This Will Hurt Me Much More than it Hurts You

Watching your kid deal with a sickness or an injury has to be one of the toughest parts of parenting.

Sydney has had a cold for three weeks. It comes with a nasty cough, and she sounds like a lifetime three-pack-a-day smoker. I have the same cold and I personally know it is accompanied by – warning: too much information coming – a particularly thick, nasty phlegm. The poor girl doesn’t have the ability to blow her nose or clear her throat, so I know she is suffering. It is particularly bad when you lay down to sleep and I cringe every time I hear her coughing jag through the baby monitor.

I would gladly take on this cold for three months if it would save her a week from it.

I feel completely helpless when my daughter is sick. My wife and I fret over her, wonder when to take her to the doctor and generally feel every sneeze, sniffle or cough as a piercing arrow to our heart. The old saying “this is going to hurt me much more than it does you” certainly applies to parents when their children are sick.

This all makes me dread the upcoming heart surgeries Baby Gregg #2 is facing. (Still have not settled on a name. Tyson is now the clubhouse leader.) I can’t even watch Sydney get a shot – yes, I really do walk to the other side of the room, turn my head and then immediately swoop back in afterward to comfort her – so how am I going to handle doctors carving up my tiny son’s chest like a Thanksgiving turkey?

Moreover, how does one deal with all the pain a child will be in after major surgery? All the medicines being pumped into them? The sight of their fragile bodies surrounded by the constant hum and whirr of medical equipment working to keep them alive?

I always thought I was a tough guy. Then I became a parent. When it is happening to you, it is manageable. When it is happening to your kid, it is agony.

Don’t get me wrong. I know this is going to be needed if my son is to have a chance, so I am 1000 percent in support of the surgeries. But I dread the whole situation.

My wife said the other night she just wishes she could keep him in her belly because she knows he is safe. Once he comes out, he faces life or death.

I have no doubt she’d be willing to carry that boy for years if it meant he’d be safe.

I once heard someone say you spend the first 18 years of our child’s life just hoping you can get them safely to adulthood. That is your main responsibility – keeping them safe. You’d think that would be fairly easy. But it is amazing how much they can get into.

I turned my back for a second one day and Sydney was nine steps up the stairway. If she had fallen back, she could have killed herself. I can’t imagine when she is 4 and I take my eyes off her while in the yard and she darts into oncoming traffic.  

We’ve been trying to do more walking with Sydney. She needs the exercise and the doctor said it is a good way to break up the gunk in her chest. This weekend, we had her walking our long driveway. She fell and got a nasty scratch on her head. This was after she had fallen into a wooden chair leg and got a bump in just about the same spot. Before that, she had rolled off the couch at a friend’s house and hit the edge of the coffee table, giving herself a bruised cheek.

If my old co-workers at Job and Family Services saw her, I might be the subject of a 241-KIDS call.

Every time she falls, it cuts right to my heart. You feel like the worst parent on earth for letting it happen. We keep telling ourselves that kids will fall or get hurt and we have to get used to it, but I doubt we ever will.

I guess, in a way, I don’t want to. Having a child has awakened emotions in me that I long thought were gone. I don’t ever want to lose those again.

We should know more on March 26 what the plan of care is for our son. We’ll have another echocardiogram and meet with a cardiologist, high-risk obstetrician and some other doctors to get a sense of how many operations, how long in the hospital, whether we can care for him at home or not, etc. It is amazing to me that they can take a picture of my son’s heart through my wife’s belly – it can’t be any larger than a thumbnail right now – and know exactly what is wrong with it and what it will take to fix it.

I’ll be glad to have some answers, no matter how painful.

Parenting can bring you to your knees.