Bubbles

Lots and lots of people are walking around Children's Hospital each day. The parents are mostly in their own little world or a personal bubble.  They have a child that must be cared for while they move through the day's activities. These activities are not always easy.   Their focus is on the anxious three year old, or 6 year old sitting with them. They just want to leave the hospital with the least amount of distress possible. The tired parents are constantly trying to be in control of their child, their emotions, the surroundings, the triggers that send their charge out of control.  It is an exhausting job and must be accomplished over and over.

The bubble surrounding the pair contains a small inner bubble containing the nervous child.  Most of the children in Cancer World know pain, stress and discomfort are coming.  They live in a world where no matter how hard everyone tries, it hurts, or causes pain or fear or anxiety or all of the above.  Kids work really hard to keep it all under control by playing games on their parent's IPads, making up stories about castles and keys and secret monsters. These children are in need of secret hiding place in their bubble.  The bubble is more important as the children gain understanding of what is happening.

Mary-Elizabeth and I  have been in a bubble for a long time but that is changing and for the good. Life in the bubble has it challenges.  We now seem to be in our own separate bubbles. Not that we don't join our bubbles on occasion defend against the world but that is becoming more rare.   Right now we are each working on putting ourselves back together. It is a slow and difficult solitary process.  The protection of the bubble is still necessary to make the healing possible.  I work to break into her bubble and try to dislodge it so she can float out into the world a little bit more.  Lunch with friends, a very vacant movie and just some time for giggling.  She is resistant but then she is a Cancer and had cancer twice so she is a bit hard to budge.   But then I am pretty stubborn.

I too am exploring the world a bit and trying to stretch my bubble.  Trip to Whidby Island, a trip to my former office.  A note to a friend, a call.  Small steps, safe steps, but steps just the same.

We welcome all that want to come and join us as we make these little steps.

I watched Lily yesterday while on Whidby Island.  She had such a good time.  But when her run was over, she always came back to join me. 

I guess we have all be running as fast as we could for so many months.  It is now time to find the way to rest and recoup in a different way, not to get ready for the next battle but now to prepare for the future, at last.