Flatlining

This is my lovely son Gabriel who is 3 years old in the top picture & 13 in the bottom. It's difficult to tell from his happy smile that by the time the first one had been taken, he had been born with a lack of oxygen at birth; hospitalized for dehydration, reflux, eye surgery, adnoids out, ear tubes in & seizures. He had also been diagnosed with mental retardation & initially with ADHD, (which really turned out to be bipolar disorder), tourette's & OCD.

The thing about Gabe is none of this matters. He has been smiling since he left the womb & is an absolute savior & gift to everyone who is lucky enough to cross his path. We live in a very small community & I have not been Diane & his dad has not been Greg for a very long time..... we're Gabe's mom & dad.  He's in a teenager's body with a cognitive age of about 5 years behind that, which definitely keeps life interesting.

Gabe spent the better part of the last two weeks in Children's Hospital with what started as sinusitis in his nose, that spread to his eye & required around the clock antibiotics. He came home briefly but was back in the hospital the next day because his eye started to swell up again & one shoulder 'locked' into a weird position up towards his ears. Freaked the Doctors out, so Greg got in his car with an emergency pass for the ferry & went back. He finally got another CAT scan at 10pm & a bed by 1:30am with more IV antibiotics. They HAD been afraid that he was exhibiting signs that the infection had leaked into his BRAIN, but it hadn't, Thank God.

It was the weirdest thing when I found out he had to go back again. I told Greg he had to take him because I could NOT get my head around it. I just went completely FLAT. I could not feel a THING & I did NOT want to go back to the hospital. I called 3 close friends who all said I should probably follow them over, but finally called my therapist. She drove right over & we talked it through & she told me it was o.k NOT to go right away. THEN I started bawling. I hadn't had a decent night's sleep in days &  went to that child place of being paralyzed by exhaustion & it took her to tell me my feelings were o.k.

Long story, but a few days later when he was home again the Doctors were calling by 8am to get him to come back in for a check up, but I never called them back. Gabe has been SUCH a trooper for almost 2 weeks now that we just got in the car & drove to an animal rescue place he likes to go to & hung out like normal people. He tired easily & slept all the way home, but he was fine. It was so great to not feel fear & dread for a change.