Coming out of the Fog....or....maybe not. There are days that I feel like life is going to be OK, and then there are days that I feel like a sledge Hammer hit me and I can barely get myself out of bed. On those days when I do finally pull myself out of bed (usually to tend to the 4 lively kids downstairs), I find it calling me back to it like an hour later. I have been having this recurrent nightmare. Well, actually I have had it twice I should say..that makes it recurring, right? In it, Tucker is alive, but I didn’t know it. I had thought he had passed, but someone tells me in the dream that I am wrong and he has been in the ICU all this time. I cry and panic in my dream trying to get to him, but I don’t know how to get there. All the while thinking he’s been left alone all this time, and he must be so frightened. I’m hysterical. When I find him he is intubated and unable to communicate with us because he is sedated. In the dream, The doctors tell me he will be like this for years. In my panicked and frantic state I somehow get to him and I try and move and massage his limbs so he doesn’t need years of physical therapy when he does wake up...or worse, lose his hands and feet from lack of circulation. It is at this point, my alarm usually goes off and I wake up not knowing what my reality is. I read the following statistic this morning and could only think...well DUH!!! How could a parent not experience this after what we went through?! Apparently, research has shown that families facing childhood cancer are actually more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than are victims of shootings, armed robberies or natural disasters. Among teen cancer survivors in a National Child Traumatic Stress Network study, about 45 percent of their mothers and 35 percent of their fathers experienced moderate to severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder one year or more post-treatment. So bottom line, Childhood Cancer is the gift that keeps on giving. Too bad this is the kind of gift equatable to a Black Mamba snake wrapped up in black packaging. It is something that a parent will always live with no matter what the outcome is. In the Childhood Cancer world The Boogeyman really does exist.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 17:12:37 +0000
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