Benignity and Trickery

I'm going to tell you about what might happen to siblings of kids with complex medical needs. No matter how conscious you are about giving them equal time, things slip through the cracks, stuff is blown off, "little stuff" is overlooked. Oliver complained about pain in his finger for a year. I acknowledged it, but I also blew it off. I blamed it on diet or inflammation. You need to stop eating junk, I might have said. How bad could it be? Both Oliver and his brother Henry are strong in every way. They are strong and sensitive. They are honest and funny as hell. Like their sister, except they haven't gotten as much attention. It turned out that Oliver has an aneurysmal bone cyst. Benign but tricky. Today he had a second surgery to remove it as the one in December didn't work. The tumor came back, began eating into his bone. Hopefully, today's intervention will last. I sat by the bedside in the recovery room for hours, running my hand through his hair, watching my nearly grown boy sleep off the drugs they gave him. He made jokes in his sleep, smoothed all my rough edges worn thin by time in hospitals those weird hours ticking by. Precious child. Brave children.

I'll be catching shit for the "inflammation" and "too much sugar" talk -- but that's okay. We all need to be humbled and set straight.

Power to the siblings.

The Phoenix and the Ashes

Someone has recovered quite robustly from oral surgery, and it ain't me.

Report from the Dentist: Is it Safe?*

So, I'm going to moderate my tiny little mother mind™ words of this morning -- or at least temper them -- by saying that the anesthesiologist with the famous physicist's name turned out to be a wonderful guy. Really wonderful. He was gentle and kind and told me I was a saint. I told him that I most assuredly was not a saint and that he didn't know me from Adam. It turns out that he has a sense of humor, too, because he looked at me and said, You're right. You're probably dark and evil on the inside. Those were probably the truest words ever said, but only ya'll know that. It turned out, too, that Sophie had no cavities but needed her impacted lower wisdom teeth removed, and when I say removed, I mean right then and there. I felt boxed in when the dentist came out to tell me. She's a surgeon, and she specializes in treating people with special needs so there was room in the box, but still. I basically hyperventilated in the waiting room over the next four hours, in between texting with a few good friends and reading about Melania Trump in The New Yorker. That made me stop hyperventilating and start praying to Jesus for our salvation. The anesthesiologist with the famous physicist's name walked me to my car when it was all over. He lifted Sophie out of the wheelchair and put her in the front seat of my car, fastened her seatbelt and then helped me to fold up the wheelchair and lift it into the back of the car. So except for the hourly wage, I have to eat my words.



Also, it's my youngest child's birthday today, and he's fifteen years old. I'll devote a whole post to Oliver tomorrow, if I make it through the night. We're having Vietnamese food for dinner and a peanut butter chocolate birthday cake for dessert.

All will be well. All will be well. All manner of thing shall be well.



















*Prize to the first person who knows what this line refers to!