But overall, it was an absolutely amazing experience, and I can't thank Brian, Tyler and their team enough for giving us that gift. Plus...they totally rocked it!! How lucky is Caelen that his first concert was FGL? Mine was Paul Anka, thanks mom.
Aunt Kelly was thrilled to squeeze on Tyler's abs. No shame in her game.
I should back up this story though with what I believe are once again, Angels among us.
2 years ago yesterday, Caelen had his third open heart surgery, the Fontan, reversed or "taken down" after 3 miserable weeks of struggling and then the Plastic Bronchitis diagnosis, because his body simply couldn't handle the new circulation. He went down in the afternoon and I got to play "our song" to him, Blake Sheltons "God gave me you" which helps to calm him.
What we didn't know at the time was how rough the day would go. After the team was done in the cath lab, Caelen started desaturating and Dr Rome had to go right back in, basically doing a double cardiac catheterization. That was a long and crappy day and night. When I re-read that post from 2 years ago, I remembered the Angels God sent to us that night. If you get a chance, go back in the blog to Oct
18/19 2012.
Fast forward exactly 2 years, and Caelen got to go to his very first concert, and it was his favorite band. No way this was a coincidence.
Here's where the Angels come in to play. It took a small army of angels to make yesterday happen, starting with one of our local Fire Captains, Michelle Martin, who got the ball rolling by making calls to figure out how to get Caelen to meet FGL.
Captain Martin, God Bless you for working so hard to make yesterday happen. Your big heart led you to Tara, who called her friend and local DJ Virginia, who called DJ Sammy over at WIRK, our country station. Sammy called FGL's "people" (ha ha, don't you wish you had "people") and together, they scored us a meet and greet with not just FGL, but Jason Aldean too! Plus tickets to the sold out show!!!
Full disclosure, I'm not entirely sure that's how things went down, but I *think* I'm close.
I just want to say a gigantically HUGE Thank You to Captain Martin, Tara, Virginia, Sammy, Stacey (FGL) and of course to Brian and Tyler themselves. Thank you for making one of my miracle boy's dreams come true. Even though Caelen got suddenly shy, he hasn't stopped talking about meeting Tyler and Brian, and telling everyone he has encountered today. He's still singing and playing his now very special signed guitar, and rocking out to all of the FGL videos. We're still exclusively playing FGL in the car, even though I asked today if we could take a break and hear some different groups. That answer was No! But that's ok, after yesterday, FGL can continue to be the first and last thing we hear every day 😄