in september 2009, parker (aka sparky) came home from his first day of school feeling sick. within 6 weeks, he was in a wheelchair.
.JPG)
i vividly remember that little blue wheelchair. how tiny it was. how small sparky looked in it. how frail he was.
at the time, it was inconceivable to imagine that he would outgrow that chair and need another. and then another. that over the next 5 years, growth kits, frame sizes and picking colors on the lastest model would be in relation to a wheelchair and not bikes.
i have a vivid recollection of when sparky began to lose control of his legs. he was walking down the school hallway and his legs just kept giving out from under him. he had a dramatic wobbly limp and then every few steps, his jelly legs would buckle and he'd fall to the floor. after a few moments, he would painstakingly push himself off the floor and gripping the wall for support, he would start the whole process of stumbling, falling, picking himself up again all the way down the endless hall to his classroom. it was a terrifying and heartbreaking sight to see. i remember his teacher, who was walking down the hall with us, suddenly grasping my arm and with tears in her eyes and a catch in her throat whispering, "This is breaking my heart."
it was the type of heartbreak that knocked the wind out of you
and it would be like this for the next 5 years.
i don't know how he possessed the gumption to keep going but it is this example of his deep-seated, quiet determination that would help him persevere thru the days, weeks, months and years that followed.
.JPG)
his deterioration happened at lightening speed. in a short 6 week time frame, he went from this stumbling walk to having to rely on a wheelchair to get around. by the end of october, he had to crawl on his hands and knees to get around our home. by november, he could no longer crawl but just pulled himself along on his belly. by december, he had days where he lacked the strength to move at all. he often had to be carried by his dad or brother.
he lost 15lbs in 3 weeks. his eyes became sunken and dulled with pain. he had rashes, migraines, nausea and difficulty breathing. he developed full body tremors and night time incontinence. he endured hallucinations, rages and his cognitive and processing abilities ebbed away. he could no longer hold a pencil or write. he often needed help to feed himself. and then there was the pain. always there was the relentless and agonizing joint pain. no amount of pain medication, IV or otherwise, ever provided relief.
it is gutting to watch your child suffer and not be able to alleviate it. it chips away at your very soul.
these painful memories flood back as vivid as the days and years that they occurred. i write of it now, not out of some macabre sense of dredging up old pain or revisiting old haunts...no, quite the contrary. i look back on these memories and am stunned that we are still standing today. that sparky is standing.
here's the thing. the standing and walking part, well, we don't know if or for how long that will last. we praise God that he has not needed his wheelchair since january 2014 and he has been stably improved since late spring 2014. but this could change in the blink of an eye. you never know with this disease. that is the reality of living with a chronic and incurable disease. there is no cure yet and there is no magical, miracle formula to bring about remission - the fight has been long and arduous...5 years and counting. it has taken 5 years of daily fist fulls of pills, 3 years of daily IV antibiotics, an extensive and exhaustive regime of complementary medicine - homeopathic, herbal and traditional chinese medicine, along with biofeedback and intensive physiotherapy to get to this point.
and there is still healing ahead of him. and he's not walking out of this battle without the wounds of war following him. one does not lose 5 years of their childhood to a haze of suffering and pain and not have grief and loss to process. and he's wrestling with his faith and his relationship with God. he doesn't see the purpose in all that he has endured but he says that he believes that one day it'll all make sense. and he is keeping his heart and mind open to seeing that.
when he entered this shadow land of suffering, he was a little boy of nine...now he is emerging as a young man. he will be 15 in a month. he stands tall (taller than momster!) and he is tall in bravery, strength, courage, and spirit.
and that tall in spirit part is the miracle in all of this. that a child at the age of 9 can endure 5 years of relentless suffering and pain, essentially become cut off and shut away from the world and yet come out of this standing tall and unbroken...
well isn't that the miracle in all of this?
i share this today because i know that there are other momsters out there aching with the wounding that comes from the long nights of nursing the broken, gasping bodies of their babes.
i know the despair of living the words incurable and chronic. i know the way that reality rips your heart out and then tramples it underfoot.
i know the despair and the terror that fills every fiber of your being and reaches into every recess of your mind when your child looks you dead in the eyes and says he'd rather die than go on living.
i know the horror of hearing your child endlessly screaming in agonizing pain. i know the devastation and heartbreak that follows when your attempts to bring them comfort, relief or solace fail. i know that a little piece of your heart will never ever recover from that.
i know that their pain is your pain and you will carry it with you until the day that you die.
i know that there is never enough of you to go around. i know the fear of what incurable and congenital disease means to your future. i know that you worry endlessly about your other children and their future and the future generations to come. i know you fear that if no cure comes, your grand babies may one day suffer.
i know the unwelcome resentments that filter in when you hear other parents complaining about how exhausting it is to drive their kid from activity to activity or get up for early morning practices.
