I Want to Believe or Deep Debriefing Thoughts

I've been trying to figure out what this whole experience was like for Max. I mean, aside from terrifying, disorienting, painful and annoying, what would be a good, common reference point to help us understand this event from Max's point of view?

Well, remember that time you were swept off, suddenly and inexplicably, to a unfamiliar place? Remember that time strangers poked and prodded you? They took blood samples, they looked at your orifices, they put needles in you and pumped fluids into your body, they thoughtfully looked into your ears with small, bright lights. Sometimes they would wake you up at all hours of the night to do these things. Remember that time people weighed your diapers to track your fluid output? You may have blocked it out and require hypnosis to recall your suppressed trauma but, yes, it was when you were abducted by aliens!

For Max, really, this was all just a weird, really scary, toddler version of "Fire in the Sky".

Things I learned in the hospital:

- You can, in fact, lie very, very still for hours and hours if your sick kid can only only sleep lying on top of you.
- If you have to go to the hospital with your child, and your child is previously obsessed with earth-moving equipment, make sure there is a giant construction project with bulldozers and excavators and lots of dirt going on next door before you're admitted. You'll be glad you did.
- If you're in the hospital and your child can only sleep lying on top of you, watch your fluid intake!
- You know you went to the right hospital when there's a construction site next door and, within moments, they have an Elmo DVD piped into your ER room.

I'm not going to bore you to tears with a bunch of "life-is-precious" type-stuff. I will say, though, that it'll be a awhile before I look at Max and don't have a flash of things breaking in slow motion. It's like the moment you wake up from a "falling" dream: Crap!!! Oh. Having said that, however, a visit to just the sixth floor of Children's Hospital will tell you that, for many parents, there is only the "falling" dream. To them, Max and family were just tourists, passers-by.

No matter how much I didn't sleep last week, no matter how many times I had to fake not-crying because Max was watching, no matter how many times I had to untangle Max's IV tubes on another walk to the window with the excavator-o-vision, I got to wake up from the dream and take my boy home to knock Legos over and spread jelly in his hair. And that, my friends, makes me the luckiest bastard from the sixth floor. So thankful to be here; so thankful to be washing this damn strawberry jelly out of this kid's hair.