The best medicine

Our little family has been through lots of medicines and supplements - especially in the past nearly three years (when I found out I was pregnant). Some work wonders right away, others take some time for the body to adjust to it. A lucky few have no side effects (or no side effects worth mentioning at least) and others....AAAAHHHHHH! Do you want to know what my favorite is?
A smile. From a stranger in the hospital halls, a doctor that is just as frustrated as I am, my children (their smiles light up my entire life) or even an old photograph of simpler times with smiling friends. Smiles are therapeutic.

William - 8 months old as Charlie Brown

Have you ever had the thought that things just possibly can't get any worse? Ask that to the parents that buried their child last week; the parents in the PICU today watching the clock and hoping they are granted another hour to hear their child's soft breath. Maybe this is just a sensitive subject for me in general. I've invited myself to my own pity party a couple of times for my own son's situation. Luckily, I just make an appearance - see the party is really a drag - and then get the Hell out of there! I don't know...even though I know life has been rough for my son sometimes...I just can't shake the feeling of "wow - how lucky are we!"

Matthew's last surgery and hospitalization before transplant

Two of our kidney friends are having a rough time at the moment. It affects me...maybe more than it should. But I can't help but put myself in their shoes...knowing that one day...it could easily be my son. I think making the hospital rounds so often in a young life, you do feel a connection and an empathy that perhaps others do not. I know I didn't - until it happened to me. When William was sick with a high fever and vomiting at 10 months old - I just thought the world needed to stop for us on the way to the ER. Now I see I overreacted a wee bit. ;) But it was my child in distress. Now when that happens, I offer up a little praise that it's just a virus and will run its course, happy to know it isn't something scary!
And when I find myself getting overwhelmed - I smile to myself. I might look a bit goofy to someone passing by, but I'm pretty goofy looking naturally already. ;) I have smiled while rocking a screaming, hungry and mighty angry 2 month old that was waiting for his turn in the OR, because it was one step closer to our goal of transplant. I've smiled through the vaccines of my first born, knowing all the pain he would be kept from in the future with just a couple of tiny pricks. I've smiled as my husband has boarded a cutter in the coast guard during our first year of marriage, because I knew eventually he would come back. I've smiled as I have visited my grandparents' graves, because now they are truly at peace.



Yes, smiling is often underrated. It helps. It heals. It doesn't take away all of the pain, but it acts as a rainbow during the storm. The promise that one day, the smile will be real...even if you think it won't. Just smile.