Monday, September 10, 2012

It Can Always Get Worse

It has been one hell of a week. Maybe two. Cadence was supposed to leave for Prague last Thursday but ended up at Cottage Hospital with a kidney infection instead. Today is Monday, and she is still there. Her kidney infection developed into pneumonia and she has now gone five days without food. Nothing sounds appealing. She is nauseous. She has thrown up. Life takes a turn we never anticipated, never dreamed could happen to us and now what? Her flight to Prague got rescheduled twice, maybe three times by now, with no anticipation of a quick departure at this point. Now all we want is some progress towards regaining health. All we want is a consistently normal temperature, and an apatite. We want an apatite and actual food consumption.

While all this is happening to Cadence, the world continues to turn and others in the family fall into their own small crises. Someone has panic attacks about gym class, someone is stressed about their future, someone's car has broken down for the third time in five days, someone's room is infested with fleas, someone just wont eat, and someone (me) is just trying to keep her chin up and keep moving forward.

It can always get worse, so I realize this week that instead of being weighed down by all the shit that keeps on happening, we should all just dodge and weave, picking ourselves up and taking a sip of soup to regain our strength. We can't give up on life when it starts showering us with challenges. We have to keep a neutral stance, taking each calamity as it comes and doing our best to get through it all, expecting that we will not anticipating that we won't.

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