Just Thinking...

We are on a crazy pace of at least 15 medical appointments/procedures for 3 kids in the first 2 months of the year. It is beyond crazy, and I sure did not plan for things to work out this way, but one thing and then another just happened so here we are just trying to keep up with all of it.

We left the house before 5:00 am yesterday in order to be at the U of M by 7:00 am. I spent the entire day there with Paul. We decided that we would get as much done as we could while he was sedated. He had an eye exam, MRI, and EEG done. That took all morning so I had some down time to make phone calls and read. I then got to spend the entire afternoon rocking my little boy. He usually does not sit still to be rocked so I enjoyed just watching him sleep, interrupted by one beeper or another occasionally. His IV arm was covered with cars stickers, he had cars on the pajamas and slippers they put on him. This was all done because the child life specialist had been there for his last procedures and she remembered how much turning everything into a car helps him do what needs to be done. The anesthesiologist who drove the cart to the procedure room made some pretty good car motor noise, too.

While I was rocking Paul I thought back to when the neuro-typical kids were younger and how healthy they really were. We made very few visits to medical facilities. There were the routine well baby/child checkups and dental visits. There was the time the kids were chasing kittens in the hay loft and Rene` felt breaking her arm (that was a quick visit to the ER to get a cast). There was the time they were playing high wire acrobats and Jared jumped off the swing sending it flying into Rene` nose, which could not be fixed until she was an adult. Finally there was the time Jared got smacked in the face with a basketball leaving him with a very ugly bruise on his face. That was it. There were no CAT scans, MRIs, surgeries, mounds of lab work or anything else.

None of this medical stuff becomes routine, ever. Oh, I know exactly what is going to happen and very often we get the same nurses and doctors which makes things go more smoothly, but it is not routine because if there is a need for such procedures there are complex medical issues that need to be addressed. There is always stress involved while waiting for the results and then when we get them we have to figure out how to proceed.

Having healthy kids is a blessing, being able to parent kids who have complex medical conditions is a gift. The Lord gave me the ability to deal with all of this so I do what I do for my kids. They are worth all of the long days, sleepless nights, and stress that goes along with parenting them.