Whacky Tobacky

There are few things I dread more than having to venture into the city to go to a medical appointment. Perhaps because I've now spent the bulk of my adult life sitting in a waiting room because of my desire to have children who are either born broken or born with a tendency to try and slice off their digits at every given opportunity.

I've done my time with the medical establishment. Which is why it seems a cruel hard fate to know that today I have to make the long drive into the city, pay for parking, wear one of those ugly hospital gowns that never seem to snap shut properly and therefore flash everyone in the room with a delightful view of my arse crack and then lay down on what is basically a metal coffin and listen to the obnoxious clanging of the MRI machine as it takes pictures of my back fat.

It's going to be awesome. And I'm so not shaving my legs for it.

To say I'm not really excited about my afternoon appointment is a bit of an understatement. Especially since I've been down this road before more times than I can now count and it leads to surgery, more pain and me walking around stooped over a bedazzled cane as my dad offers to give me an enema.

(For some reason the man is obsessed with fecal regularity. Especially mine. As a postoperative gift, instead of the typical flowers most daughters get, he brings me a box of stool softeners. I wish I were kidding.)

Let the good times roll!

However, as pessimistic and irrationally cranky about my own experiences with the medical establishment and my mucked up back, I have nothing to say about the treatment my children (dead and alive) have received in their short little lives.

We are blessed with a fabulous children's hospital and surrounded by expert medical peoples who go above and beyond the call of duty to ensuring all my children keep their digits while ensuring my youngest lives to see another day.

Jumby's life hasn't been the easiest, starting from the day he was born prematurely and weighing one pound four ounces. My kid was as big as a block of butter. He survived his size and the plethora of health issues that happen when you are born a micro preemie.

He survived the abuse he received thanks to the medical establishment and he fights daily to overcome his existing disabilities. (For those of you who are unaware, he's legally blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, and quadriplegic who eats through a tube and will remain diapered for the rest of his days.)

But Jumby is awesome. Regardless of all his impairments, this kid just keeps on thriving. He has a sense of humour that is inspiring and spreads more joy than a diseased tick can spread Lyme disease.

But life isn't always easy with him (understatement of the week alert!) and there are times I'm rendered exhausted by the sheer enormity of what it means to tackle this many disabilities at once.

This most happens when Jumbster is having a bad day with pain and spasms and there is nothing we can do to help him medically other than love him through it.

It can sometimes suck.

I'd move mountains to make his life (any of my kids' lives) better. Pain free. Healthy.

Even if that mountain was medical marijuana.

And that is what I'm yammering on about in my latest Momversation video. Which I hope you will take the time to watch.

 



 

For My Child

I am so sorry.

I'm sorry I couldn't protect you.

I'm sorry I couldn't give you the childhood you deserve.

I am so sorry for each strip of innocence that has been torn away from you before you were ready.

I'm sorry for dead brothers. For battered babies. For grown up atrocities committed against you.

I'm so sorry I couldn't be a better dragon slayer for you.

I'm sorry for every tear you have cried, for every wound you have received, for each and every scar you now bear.

I'm sorry your father and I couldn't protect you from all that life has thrown at our family, and I'm sorry I won't be able to protect you from everything that looms in your far off distance future.

I am sorry for the flashing lights, the lawyers and the courtroom.

I'm so very sorry for every nightmare you've had because of this. For the fear you still carry deep in your heart.

For the pain you endured and likely will still endure for days to come.

I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you from any of this.

But I am so proud of you, my child.

I'm proud of your resilience and your strength.

I'm proud of the way you stood up and said, "This was wrong."

I'm proud that you wanted the truth to ring loud and clear. I'm proud you stood up there, alone and vulnerable and withstood the battery of a trial in the hopes this would never happen to any one else.

I am in awe of your bravery. Your dignity. I don't know that if our places were reversed I'd have the strength to endure all that you have.

I'm in awe of your dogged perseverance of joy.

