Looking the monster right in the eye.

           So, Thanksgiving has come and gone. Two holidays and so far no hospitalization this fall.   If we make it to New Years, Chris Hardwick needs to show up and award points.  If we make to Easter with none, I want medals and a brass band.  When you have a kid with special needs you get very good at short range tactical thinking. How to fit five or six out of town appointments with specialists in into a week, max.   How to pack at three am for an out of state hospitalization (that one you learn the HARD way.)  Exactly who must be called when you disappear for a week or two so no one freaks out and thinks you're angry at them/dead/abducted by aliens.   But regular long range plans are hard for us.  They take a leap of faith you sometimes don't realize you need.  You have to learn how not to overpack for visits to relatives. (Hint, you don't need all the equipment and you can put pertinent medical info on a thumb drive now, so no paper either.)  You have to remember not every gasp or freak out on the part of others means an emergency, sometimes they just don't know what our normal looks like.  You have to realize that gosh, darn it, other doctors in other towns went to med school too and did not just go to the barber's school of small pox and leeches.  But it is hard, you know.  You watch a kid like mine with a mixture of awe and fear at all times.  It's like Feisty Pants is the toughest Faberge Egg in the bunch. She is resilient and tough and feisty in ways I can only hope to be when I grow up, and yet a cold could lead to medivac helicopters and ventilators. 

             I write all this , by the way, not to bitch or whine  (I don't care what the rest of the freak commune masquerading as my family here says. Don't listen to them.)  I write all this because I want this blog to be an honest account of what the journey is really like with a special needs kid.  It is at all times a heady mix of fun, fear, and crazy.  It's not all beer and skittles but mostly because of our reaction to the circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.  And I listed fun first for a reason.   I have learned to take my victories and joys where and when I find them and that attitude has let me relax be a better parent.

             But, the holidays are upon us.  And my two smallest budgets, time and patience, are even more taxed than usual. There are relatives to visit and presents to make and/or buy.  Cards to write.  People to see.  Lists to accomplish.  A million things I need to remember that I know I won't remember until it is too late. And now, sigh, in the last few weeks we have all battled a tummy bug and then followed that up with a cold for good measure.  There were no issues that led us to an ER or hospital stay.  But there have been so many in the past.  At exactly this time of year.  So even though, we sailed through with no problems or complications, I will spend the rest the year looking at my feisty one with a slight amount of trepidation knowing that this time, we dodged a bullet.   And it could easily be next time, that we do not.