Today a social worker visited us from Early Intervention to asses our situation and make a recommendation of if we need a social worker and how often we should have one. For the first time in a long time I got the chance to talk about me, about Craig, about everything that has led up to this point. For those of you who really know us well you’ll know that these last few years have been about as far from sunshine and rainbows as you can get. While discussing our loss last year and why I never got any help or support through that difficult period I suddenly remembered everything else we were dealing with during the time we used to refer to as the “365 shit storm”. We woke up one day and realized that a year, a calender year, is arbitrary. What had wasn’t a bad year, or a bad month, it was a cycle of insanity that lasted a solid year, but not from January to Januray, more from middle of February to middle of February. Everytime we turned around there was another fire to be put out, another wound that needed to be stitched, another limb hacked off only to be reattached with a glue stick and scotch tape. With everything we’ve already been through with Aleck I didn’t realize how easy it was to put all of that on the backburner almost as if we never went through it. Yikes. Let’s just say I’m pretty sure the Social Worker didn’t think she’d be here for an hour and a half.
Finally I felt like someone wanted to know how I was doing and I didn’t feel obligated to put on a brave face. Quite the contrary, it was a virtual vomit of events and emotions. I figured, if she was going to take us on she needed to know everything so I told her, almost everything. Believe it or not, there is more that I don’t feel comfortable discussing since it involves more than just Craig and I. That’s right folks, the storm just keeps on coming.
And as things just keep piling up those who are with us seem to get closer, and those who can’t handle us are falling to the wayside. We’ve definitely been loosing friends over these last few years but at the same time people are rising up to meet us and our challenges who we never expected would be intregal parts of our lives. Its amazing the way people can just be there when you need them, no questions asked, asking nothing in return. Checking in on you, bringing you food, walking your dog, bringing clothes that fit over the splint and cast, holding your baby, handing you tissues. Hopefully when we get through some of this, Craig and I can be there for others as well. As much as we’ve tried over the last few years, we only seem to be able to handle what’s going on in our own life and even just that is overwhelming. So to those who may have needed us more in their lives lately, we’re really sorry, we’ll get there eventually.
Friday morning Aleck has his upper GI and won’t be able to eat for 4 hours before the exam, not even water. It’s going to be one hell of a morning and I’ve already called in the reinforcements. Grandma Suzy is going with us so that one of us can pay attention to what we need to do while the other one holds the crying baby. When he’s hungry there is just no soothing him unless that pacifier carries milk. Hopefully they won’t find anything and all will be in working order. We’ll keep you posted.
On January 11th Aleck is having his first surgery, the tendon cutting done at Children’s on Lincoln and Fullerton. It’s a 23 hour surgery so I’ll be staying with him at the hospital overnight. We decided that we didn’t want to risk giving him the anesthesia before he hit the 3 month mark and would rather suffer with casts a little longer than take that risk. I know I’m nervous for this surgery, he’s just so little, but even more that we are popping our surgery cherry with him since this is just going to be the first in what will probably be a long line of surgeries. Just 4 months later we’ll have the hip surgery to deal with, I guess its a good thing we are getting to start with something small like a tendon.