Ups and Downs
Been a hectic couple of weeks.
Had some very bad news hit me right as I arrived in Austin for a college reunion type weekend. My wife has been having some complications with the pregnancy. She had an extra appointment slotted in and I understood that when I made the 8 and a half hour trek that I might have to turn around and come home. Possible we'd have an early delivery or get some really bad news. So five minutes before seeing all my old friends she told me there was some issues with our future son's heart. A google search provided only scary and extreme causes for the enlargement.
Now, normally when I get worried about my kids I'll do an Internet search and find only two things: Take your kid to your doctor or probably nothing to worry about. Just about anything you search for healthwise is 50/50 with those results. This time, quite different results arose for my wife. They consisted of scary ideas like heart transplant or even cancer causing the abnormality. Cancer in a newborn? I had never heard of that--course just this week I see an article on a former Big Brother cast member's baby that has cancer. Scary thoughts. Also, it could be nothing. Nothing at all. She set up an appointment with an At Risk specialist for when I returned home. So it was a waiting game.
My wife told me not to come home immediately and at least see all my friends when they arrived in town (mostly Thursday and Friday). Hard to put on a brave face when there are all these unknowns going on, but I knew I was helpless and I could be helpless at home or helpless in Austin. Still, staying brought more problems. I didn't want to dump all this bad news on my friends who were in town for a fun weekend. So, the first day I just had to put on my best poker face when they asked about the due date and we talked about kids. I think I was a little in shock with the news and at moments I'd get overwhelmed and have to kind of excuse myself when my mind dwelled on my son.
I decided Friday to come home and be with my wife early Saturday morning and revealed the bad news to a couple of friends to give them a heads up. Before that I was a bit of a fun sponge when we were out on the town and got voted the LFG. That's something we dub one of our friends every trip: Least Fun Guy. I think I took my ribbing pretty good, and I had no problem with it as at that point none of them knew my plans were to get up early and get out of town. Clearly I had other things on my mind but how were they to know.
Saturday morning my wife told me to stay for the game and to try to have fun at least one day as there was nothing me coming home would solve. Instead of driving home Monday, I decided to comback early Sunday, and make the best of it in Austin. I think I had a much better showing and even managed to clear my head for a few thoughts. I think having told a few friends made it easier and kind of got the weight off my shoulders a little bit, and allowed me to relax a bit.
The game was fun. The conversation at the bar afterwards when the 15 us just talked smack and recounted old stories though was the highlight. I took my fair share but enjoyed it.
So, I returned home and we had a couple more doctor's appointments. Good news is, the really scary possibilities on the Internet are less likely. What's most likely are one of two things, one is a condition that can be treated with medicine and the other one that will need surgery. The second possibility has some scary outcomes, heart surgery on a newborn--ugh. If it's the second our newborn will need to be airlifted to Children's hospital for the procedure. While the really bad causes haven't been totally ruled out we were assured they are far less likely and are hoping it will just take medicine.
After an appointment yesterday, we moved up the date of the delivery and have been scrambling to get things done. Suddenly, everything is happening at once. I spilled the bad news on facebook even though I kind of subscribe to the maxim face your problems don't facebook them (..thought apparently I have no issues with blogging about them), however, the utility of social media is when you need to tell a lot of people about something and may not have the time to keep them individually updated, facebook is a great resource for this. I've really received some nice notes and inspirational messages from a ton of people on my friends list, so I glad we posted what we did.
As far as blogging, writing has always been therapeutic for me and this is less about whining about what I going through and more about dealing with it. The worst thing about this is it could be not much at all and a bunch of pointless worry. There are folks with tangible problems and mine, hopefully will be illusory. Anyway, that's the outcome I'm hoping for, so prayers much appreciated this week.
What's weird is while this very bad stuff has been going on, some really cool things have presented themselves at the same time. I'm really excited about an opportunity which in the coming months hopefully I'll be able to share with everybody.
