Sick
A short look on illness and 2022
Racing to the childrens hospital was not the family roadtrip we had planned. My daughter sat beside me in the backseat vomiting every 5-10 minutes and I held towels up for her tilted chin scared she’d forget to breathe.
She woke up like this at 2 am but it’s been a week of off and on stomach problems. Every time we get it “figured out” she has stomach pains again.
In moments like these I feel a weird sense of meeting another level of motherhood. As I silently cried in the backseat with street lights streaming beside us, I felt the knowledge I had been exactly where countless of mothers have been in the past, present, and will be in the future.
A lot of people are naturally talking about their 2023 goals or “word of the year.” I used to do both but this year I’m exhausted. I want us to be a healthier family.
Not defined by weight but by immune systems. God, help us all be healthier. There are too many friends with babies just as sick as our own. The pandemic began in 2020 but has it ever stopped or just morphed into cruel vines that sneak into our bodies’ walls and push away the siding.
We had Covid twice. RSV. Flu and colds. Unexplained pain and fatigue.
Wrap it all up in a bow of uncertainty over health insurance next year. The government says we make too much but I don’t understand how anyone could pay minimums of $250 for one person a month. How do we maintain a boat that is built with porous materials?
I want 2023 to be better but there are no real lists that will change what may come our way.
Forgive my long winded writing. There is hope, always. But this morning I am simply tired.