just for a little while

This week has been one of scary ups and downs.  My son is sick.  He just has a cold, nothing more, but that's all it takes.

Even the slightest shot to his immune system and his tiny body goes into panic mode.  He swings huge on the pendulum of blood sugars, from lows in the 60s this week to numbers far too high.  Numbers that test the capability of the machines and warrant emergency phone calls to doctor's cell phones.

Things tend to get canceled around here when he gets like this.  Appointments changed, chores ignored.  Sometimes we're so busy either trying to get him to eat, trying to get him to settle down, trying to figure out what is going on in his little body, that nothing else matters.

He's not yet been diagnosed with type 1, but as time marches on it seems more and more likely that we're headed that way.

Having a child like him does wonders for perspective, let me tell you.

Very little else in the world matters when a child is sick.

As much as he may test my patience and my will and my energy, I am grateful for those times now more than ever.  I'm happy when he can just be a four year old boy.

He hasn't left my sight for long this week, and I'm spent.  I'm drained.  I'm worried.  I'm nervous.

For what is now, for what may be.

Back when this all started, I wrote about how we were stuck in this strange limbo phase.  Months later, we're still here, though the swings on the pendulum are greater now.  That's probably not a good sign, by the way.

When he's not feeling well, he attaches himself to my person.  I joke about wanting a pouch like mama kangaroos have, but there are times when it would really be useful.  These past few days, he's hit the wall just after lunch, when the sugars rise their highest for him, and curled up in my lap.  Asked me to lay down with him, nuzzled in and fallen asleep.



In those moments, I am so tremendously thankful that he's still small enough to do this.  That he still comes to me when he's not feeling well.  That I am his safe place to land.  He seeks comfort from me, even if he wakes up and soon thereafter proclaims that he is a big boy.

He is still my baby, just for a little while.