After five weeks of my son’s unexplained illness, two hospital stays, a zillion blood tests, one MRI, two ultrasounds (and one more on Monday), one echocardiogram, one EKG, a dose of IVIG, three X-rays, and two many examinations to count by numerous doctors, my sons STILL UNEXPLAINED illness seems to be disappearing as mysteriously as it arrived. The every-day fevers are gone. The bloodshot, conjunctivitis eyes are almost white again. The hip pain that moved to his knees, causing him to be unable to stand for more than a minute, has disappeared leaving just a small pain and a little fluid in his knees and ankles.ย His color is coming back, and he’s left only with slight anemia, a moderately enlarged spleen (that we hope we’ll discover on Monday has returned to its normal size), and a lack of endurance. Well, after such a long illness, it’s no wonder. (He did get a stomach virus that set him back two days as well…)
For a dancer wanting to do a week long dance intensive and then audition for a dance company and be involved in choreography for a whole week — and to do this just seven days from now, no endurance presents a problem. As does lack of muscle tone and generally being out of shape. And his whole year of dance depends upon the audition and choreography sessions. The intensive, while less important, is something he’s been looking forward to for months.
In any case, we are grateful for the fact that he seems, at long last, to be returning to health. But a weekend spent in the hospital so that the best doctors around could figure out what was wrong with us left us with no clear-cut answers. That remains a source of frustration. We are also frustrated by the fact that this illness caused him to miss more than half of his summer camp stay, something he loves and looks forward to almost as much as his dancing. And now it has put his participation in this intensive and his year of dance at risk as well. Not to mention that he also missed a bar mitzvah/reunion with all his camp friends…That leaves us wondering why this occurred? What was the good in this illness?
If I believe, which I firmly do, that God has a hand in everything and that everything is for the good, there must be something to learn from this experience? As hard as I have searched, I’ve found nothing, not one ounce of good.
Which leads me to the conclusion that when we can find no lesson in the “bad” events of our lives, the only thing we can do is find a place of gratitude. And that I can do.
I can feel grateful for Julian’s returning health.
I can feel grateful for the fact that he wasn’t one of the other children on 3E, the surgical wing at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital where we happened to get a bed, who had had surgery. My husband came to me in tears after seeing a child that had just had open heart surgery; he didn’t yet know that Julian’s heart was okay, since he’d left the hospital the night beforeย after Julian had been given a dose of IVIG, a course of human antibodies, when we thought he had some irregularities in the arteries to his heart possibly caused by having Kawasaki’s Disease. (We aren’t sure he really had that, and the doctors told me the next morning that his heart was perfectly healthy — before my husband arrived back at the hospital.) We cried together in gratitude that Julian’s heart was healthy and that wasn’t him with his chest cut open and stitched back up.
I can feel grateful that Julian is alive. I walked yesterday with my neighbor whose son committed suicide a year ago. And I watched a movie last night about a mother dealing with the death of her daughter.ย I can feel grateful my daughter is alive as well. And my husband.
Julian can be grateful each time he dances, because there were moments when we thought he might not dance again of for a long time…like when they thought he might have juvenile arthritis or a heart condition.
I can be grateful for my husband’s job and the insurance it provides that allowed us to go to the hospital for three nights and not worry about the cost.
I can be grateful for my Jewish renewal community, which responded with much loving kindness and concern when they heard about Julian’s illness.
I can be grateful for the three rabbis, Leah Novick, Paula Marcus, and Eli Cohen, who called me to check on me and on Julian.
I can be grateful for all those who included Julian in their misheberach prayers this past Friday after they learned of his illness…and for his friend Rocky who included him in his prayers while Julian was home from camp because he was sick…and my friend Linda Lee who is including him in her daily prayers. I know prayers work, and I see their affect on my son.
I can be grateful for great Western doctors who cared for him and for those who saw that he had been sick too long and needed to come into the hospital for testing.
I can be grateful to the Eastern doctor, Dr. Andrew Wu, whose acupuncture treatments and bad-smelling teas, have helped Julian more than anything else.
I can be grateful for my health and the health of my family…including Julian, who seems to be healthy today.
I can be grateful that all the testing has shown Julian basically to be a normal healthy kid.
There’s so much I can be grateful for — and I am. I do feel profoundly grateful.
And that seems to be the lesson. Maybe we will find something else good in this ordeal, but for now, gratitude seems to be enough.
