…I showed up in boots, and ruined your black tie affair.
Sitting in our living room on NYE, holding Aleck while he slept in my arms, stroking Sadie by the fire and drinking champagne with Craig I quickly took stock of this life. Loving adoring unbelievable supportive husband, check. Adorable blessing of a baby boy, check. Amazing dog who keeps tabs on all of us, check. The best family a person could ask for, check. Great friends who had left me some of the best birthday voicemails I’ve ever gotten, check. A great place to live, a home that makes us feel comfortable and safe, check. It looks like my sister was right, when the day before she told me that things might be hard but I have everything I want.
When you find that one thing after another is blowing up in your face, when you look back on a 3 year stretch of your life and can actually count the few moments where you caught your breath, it can be more difficult to focus on the good things even when you are surrounded by them at every second of the day. So I decided that I would spend the rest of the weekend just breathing, after all, we had driven our new car home that evening, and two days before we finished moving my mother in-law out of her apartment and into her nursing home. And the week before that my family had a scare at the hospital when a routine procedure on my dad took a scary turn, and his heartbeat was through the roof. Yup, it was definitely time to breathe, to thank god that everyone is OK and that this year was behind us. When the ball dropped I really felt a sense of an ending and a beginning. Of putting a lot of crap, bad energy, negative vibes behind us and moving forward ready to tackle Aleck’s treatment, ready to focus solely on him and getting each part of his body functioning, one vertebrae at a time.
I planned on sitting here to write about Aleck reaching his 3 month mark, a day I’ve had my eyes on for a while. First of all, congratulating Craig and I on keeping him alive for 3 months!! That in and of itself is a huge accomplishment. He’s coming out of his newborn phase and turning into a more interactive person. Practically carrying on complete conversations during every diaper change, he’s turning into a little Persin (I can never resist that joke). We spent Sunday switching his clothes from his 0-3 months to his 3-6 months since his onesies were all proving to be too short on him now. He may not be packing on the pounds, but he’s definitely growing right on target. It was bittersweet to put some of it away. What I’ll miss the most are the onesies that say, “Party in my crib, 2AM”. Or, “Nothing’s Wrong, I’m Just Testing You”. I swear, those things kept me sane during 3am changes and feedings. What totally broke my heart is that the outfits we got new were barely worn, still in amazing condition, that he won’t be wearing anymore. My guess is, I’ll feel this way with every change, marking how much he’s growing and how quickly the time is passing. I try to take time to appreciate how little, how adorable, how helpless he is right now, knowing that he’ll be going to kindergarten in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately yesterday, the clean slate was cracked in half and thrown into a shredder when I took Sadie, our amazing dog pictured in my last entry, to the vet. Monday evening I noticed a swollen, bloody spot in her mouth, and after Aleck’s first Occupational Therapy appointment and my mom’s arrival to babysit, I ran her to the vet. It’s a tumor, in her mouth and under her tongue. There is a real chance it could be cancerous. I had to leave her there for 3 hours while they sedated her, biopsied the tumor, removed as much of it as possible, took X-Rays of her lungs and drew up some blood work. The good news is, her liver and kidneys are still working properly. The bad news is, we won’t know anything until Friday at the earliest.
I understand that she’s a dog, and when we got her I more than understood that she would die someday, much sooner than I would ever be ready for. Regularly I kiss her sweet head and say little prayers that she’d live forever, already bracing myself that Aleck may not remember her and if we have another child that one may not know her at all. But she’s only 8 years old. And she’s my security blanket. She got us through the loss of our first baby, after all we weren’t coming home to a totally empty house, there was someone special still here who needed us and our love. I’ve been counting on her to help me through this difficult time with Aleck, to be there to greet us when we come home from surgeries, to keep me company when Aleck keeps me up all night adjusting to new splints (ones for his shoulders will be coming soon from the OT), new casts, and everything else the medical field will be throwing at him.
Our friends have suggested that we have all the makings for a great country song, but I don’t know if even Patsy Cline who’s sorrowful ballads make me tear, could take all of this on in a song. To keep our sanity Craig and I joke that you can’t make this stuff up. That if we tried to sell this as a movie idea the audience wouldn’t buy that two people have had to deal with all of this shit in a two year time period. Though we have chosen our directors, the Coen Brothers, to perfectly capture the dark humor and sense of desperation that seems to permeate every scene.
Thank goodness my mom is on her way from the suburbs as we are preparing to head out to meet a Genetisist for Aleck, another doctor to add to our roster. I told my dad that I don’t know what I would do if they weren’t the kind of parents they are, as supportive as they are, as available for me as they are, and he said not to think of it since they are here for me.
So please say a little prayer for Sadie our Lady, Sexy Sadie, Sadie Bear, Sadie Spice, our little fox, that she can get through this so we can get through all of that.