My husband and I were sitting around today thinking of all the things that have gone wrong in our lives since we have been married. Now I am not talking about us adopting the three wonderful kids that we have I am strictly talking medical.
First my husband got diagnosed with testicular cancer and then the next year I had to have emergency appendectomy and then got diagnosed with breast cancer. Since that I have had 23 surgeries for reconstruction and problems related to it. I had to have my gallbladder removed.
My husband is now in the hospital for a kidney removal and has been in the hospital for 2 weeks so far and we don’t know when he is coming home. My reason for mentioning this is because our kids are having a hard time adjusting to Dad being in the hospital. In theory they should be used to us being in and out of the hospital but the reality is that even I am not used to that. The kids have had to deal with a lot that of things that their friends have not had to.
Whenever one of us is in the hospital we make appoint to try to eat dinner with him at the hospital but going into week 2 it is getting a little costly so we are visiting for a few hours every day, calling before school and before bed time too. But the kids are still having some problems adjusting.
It is really weird for me seeing how each of the kids is dealing with it differently. My daughter is working harder than ever to get awesome grades and seems to be adjusting ok. Our 10 year old is doing ok at school but when it comes to home and the nightly rituals that Dad usually does he is having a very hard time. For the first week he was ok but when he thought he would be coming home this past weekend and is still not being able to come home. When he heard that he is having mini meltdowns every night for an hour or two just crying that he wants Dad to tuck him in. Our oldest son who is a B honor roll student is all of a sudden failing tests for the last 2 weeks. He is making stupid little paper spinner’s in class all day. I know he is doing this so that he is making the spinners to help keep his mind off his Dad being sick but we do not know how long he is going to be in there so I need to figure out how we can help them adjust and be ok with this.
Any suggestions?