couple. They managed to get out of the tub with some help from the boy and minutes later a ladder was used to get them down from their apartment. It was like a movie... all of it. The storm, opening the door to what I can only compair to pictures of Hiroshima... and Coach Mutz showing up out of nowhere. So much destruction, loss and death. I wanted to wake up and find it to be a terrible dream but it wasn't. I didn't sleep for days, terrified of another storm sweeping through (we were on tornado watch for three days straight). Things slowly began to fall into place after a month of living with the Mutz's. We finally came up on a place to call home, received two new cars from family members and we both still have our jobs. It has been the longest most stressful two months of my life. I have never felt so physically stressed and mentally stressed in my life AND I WENT THROUGH NURSING SCHOOL! I however can gladly say Kevin and I have our lives, and that was the most important thing. I cannot express enough thanks to everybody who helped us out through this mess, but we are finally on our feet again. Thank you all and god bless you all for your prayers!

Enjoy the novel, thanks for listening

xoxo ~*Vic*~