We’re back home and on the mend. It was a bit of a tough transistion, getting nursing care arranged for both at home and at school and so Lily was away from school longer than we had hoped, but she went back late last week and has been as happy as they come ever since. She’s had some rough moments where she has to ride out a little pain, but between the nurse, Tylenol and a little help from morphine, she feels good enough to zip around the school in her walker like she’s never been gone.
Part of me still feels like we’re there though. It was crazy to me how quickly everything at the hospital just became routine again, which is a testament for both how amazing Sick Kids is and for how much our first stay years ago has burrowed this little space in the back of my mind. How comfortable it was to wander downstairs to finally grab something to eat after finally getting Lily to sleep after the nursing changeover. How normal it feels to walk those hallways after most of the lights are out and it’s quiet with just staff and other parents around. How you get used to the back routes between clinics because you can’t fit a crib through the atrium elevators. So much of that place is just part of us now and while I had always thought that time would change that, it doesn’t really – it just slips to the background and stays hidden there, hoping that it will stay locked away with the rest of random information that you don’t really need to know.
So many of our trips this time were between our room on the 7th floor and the IGT clinic on the 2nd floor, and each time we walked the hallways of the critical care unit and the tiny waiting room that so many people have called home. The first time we walked through, the memory of rushing out to meet my sister there after Lily’s cardiac arrest hit me and almost brought me to my knees – I could feel the tears and my hands shaking, so grateful that we were there for such an “unserious” reason. I batted them away, feeling so annoyed with myself that I let that time take over my mind, but it’s so hard when it comes out of nowhere. I would be taking a photo of Lily, trying to get one to prove that she was smiling and laughing, and the image of her lying in her tiny little ICU crib would flash in front of my eyes. Jess and I would stand downstairs for a rare moment together and both of our eyes would wander to the second floor corridor that we walked through, rushing behind the paramedics. It all just replays again – the Sick Kids Mom PTSD. We say that with laughter, but the truth is stark behind it – ask any parent who has watched their child endure such grown-up experiences and they’ll tell you about PTSD. It exists in the bones and in the brains of each of us.
We’re home again though and like any sort of flare up, the feelings and the memories will go back into hiding again soon, allowing us to just focus on the good. The wound will soon be healed, the tube will go back to where it belongs and we will say goodbye to the daily nurse with the glorious morphine. We will go back to the daily routine of thinking about weight and development and how to keep the momentum going. We will start thinking about the end of SK and how best to move forward from an amazing 2 years. The spring will come and with it, good thoughts will hopefully drown out the memories that came to play this winter.