Had some very bad news hit me right as I arrived in Austin for a college reunion type weekend. My wife has been having some complications with the pregnancy. She had an extra appointment slotted in and I understood that when I made the 8 and a half hour trek that I might have to turn around and come home. Possible we'd have an early delivery or get some really bad news. So five minutes before seeing all my old friends she told me there was some issues with our future son's heart. A google search provided only scary and extreme causes for the enlargement.
Now, normally when I get worried about my kids I'll do an Internet search and find only two things: Take your kid to your doctor or probably nothing to worry about. Just about anything you search for healthwise is 50/50 with those results. This time, quite different results arose for my wife. They consisted of scary ideas like heart transplant or even cancer causing the abnormality. Cancer in a newborn? I had never heard of that--course just this week I see an article on a former Big Brother cast member's baby that has cancer. Scary thoughts. Also, it could be nothing. Nothing at all. She set up an appointment with an At Risk specialist for when I returned home. So it was a waiting game.
My wife told me not to come home immediately and at least see all my friends when they arrived in town (mostly Thursday and Friday). Hard to put on a brave face when there are all these unknowns going on, but I knew I was helpless and I could be helpless at home or helpless in Austin. Still, staying brought more problems. I didn't want to dump all this bad news on my friends who were in town for a fun weekend. So, the first day I just had to put on my best poker face when they asked about the due date and we talked about kids. I think I was a little in shock with the news and at moments I'd get overwhelmed and have to kind of excuse myself when my mind dwelled on my son.
I decided Friday to come home and be with my wife early Saturday morning and revealed the bad news to a couple of friends to give them a heads up. Before that I was a bit of a fun sponge when we were out on the town and got voted the LFG. That's something we dub one of our friends every trip: Least Fun Guy. I think I took my ribbing pretty good, and I had no problem with it as at that point none of them knew my plans were to get up early and get out of town. Clearly I had other things on my mind but how were they to know.
Saturday morning my wife told me to stay for the game and to try to have fun at least one day as there was nothing me coming home would solve. Instead of driving home Monday, I decided to comback early Sunday, and make the best of it in Austin. I think I had a much better showing and even managed to clear my head for a few thoughts. I think having told a few friends made it easier and kind of got the weight off my shoulders a little bit, and allowed me to relax a bit.
The game was fun. The conversation at the bar afterwards when the 15 us just talked smack and recounted old stories though was the highlight. I took my fair share but enjoyed it.
So, I returned home and we had a couple more doctor's appointments. Good news is, the really scary possibilities on the Internet are less likely. What's most likely are one of two things, one is a condition that can be treated with medicine and the other one that will need surgery. The second possibility has some scary outcomes, heart surgery on a newborn--ugh. If it's the second our newborn will need to be airlifted to Children's hospital for the procedure. While the really bad causes haven't been totally ruled out we were assured they are far less likely and are hoping it will just take medicine.
After an appointment yesterday, we moved up the date of the delivery and have been scrambling to get things done. Suddenly, everything is happening at once. I spilled the bad news on facebook even though I kind of subscribe to the maxim face your problems don't facebook them (..thought apparently I have no issues with blogging about them), however, the utility of social media is when you need to tell a lot of people about something and may not have the time to keep them individually updated, facebook is a great resource for this. I've really received some nice notes and inspirational messages from a ton of people on my friends list, so I glad we posted what we did.
As far as blogging, writing has always been therapeutic for me and this is less about whining about what I going through and more about dealing with it. The worst thing about this is it could be not much at all and a bunch of pointless worry. There are folks with tangible problems and mine, hopefully will be illusory. Anyway, that's the outcome I'm hoping for, so prayers much appreciated this week.
What's weird is while this very bad stuff has been going on, some really cool things have presented themselves at the same time. I'm really excited about an opportunity which in the coming months hopefully I'll be able to share with everybody.
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