At Least it isn't Sepsis.

"At least it isn't Sepsis" I whispered to myself a half a dozen times this week when life wasn't going "as planed" and inconveniences popped up at almost every corner. It was one of those weeks where one annoying thing after another happened. A flat tire on Valentines day, A broken heater in the dead of winter, the dash of the car that's not in the garage lighting up like a Christmas tree just to name a few. 15 years ago when we were low on funds and even lower on life experience this week alone would be enough to send us to push us over the edge. Then life happened. We saw real chaos and heart break. We handed our son over for dozens of invasive surgeries including a full scull repair, multiple abdominal surgeries and even surgeries that days afterwards failed, split right at the seems. We've sat bedside during painful intestinal folding and even blockages that wreaked havoc on his gut and took months to heal. We've handed his unresponsive little body over to the anesthesiologist later to find out his tiny body went into hypoglycemic shock and cause him to go into an unresponsive state. Then, there was Sepsis. Infection raged through his blood like a swarm of angry bees protecting their honey. With in 10 hours of the first symptom, he was unresponsive, heart rate soaring into the 200s and an uncontrollable fever. He was sick. As Dan and I stood still the room filled with busyness. Drs. from all floors came in to assess him. Several nurses blousing fluids, checking his monitors and administering medicines to keep him alive. The hardest part of that terrifying night is he couldn't say "I love you and daddy too". He always includes both parents when he says "I love you too" but that night he couldn't say anything.....That's when life felt more fragile than even and nothing else mattered. That's sepsis. That's a certain kind of hell I wish no one ever had to experience.
The truth is, we all have our "sepsis". We've all fought impossible battles. We've fought our demons. We've seen heart break and have been in a place where time stood still and we weren't sure it would ever start moving again. We all fight hard battles. Sepsis just happens to be the most recent fresh hell that knocked us over and left us scared. When life starts to get hard and it feels like one inconvenience after another keeps popping up, remember your sepsis. Throw your brain back into a positive state and get shit done. Getting stuck on flat tires and broken furnaces isn't going to help anything and it's not going to be your last flat tire or broken furnace. So put your big girl panties on, call a friend to complain than remind yourself, "At least is isn't sepsis" because you, you can do hard things!