I'm in awe that even in your most vulnerable moments you clung to your truth and held fast like a beacon of light in a storm.

You have a grace about you that you likely don't see just yet, but I hope one day you will.

You shine in a way I never will, never could. I'm amazed that you're mine.

I love you so much, and so much more with each day that passes.

I am so, so proud to be your mother.

And yet.

Still.

I am so very, very sorry.

 

 

 

 

 

Not My Proudest Mommy Moment

There are days when it sucks being responsible for smaller life forms.

Like when you notice a fish floating at the top of your fish tank because you may have not cleaned the water recently.

That totally sucks. No one likes a fish killer.

Or when your dog starts pushing around his food bowl with his nose only for you to realize you forgot to buy dog food. Again. And no matter how many times you pour Cheerios in his bowl, he still gives you the side eye and accuses you of being a bad doggy momma with his hound dog expression.

That sucks.

It sometimes feels like I am barely responsible enough to wear adult sized pants let alone be in charge of a family of smalls and various assorted non-humanoid life.

They just keep demanding more and more from me. Like food. And toilet paper. I can hardly keep up.

Which is why I was happy to escape my house on Friday and Saturday to take the girl child to a volleyball tournament. The dogs where barking, Jumbster was grouchy and Frac had been sick since Wednesday night breathing his toxic germs all over the place.

Frac wasn't feeling well. But after several days of listening to him moan and bitch about feeling like crap I was happy to escape for a few hours to go sit in a hard plastic chair inside a smelly gymnasium and watch a bunch of teenaged girls hit a volleyball.

As a mother with severely disabled children who have real medical problems, I have absolutely no patience for the pathetic sniffles of my healthy children.

Which is why, on Sunday morning when my eldest son came into my room at 530 in the morning to wake me up to tell me his stomach hurt I told him to suck it up butter cup. I mean really, did he expect me to drag my butt out of bed to pour him some Pepto Bismol?

It was the flu. Drink some fluids, takes some over the counter medication and go to sleep. Or better yet, go talk to your baby brother about what it means to have real medical problems. Sheesh.

At 10 am, Frac was still whining and I was becoming short tempered with him. "Stop whining. I know. Your tummy hurts." It was all I could do to not snarl at him.

It appeared Frac was another victim of the annoying man-cold and rolled my eyes at his male whininess. Seriously. I carried small elephants for almost ten months and then had them claw their way out of my girlie bits and I never whined this much. Boys.

But at noon, I started to listen.

It only took some tears to get my attention. My Frac is many things, over sensitive, a tad lazy and maybe even annoying at times. But he's never a crybaby.

And yet here he was crying.

Finally, my mommy instincts were paying attention.

By one pm, I knew Frac didn't have the flu. By 130, I knew I had to take the poor kid to the emergency room.

An hour and a bit later, he was admitted to hospital.

By 6 pm I was signing permission forms to have my son's abdomen dissected like a frog in a high school biology class.

Frac's last words to me before being wheeled into the operating theatre? "I told you my tummy hurt."

He must have missed the signs that I was drowning in mommy guilt. You know, what with him busy writhing in pain from having his appendix explode inside of him.

(Side note: Did y'all know they supposedly take out an astronaut's appendix before sending them to space? Or that the cow is one of the only mammals that use their appendix? The things one learns inside an emergency room.)

Frac is going to be fine. He's recovering nicely. And he's lording it over my head that he was right and that I was wrong. And I'm never allowed to tell him to 'suck it up' again.

I'm sure that's a promise I'll be able to keep for a few days at least. All bets are off when he is loafing in bed at home, ringing a bell and demanding I wear my mom pants all the time.

It's bad enough I'm going to have to grind my own coffee for the foreseeable future. I don't even want to think about what it's going to be like to have yet another (temporarily) disabled child at home.

I should probably just find new homes for my pets in the mean time.

If history is predictive of the future, the smalls under my care may have a problem.

Sorry kid. You were totally right. Enjoy hearing me admit that now because IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

 I love you.