4 years later…

Where to even begin.  Its been 4 years since I blogged on here.  4 years! Can you believe that?  So much has changed and what I can tell you unequivocally is that this is a lonely life we lead and because we feel so alone and isolated even when we are in the midst of teams of people and family, I want to reach out, I want to get real, and hopefully find connection through that.  Since my last post 4 years ago there is virtually nothing in my life that has stayed the same.  Logan is alive, I want to get that out there asap, but other than that, there is nothing in my life today that resembles my life before I got pregnant with Logan.

 

I am divorced.

I am now a single Mom.

We sold the our family home

I live in a much smaller house that I am renting.

I have to go back to work after being a stay at home Mom for almost 9 years.

My friends have changed.

My family has changed.

I home-school my children.

Its tough. I get depressed, anxious, and I am always under slept. This is my new reality and it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

My intent for sharing all of this is that I know it is a very common story that many heart parents relate to.  Frankly, all parents of any special needs children can relate to and hopefully through honesty and transparency we can all begin to heal.  The effect of prolonged stress on families, marriages, and our health, cannot be underestimated.  The divorce is across the board, 85% for our families.  I feel that despite all of the medical knowledge that can be easily accessed now on the medical issues our children face there isn’t much on physiological and emotion trauma that we will continue to suffer from even once the acute medical issues are resolved.

Its a big problem.  A problem that has to be faced.  The effects of prolonged acute stress is one of the most harmful things that the human body can endure and yet we have to, at the same time, take care of and support a medically fragile child.  Hopefully this is something we can learn about and share together.

I thought about starting a entirely new blog as a symbol of this new life I am leading but as painful as it is to look back at the past, it cannot be forgotten, and it is part of who I am.  So I will continue with this blog because its been part of my journey and hopefully someone out there reading  this will know, they are not alone, all of us are going through similar battles.  Many years ago I told my therapist a deep personal thought and then said, ‘gosh, that’s embarrassing to admit, its so cliche’ her response has always stuck with me, she said “we are human, and no matter how different we look, we all tend to be more similar than you’d think, we are all essentially just cliches of each other.”

I try to remember that.

I am not the only person who has gone through this, I am not the only person struggling with doubts, anxieties, guilt, and dilemma, fundamentally we all share the same fears and insecurities.

Did I do everything right for Logan?

Could I have done more for Logan?

Should I have done less?

Is it all my fault that my marriage ended?

and the biggest fear of all…

What am I going to do now?

The last 7 years have been harder than I ever imagined life could be.  The first 4 years of raising Logan was a constant fight or flight, adrenaline fueled, psychosis inducing (or to quote the great Dr. Roger Mee) ‘diamond inducing stress’ we had to fight like mad man to get Logan the right medical team (I have never blogged about the things that really happened at the beginning of our journey because they are so utterly painful, and almost unbelievable to most that have not lived in this pediatric surgical world) and then going through awful surgeries, too many times to count the code blues, and crashes, comas, strokes, emergency bedside surgery, surgeries that didn’t pan out the way we hoped, and to be told through all of it, there is a very good chance your son will still die even if you make it through.

The same week that Logan had his final surgery in the cardiac cath lab that was able to stabilize him to point that we were fairly confident that we would be out of the hosptial for at least a few years, my marriage fell apart.  Instantly, with no break, my family was thrust into a divorce.

I honestly thought that after everything that we had been through with Logan that the rest of life would be a cake walk.

 I was wrong.

Throwing a divorce on top of the trauma that my family had just endured was devastating to everyone.  I am going to be very real, there was nothing about it that was easy. And looking back now one of the most damaging aspects of it for me, was that it didn’t afford me the time to process the pain of the medical battles.

For those of you that know me on social media, you know that I, for all intents and purposes, fell off the face of the earth.  This was strictly for self preservation.  Going thru a divorce immediately following all of that knocked my on ass.  I am still in the process of getting up now, brushing myself off, and figuring out where to go from here.

Its hard to even know where to start after taking a 4 year absence from blogging and I don’t know if I have the emotional stamina to get it all in one sitting.  It may just trickle out over time.

However, despite the constant barrage of self doubt, questioning, anxiety, and bewilderment at what life has thrown my family, there are a few things that I know for sure.

We are all in this together.

We are stronger together.

The ‘right’ or ‘perfect’ answer doesn’t exist.

There is vastly more that we don’t know than what we do

There are things that are too broken to be fixed

I will be forever bonded to a group of families that have had to live with, along side, and through these devastating ordeals.

There is always room for hope.

I promise to give a detailed update about Logan shortly.  This was a big step for me emotionally just to add a page to this blog, and hope that you find some patience for me.

sincerely

Kristen Spyker