the other day i took douglas to cincinnati children's hospital to have his hips checked. it's a routine protocol for babies who are born breech to ensure that dysplasia hasn't occurred. thankfully, the ultrasound scan came back perfectly normal and his hips are in ship-shakira-shape. a truth that for many other children we saw that day, was not the case. as i pushed my healthy happy boy in his stroller through the glossy halls of the hospital, we were met with the faces of sick children i have seldom seen in real life. the faces reserved for the gut-wrenching saint jude's hopsital commericals that come out around christmas time and particularly horrific episodes of grey's anatomy. we saw parents in waiting areas with cups of coffee and a look of fatigue i have never known. the kind of tired, i would guess, that comes with having a child who is sick. relentless in nature. unkind and unwavering. as we sat before going back for doug's ultrasound i looked around at all the different children waiting to be seen. young children. old children. babies. someone's baby. every race, gender, social-economic class, ethnicity and beyond. children and their loved ones with dreams and hopes and ambitions and goals. brought together because of a shared commonality: being unwell. that's the thing about illness. it doesn't discriminate. i talked to the technician who performed doug's ultrasound as she worked. i told her how humbled i was. how torn apart i felt. gutted after spending less than an hour bearing witness to such pain. i asked her how she did it. how she combated the cold truths hidden beneath the surfaces of the mickey mouse murals, brightly colored elevators and princess stickers. she was so bright and cheery and utterly delightful. i can't imagine the sadness she's seen. perhaps even felt herself. the terrible results she's had to place flatly on her expression, because she isn't at liberty to share them with the families. she simply smiled at me. she told me matter-of-factly that even in the most dire of circumstances things could always be worse. and i suppose she's right. then she told me that my son's hips were perfectly ok, and that she wasn't supposed to tell me that until the doctor looked at the results but she knows how moms worry. and she was right about that too. i've felt differently after visiting the hospital. stirred, in a way. i can't stop thinking about the faces i saw. i can't shake the images from my head. and i'm not upset about it. i want to remember those faces. those families. i hope they remain ingrained on my heart and etched in my memory so that the next time i start to feel sorry for myself i can jolt myself with a dose of reality. it's funny, i was thinking about teaching and how whenever we took prayer requests in school, no matter what, i always had a kiddo who asked to pray for sick kids. don't get me wrong, we prayed for a lot of dogs and cats, siblings, parents and the occasional "bird i saw on the side of the road this morning" (may he/she/they rest in peace) in kindergarten. but i always had someone raise their hand and ask to pray for kids who are sick. and i can't help but wonder now if that's because some of my students have also born witness to the sadness that encountered. to the reality that stares you down when you see a tiny human in distress. when you see anyone in distress. i sincerely hope that this post isn't taken as a pity token for families suffering with children who are ill. i mean it to be nothing of the sort. i only wish to offer my experience in the hopes that maybe someone out there has encountered something similar and has felt the uneasiness i have. i urge you to lean into it, and do something good with it if you can. that day, and every day since, i have said an extra "thank you" to the big man upstairs for the health of my child and prayed blessings and peace over families whose circumstances aren't as fortunate as mine. i have bad days. really bad days, sometimes. i have moments when i forget what a gift it is to have breath in my lungs, a heart in my chest and a brain in my noggin. moments when i forget what a gift it is to have a son and family who also share those things. and if you've had those moments too then i leave you with the words of the lovely ultrasound tech at children's hospital: it could always be worse. and i wish that for you, it gets better. and it will. xo
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