i know how glancing into the car next to you at a stop light and seeing a kid in sports gear makes your heart wrench violently in your chest.
i know that you are exhausted from running IVs at all hours of the night. i know that the only car ride your baby takes is to and from doctors appointments.
i know how you want to scream and rail at how unfair it all is. i know how ashamed you feel to begrudge another parent their healthy child. i know how you feel guilty about that flicking line of resentment that weaves its way up from your knotted gut and lands strangle hold in your throat.
i know that you must be more than just a momster.
i know the weight of being responsible for making tough medical decisions and that those decisions keep you up at night. i know that sometimes there are no good treatment choices and how you wish for clear cut answers and not choices that include this or that devastating side effects.
i know the hours and hours and hours spent scouring medical files, researching medical literature in order to educate yourself on this thing that has a choke hold on your baby.
i know that some diseases come with a call to advocacy. i know that that work can burn you out. i know that the desire to educate others, to make a difference, to find a cure, to spare another, to support a newbie is the fire that drives you...even when you have nothing left to give.
i know what its like to live with your heart imploding on a daily basis. i know the screams you stifle, the grief you stuff and the strength it takes to just keep your head above the water.
i know that you lie on the bathroom floor in a limp exhausted heap in the middle of the night, with silent tears streaming down your face. and you wonder how, just how in the world, will you find the strength to pick yourself up and face another day...let alone, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime.
i know that the fight to keep your baby alive will take precedence over keeping other relationships alive. i know that you will be judged on this. i know that know one will ever really know how you feel. i know how quickly the crowd will thin exponentially. that who you thought would be your "go to" people at the start will be no where to be found. i know that very few will have the stamina to be there for the long haul.
i know that unless you have lived the incurable, you cannot understand the sense of loss, the grief, the isolation, the relentlessness, the desperation, and the endlessness of it all.
i know that a childhood shattered by relentless suffering will take you to dark and desperate places. it will challenge your faith in God. it will make you question His Goodness, His faithfulness, His purpose and His plan. it will have you on your knees, face on the floor, fist pounding the earth. i know you will plead with God for mercy. for wisdom. for healing. for guidance. for forbearance. for strength. for relief. and in the most desolate of hours, you will bargain with Him.
i know that quite possibly the deepest ache, the most pressing heartbreak is the worry that your baby will suffer irreparable damage to their spirit and that they will lose their hope along the way.
that their suffering will whittle away at the essence of who they are and who they believe themselves to be and how they see themselves in relation the world and to the ONE who created it and them.
yeah, that.
perhaps, it is the deepest, most aching worry of a momster. the one that keeps you up at night and presses in hard and heavy on your chest. the kind that makes it hard to breath around. the weight of it refluxing you into a fetal balled position of desperation.
the kind that makes you feel very, very small and very, very helpless.
have courage, dear hearts - the incurable, that curse-able, despicable word that it is, does not have to be that which defines us, our children, or our lives. it does not have to break them...rather it can be the making of them.
.JPG)
.JPG)
i vividly remember that little blue wheelchair. how tiny it was. how small sparky looked in it. how frail he was.
at the time, it was inconceivable to imagine that he would outgrow that chair and need another. and then another. that over the next 5 years, growth kits, frame sizes and picking colors on the lastest model would be in relation to a wheelchair and not bikes.
i have a vivid recollection of when sparky began to lose control of his legs. he was walking down the school hallway and his legs just kept giving out from under him. he had a dramatic wobbly limp and then every few steps, his jelly legs would buckle and he'd fall to the floor. after a few moments, he would painstakingly push himself off the floor and gripping the wall for support, he would start the whole process of stumbling, falling, picking himself up again all the way down the endless hall to his classroom. it was a terrifying and heartbreaking sight to see. i remember his teacher, who was walking down the hall with us, suddenly grasping my arm and with tears in her eyes and a catch in her throat whispering, "This is breaking my heart."
it was the type of heartbreak that knocked the wind out of you
and it would be like this for the next 5 years.
i don't know how he possessed the gumption to keep going but it is this example of his deep-seated, quiet determination that would help him persevere thru the days, weeks, months and years that followed.
.JPG)
his deterioration happened at lightening speed. in a short 6 week time frame, he went from this stumbling walk to having to rely on a wheelchair to get around. by the end of october, he had to crawl on his hands and knees to get around our home. by november, he could no longer crawl but just pulled himself along on his belly. by december, he had days where he lacked the strength to move at all. he often had to be carried by his dad or brother.
he lost 15lbs in 3 weeks. his eyes became sunken and dulled with pain. he had rashes, migraines, nausea and difficulty breathing. he developed full body tremors and night time incontinence. he endured hallucinations, rages and his cognitive and processing abilities ebbed away. he could no longer hold a pencil or write. he often needed help to feed himself. and then there was the pain. always there was the relentless and agonizing joint pain. no amount of pain medication, IV or otherwise, ever provided relief.
it is gutting to watch your child suffer and not be able to alleviate it. it chips away at your very soul.
