I’m often pretty casual when I talk about them.

My daughter’s medical issues, that is.

When listening to me, some people may think I’m being flippant or minimizing serious issues like “surgery” and “hospitalizations” and “heart valve replacements”. And you know what? When I listen to myself sometimes I guess I can hear that, too. But it’s actually not the case at all.
As a parent, when you are thrown into a world of life and death and medical chaos, it changes you. It doesn’t harden you. No. Not at all. Maybe it doesn’t even strengthen you. I know I don’t feel strong much of the time.

But what it does do is change your perspective on life in every way.

It makes things that once seemed big now seem little, and makes the little things now seem big.

It makes you put on your grown-up pants even when you don’t want to – just because you know you have to.

It makes things like hospital stays and never ending doctor follow-ups and foreshadowed surgeries seem normal. They are not, but for parents of kids with medical issues they are OUR normal. So we need to treat them that way – talk about them that way – so that we can feel normal.

And, also, so that we don’t completely crumble into pieces every single day.