Big Brother!

Man! My daughter found an amazing big brother in my son! I don’t have any siblings that have ever visited me in hospital or sent gifts ever! I know I once visited a half brother when he was in an accident some years ago.

But look at what my son sent through their dad for my angel!

Yes, she has a puke bowl next to her. Yes, she has puked. No, her favourite blanket didn’t survive the onslaught. It came without warning. I think part of it is because she doesn’t know how to identify nausea. She has told me tummy was SORE but I suspect she felt nausea. Who will ever know?

I now wait outside theatre after having gone in till she slept. It was weird being on the other side-watching, not the patient. I hope it was the last time though! It felt weird, watching her go off to sleep. They made me stand right next to her “so she doesn’t get scared” and hold her hand. She is SO not that kind of child! If she hadn’t already been given a sedative, she’d have rolled her eyes!

This has set my back back badly. If I have to sleep on a hard thin mattress again and spend endless hours seated ever again, I will turn into a statue of stone! Which might be preferable because stone doesn’t feel.

Well…Few hours after I started posting. We don’t know how things went. We were meant to be discharged tomorrow but treatment didn’t seem to have achieved as much as was hoped. I’m not surprised. When the surgeon and nurse wheeled her down, the surgeon asked the nurse if they HAD given her the IV antibiotics she was meant to have begun yesterday. Immediately told me that the inside of her leg was worse than what it should be. And it is. We might not leave tomorrow after all.

I’m home for one more hour and a half. In excruciating pain. I feel like I might as well be sitting at hospital because lying down has made no difference to the pain. In the evening, I go back to my hellacious thin hard chair bed. A Paed ward is its own kind of sleep hell. You know how hospitals are anyway- nurses waking you, machines beeping. But now with Paeds it’s like the time I had that weird woman singing gospel the whole night! Or the man when my husband was hospitalised who was shouting all day and night. Except in paeds it’s more than one noisy patient. It’s the toddler screaming “NO!” over and over again. It’s the baby crying. Over and over. Day and night. It’s a very uncomfortable sleeping place at night and a painful chair during the day. And it’s my own poor girl who is restless at night anyway (ADHD) so even when I did sleep, she’d wake me from angrily tossing and turning😅No wonder her teen sister wants to find her fast asleep when she goes to bed! The pediatrician has thankfully left more sleeping help for her if she struggles.

So…I don’t know if this is some new test from God to see if I will keep praising Him anyway, or if it’s a trial from the depths of hades. It’s not comfortable no matter who it’s coming from, but I know Who I aim to emulate when He was suffering.

From the highs of a thoughtful teen brother, to the lows of all day pain and no ability to reduce the pain or pressure on my body, and the low of wondering what’s wrong with my girl’s heart, and wondering if she will be discharged tomorrow or if we have to endure hospital even longer. And this is nothing compared to what some moms and children go through, I know that.

But it’s much more than many of the moms I personally know go through. So, I allow myself to mourn the washing waiting for me to fold it, the children I’m not seeing while in hospital, the hyperactive daughter stuck in a hospital pain with a very sore leg, and my very sore body. I rejoice that I was able to make dinner for my three remaining little ones before coming to hide from them. And I hope for something better.