.JPG) |
| Doctor's notes from Sparky's medical files |
these painful memories flood back as vivid as the days and years that they occurred. i write of it now, not out of some macabre sense of dredging up old pain or revisiting old haunts...no, quite the contrary. i look back on these memories and am stunned that we are still standing today. that sparky is standing.
here's the thing. the standing and walking part, well, we don't know if or for how long that will last. we praise God that he has not needed his wheelchair since january 2014 and he has been stably improved since late spring 2014. but this could change in the blink of an eye. you never know with this disease. that is the reality of living with a chronic and incurable disease. there is no cure yet and there is no magical, miracle formula to bring about remission - the fight has been long and arduous...5 years and counting. it has taken 5 years of daily fist fulls of pills, 3 years of daily IV antibiotics, an extensive and exhaustive regime of complementary medicine - homeopathic, herbal and traditional chinese medicine, along with biofeedback and intensive physiotherapy to get to this point.
and there is still healing ahead of him. and he's not walking out of this battle without the wounds of war following him. one does not lose 5 years of their childhood to a haze of suffering and pain and not have grief and loss to process. and he's wrestling with his faith and his relationship with God. he doesn't see the purpose in all that he has endured but he says that he believes that one day it'll all make sense. and he is keeping his heart and mind open to seeing that.
when he entered this shadow land of suffering, he was a little boy of nine...now he is emerging as a young man. he will be 15 in a month. he stands tall (taller than momster!) and he is tall in bravery, strength, courage, and spirit.
and that tall in spirit part is the miracle in all of this. that a child at the age of 9 can endure 5 years of relentless suffering and pain, essentially become cut off and shut away from the world and yet come out of this standing tall and unbroken...
well isn't that the miracle in all of this?
 |
| Sparky - August 2014 Overlooking Noth Van from top of Lynn Peak |
i share this today because i know that there are other momsters out there aching with the wounding that comes from the long nights of nursing the broken, gasping bodies of their babes.
i know the despair of living the words incurable and chronic. i know the way that reality rips your heart out and then tramples it underfoot.
i know the horror of hearing your child endlessly screaming in agonizing pain. i know the devastation and heartbreak that follows when your attempts to bring them comfort, relief or solace fail. i know that a little piece of your heart will never ever recover from that.
i know that their pain is your pain and you will carry it with you until the day that you die.
i know that there is never enough of you to go around. i know the fear of what incurable and congenital disease means to your future. i know that you worry endlessly about your other children and their future and the future generations to come. i know you fear that if no cure comes, your grand babies may one day suffer.
i know the unwelcome resentments that filter in when you hear other parents complaining about how exhausting it is to drive their kid from activity to activity or get up for early morning practices.
i know how glancing into the car next to you at a stop light and seeing a kid in sports gear makes your heart wrench violently in your chest.
i know that you are exhausted from running IVs at all hours of the night. i know that the only car ride your baby takes is to and from doctors appointments.
i know that you must be more than just a momster.
i know the weight of being responsible for making tough medical decisions and that those decisions keep you up at night. i know that sometimes there are no good treatment choices and how you wish for clear cut answers and not choices that include this or that devastating side effects.
i know the hours and hours and hours spent scouring medical files, researching medical literature in order to educate yourself on this thing that has a choke hold on your baby.
i know that some diseases come with a call to advocacy. i know that that work can burn you out. i know that the desire to educate others, to make a difference, to find a cure, to spare another, to support a newbie is the fire that drives you...even when you have nothing left to give.
i know what its like to live with your heart imploding on a daily basis. i know the screams you stifle, the grief you stuff and the strength it takes to just keep your head above the water.
i know that you lie on the bathroom floor in a limp exhausted heap in the middle of the night, with silent tears streaming down your face. and you wonder how, just how in the world, will you find the strength to pick yourself up and face another day...let alone, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime.
i know that the fight to keep your baby alive will take precedence over keeping other relationships alive. i know that you will be judged on this. i know that know one will ever really know how you feel. i know how quickly the crowd will thin exponentially. that who you thought would be your "go to" people at the start will be no where to be found. i know that very few will have the stamina to be there for the long haul.
i know that unless you have lived the incurable, you cannot understand the sense of loss, the grief, the isolation, the relentlessness, the desperation, and the endlessness of it all.
i know that a childhood shattered by relentless suffering will take you to dark and desperate places. it will challenge your faith in God. it will make you question His Goodness, His faithfulness, His purpose and His plan. it will have you on your knees, face on the floor, fist pounding the earth. i know you will plead with God for mercy. for wisdom. for healing. for guidance. for forbearance. for strength. for relief. and in the most desolate of hours, you will bargain with Him.
