Communications and Learning Blog

I got a slap upside the head this week. But I felt so much better afterward.

I don't share much about challenges in my life outside work in this space, I have my own blog for that. But I'm making an exception because something compels me to share this.

I've been buried in to do lists for quite a few months now. Actually, more like a year. First I immersed myself in reimagining and remaking our website. Then ideas4oregon came along to fill the frantic-pace void. Because I'm taking a two week vacation soon, I've been making lists and checking them twice to get all my work tasks done so I can actually be successful at not thinking about work for 14 days for the first time in ages.

Of course, this past week (last week before vacation) went a little haywire. The wonderful woman who helps with my son's personal care was out sick for several days, which coincided with some over-the-top caregiving challenges rearing their not-so-pretty head. This was also the week for my son's annual checkup at the clinic that addresses the myriad of issues caused by his disability, so that day was pretty much shot.

I took my iPad with me to this appointment at Child Development & Rehabilitation Center at Doernbecher Hospital because I knew there would be lots of waiting between procedures and doctor appointments and I could get some work done.

That's when I got hit. As I was answering some email messages, I heard the mother sitting next to me say the adorable smiling six week old boy she was cradling in her lap has kidneys the size of a teenage boy and they are failing. Doctors at OHSU are trying to figure out why. And his life hangs in the balance.

This is one of the things that I get to experience being my son's mom. I get to be reminded what really matters. Like the time at Shriners Hospital where we sat next to a four year old boy with the most amazing head of blond curls and big blue eyes. And no legs or arms. He was screaming in pain as orthotics were being fitted to the very sensitive skin on the stumps of his limbs, while his father was doing his best not to scream along with him. Another time my son shared a hospital room with an 18 month old girl who had inoperable cancer throughout her abdomen. Her parents, unable to cope with this fate, did not come to visit her. It was all I could do to not take her home with us.

This is what children and families among us face. This is what has humbled me today. Once again I got so caught up in tasks and to do lists and lots of busy-ness and stuff that doesn't really matter and I lost sight again.

The mother was talking about how supportive some people from the March of Dimes had been, as even before her son was born, his enlarged kidneys had been diagnosed by ultrasound. She and another out-of-town mother were marveling over the love and care they receive at Ronald McDonald House, where they stay when their babies are hospitalized.

Having faced challenges myself that mothers I am sitting among are facing now, hearing how supported they are feeling, knowing it is nonprofit organizations doing that work... now I remember why I work where I do. And what that work is all about. I am reminded to set the to do lists and moving quickly to and fro and meetings and agendas aside for a while and remember what this is all about.

In the end, it all comes down to one mother and one baby, trying to make life work.

I'm going to try really hard to never forget that again.