Term 3 begins

Well School goes back today in Western Australia and for me its a bit of mixed blessings. 1, I will have no excuses for  procrastinating with the  jobs I need to get finished before the house goes on the market. 2, I wont have to listen to the kids say I'm bored what can we do then they  turn their noses up at my suggestions(clean the bathroom, vacuum the floors). 3, having sweet silence and order in my house again- well for 6 hours anyway. Then there's the biggy, the mixed part of the whole deal. Today I will be worrying about the oldest all day till he gets home. 


The lad has been a bit unwell over the past week. Although yesterday he seemed to perk up, this morning he has woken  and he has some serious dark circles under the eyes, face is pale  and the poor thing has  a sore throat and stuffy nose.. Sad that I am actually happy that he has a virus really, but if you knew his story you would understand that him coming down with a virus means the last few days of  pressure on the brain symptoms were for nothing more than a cold or flu. For you and me getting the flu  just means achy body icky nose and feeling like crap. For the lad a virus when his shunt in the brain is showing signs of partial blockage means hospital, oxygen masks, IV's, difficulty in standing up heart racing and serious vomiting attacks. All scary for us as parents, utterly terrifying for  him. 


All of this is actually  a far better option than a fully blocked shunt which means ambulance up to the children's hospital and brain surgery. In his 15 years he has had 12 of them, thankfully  we have had a 4 year  break from them all. Which has given us both a sense of security in some ways that it has been so long and a sense of worry in someways that any minute the other shoe will drop and we will be back at battle stations.


At the moment we are on Yellow alert keeping a watchful eye on things but hoping for the best. Sometimes I wonder if we will ever just be a normal family where the biggest worry is who has to take the kids to little Athletics. But I know we are only given what we can handle, just as I know all things happen for a reason and I just need to accept we are doing everything possible. Besides no matter how hard it gets, there is always someone else worse off.