i know that quite possibly the deepest ache, the most pressing heartbreak is the worry that your baby will suffer irreparable damage to their spirit and that they will lose their hope along the way.
that their suffering will whittle away at the essence of who they are and who they believe themselves to be and how they see themselves in relation the world and to the ONE who created it and them.
yeah, that.
perhaps, it is the deepest, most aching worry of a momster. the one that keeps you up at night and presses in hard and heavy on your chest. the kind that makes it hard to breath around. the weight of it refluxing you into a fetal balled position of desperation.
the kind that makes you feel very, very small and very, very helpless.
have courage, dear hearts - the incurable, that curse-able, despicable word that it is, does not have to be that which defines us, our children, or our lives. it does not have to break them...rather it can be the making of them.
.JPG)
how do you survive year 1? year 2? year 3? year 4? year 5 and on - how do you survive a lifetime of the incurable?
how do you survive the endlessness of it all?
you survive by allowing Him to carry you. carry all of it. there is no other way i know how.
when the snot is pouring out of your nose as fast as the tears are beating a salty path down your cheeks, and you are angry and confused and scared and screaming, "why my kid?", you just have to give it to Him. you give them to Him.
.JPG)
He carries us because that is who God is. that is what God does. and it is what God did - He sacrificed his son. Jesus, brutally crucified on a cross, His body broken then brought back to life, in order to redeem our broken lives in this broken world. and that allows His supernatural power to take up residence in our lives and that is what keeps us keeping on when the way is so broken and endless.
it is because of Him and His sacrifice that we have hope. and it is in this that we can find the strength to carry us through. just as we have had to carry our son's broken body over the past 5 years, God has carried us.
this lyme thing, well, it is a horrific journey - i know that the strength we have had to persevere and endure has come from Him. i know He has carried us every. single. step of the way because the pain and the suffering has been so very all encompassing that we could not, cannot, bear it without His supernatural strength to sustain us.
we have the strength to stand today because He carried us.
2 Corinthians 4:7-10 & 16 Amplified Bible (AMP)
7 However, we possess this precious treasure [the divine Light of the Gospel] in frail, human vessels of earth, that the grandeur and exceeding greatness of the power may be shown to be from God and not from ourselves.
8 We are hedged in (pressed) on every side [troubled and oppressed in every way], but not cramped or crushed; we suffer embarrassments and are perplexed and unable to find a way out, but not driven to despair;
9 We are pursued (persecuted and hard driven), but not deserted [to stand alone]; we are struck down to the ground, but never struck out and destroyed;
10 Always carrying about in the body the liability and exposure to the same putting to death that the Lord Jesus suffered, so that the [[a]resurrection] life of Jesus also may be shown forth by and in our bodies.
16 Therefore we do not become discouraged (utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear). Though our outer man is [progressively] decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being [progressively] renewed day after day.
you survive by allowing Him to carry you. carry all of it. there is no other way i know how.
when the snot is pouring out of your nose as fast as the tears are beating a salty path down your cheeks, and you are angry and confused and scared and screaming, "why my kid?", you just have to give it to Him. you give them to Him.
.JPG)
He carries us because that is who God is. that is what God does. and it is what God did - He sacrificed his son. Jesus, brutally crucified on a cross, His body broken then brought back to life, in order to redeem our broken lives in this broken world. and that allows His supernatural power to take up residence in our lives and that is what keeps us keeping on when the way is so broken and endless.
it is because of Him and His sacrifice that we have hope. and it is in this that we can find the strength to carry us through. just as we have had to carry our son's broken body over the past 5 years, God has carried us.
this lyme thing, well, it is a horrific journey - i know that the strength we have had to persevere and endure has come from Him. i know He has carried us every. single. step of the way because the pain and the suffering has been so very all encompassing that we could not, cannot, bear it without His supernatural strength to sustain us.
we have the strength to stand today because He carried us.
2 Corinthians 4:7-10 & 16 Amplified Bible (AMP)
7 However, we possess this precious treasure [the divine Light of the Gospel] in frail, human vessels of earth, that the grandeur and exceeding greatness of the power may be shown to be from God and not from ourselves.
8 We are hedged in (pressed) on every side [troubled and oppressed in every way], but not cramped or crushed; we suffer embarrassments and are perplexed and unable to find a way out, but not driven to despair;
9 We are pursued (persecuted and hard driven), but not deserted [to stand alone]; we are struck down to the ground, but never struck out and destroyed;
10 Always carrying about in the body the liability and exposure to the same putting to death that the Lord Jesus suffered, so that the [[a]resurrection] life of Jesus also may be shown forth by and in our bodies.
16 Therefore we do not become discouraged (utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear). Though our outer man is [progressively] decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being [progressively] renewed day after day.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.PNG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.PNG)
.JPG)