Making Plans

I am by nature a planner, I re-write my to do list at least every other day and carry around 3 months worth of paper calendars to try and keep track of our therapy, school, doctor schedules.

Cameron has taught me you can't plan for everything and I'm trying to become better at learning how to handle the unknown, in some cases it's become easier to wrap my head around this concept.

For instance I realize that Cameron could suddenly become ill at any time, this fact does not keep us house bound or from enjoying life. It changes some things though, like planning family vacations away from the Children's Memorial area, it gives me pause to leave Cameron overnight without us.

It's hard to find a balance because as any parent needs time away from their children to recharge, many would say those parents of special needs children need it even more.

After all Cameron and Connor need healthy parents in every sense of the word. I'm working on the letting go part, but it's not easy and when question arise relative to Cameron's health and he seems more in limbo, it's really hard to break away.

On August 1st Cameron had another MRI to follow up post surgery, this was 6 weeks since the last one and a huge marker for us. As I sat in Dr. Bowman's office on August 1st taking her through some recent early onset symptoms of a problem for Cameron she showed me the MRI and we agreed it was stable. I shared with her my concerns to leave the Chicago area both with Cameron and without. She said "go, go now, don't look back just go while you can".

And so we did. We green lighted our plans to visit my family in Michigan, some of whom we have not seen in two plus years. One week later Matt and I took a trip sans kids, courtesy of Matt’s company trip (*KBM if you are reading, yes he still works at the contest factory). It was a great trip to Napa Valley all expenses paid, and being that we were engaged there 9 years ago it was a little extra special. Of course there was far more anxiety with this trip having Cameron & Connor not with us, but I am proud to say we did more than survive, we had a wonderful time.

If given the choice I'd always like to make plans well in advance, but I’ve just learned if you have to “green light” a trip with only days before departure, it’s ok. Maybe even better so the anticipation doesn’t build.

A few photos of our travels…

Cameron and his Great Grand Father (Baba) take a nap together .

Baba and 7 of his Great Grandchildren

The Resident FISH Connor!

A Trip to Greenfield Village