I am sitting here, listening to my almost seven-week-old little girl cough and wheeze. I hate it. What’s worse is that her big sister is sick too. She’s two-years-old and as many of you know, she has cystic fibrosis. I have kept her healthy for two years knowing that someday she would get sick. That day came last week when she started sneezing and coughing for the first time. But, I was so focused on her and her health because of CF, that I didn’t protect my non-CF child from the same germs. So now, my non-CF child is in worse shape than my CF kid. Boy, do I feel guilty.
That raises the big question that I have in my head all the time. How do you raise two kids who have two completely different sets of survival needs? Maggie has to stay germ free, she has to eat a lot of food, and she has to do hours of treatments. Katie has to live like the rest of us. Sure, she should be germ free, but that isn’t a life or death situation like it is with Maggie. To Katie, a cold is a cold. To Maggie, a cold is easily a two-week, antibiotic using, and possible hospital stay ordeal. So, here I am, realizing that I neglected my “healthy” kid and she’s paying the price. I learned my lesson and here it is.
Each child, whether there’s a “special need” or not, is in need of the same care and concern. And while I know I didn’t actually neglect Katie, I know I let her down. And by letting Katie down, I let down Maggie too. Since Katie is now sick, I have less time to devote to Maggie and to getting her healthy again. It’s a vicious cycle. Here’s my new plan: don’t spread myself thin and be proactive. Had I not been so focused on my work on the day that Maggie was exposed to this cold, neither of my girls would have gotten it. If I had not been so obsessed with the fact that Maggie got a cold, I would have paid more attention to the fact that I wasn’t keeping up on sanitizing and hand washing. It was in my head that Maggie was already sick, so sanitizing myself wouldn’t protect her. Well, what about her baby sister? If I had kept Katie healthy, I would have more time to snuggle Maggie and make her feel better rather than listening to her cry for me while I tend to Katie.
So…. Next time: a germ is a germ is a germ and I need to protect both kids from them.