Monday, December 05, 2011

A visit to Children's Hospital

This past week we just had a cystic fibrosis clinic. I always dread these clinics. Often I am reminded of my failures. My failure to fatten my child. My failure to be there as a doting mom, because often my health is very poor. My failure to fix my child's every need. Even though my head tells me these failures are out of my control, my heart still aches when she fails to meet the normal requirements of her health. I know I have no control over the infections she gets, I do everything to avoid them. Keep a clean house, stock my fridge with fresh foods, keep my children active, and give them the appropriate medications and vitamins. Still a part of me holds myself liable for a poor PFT, or for a virus, or poor weight gain. The mom in me tells my head.....hook her up more often to her G-tube, do more physio, make better , nutritious food. I beat myself up for all her bodily failures. I cringe in the parking lot every cf clinic. This clinic we went and did her PFT's first. Last visit she blew an 80 FEV, this time she blew an average of 100.....100%.....perfection. Her xrays were spot on, and her blood was great. Her vitamin levels where right on. We are just waiting for her sputum results. For the first time in a long time, I felt good leaving her clinic. I half expected it to be a joke, I truly was waiting for them to chase us into the parking garage to tell us they mixed up the test results. But here we are after a nice, quiet weekend, still no call from London. Still functioning . Still relishing in the results. Annika's lung function is amazing, all signs of infection in her blood are gone, she grew 2 cm and gained 3 lbs since her last visit in August. God is good.