It’s been a whirlwind 24 hours. Yesterday morning I awoke from my 11th sleep on a folding vinyl couch in a room where visitors come in multiple times an hour and I knew we were going to move into our new “home”. We’d been counting down to Ronald McDonald day for quite a while and it felt so exciting to know soon there would be no IV tubes connected, no more beeping and dinging in the hall, or those blue striped hospital sheets that send a shiver down my spine. I peeled off the cute Christmas ornament crafts we’d taped to the big window with medical tape. Packed away our ten stuffies and two small suitcases of clothes and eagerly waited to be discharged!
We got all our papers; I crammed the new info packet on his massive amount of meds into my red med tote bag with all my other medical supplies, said a heartfelt thankyou to the discharging doctor and we strolled out of there with a wagon full of Mercer and blankets! I hadn’t stepped foot outside in days; it felt so therapeutic to take a huge deep breath of cold fresh air and forget for just the tiniest moment we were leaving one medical space for another.
Ronald McDonald House is even nicer than you could imagine a place like that to be. We gawked as we came in the giant front doors and were shown around. It’s a massive facility, serving 74 families at a time. Four industrial kitchens. A laundry room with twelve sets of washer and dryers. A lego room (!!!) and a massive indoor slide! Large leather couches in giant lounges for families to visit. Large dining rooms and shared food and common areas…a koi pond… a meal a day that’s served prepared for everyone… field trips and outings… massage therapy, pet therapy, art and music therapy… our heads were swimming and Mercer ran around the whole place with giant eyes.
We all needed a nap after that and thankfully the little guy got one! It was powerful and a bit scary to see the severity of what we’re really going through become so obvious. Like, this isn’t just a little thing. We’re entitled to live here, paid for by charities, to live here…to receive medical care for Mercer’s life threatening illness. It’s somehow both uplifting and also sobering. And teetering on that knife’s edge is so mentally and emotionally draining. Your brain wants to ask and answer a million questions and the reality is most of those sentences end up with “I don’t know”. Living for a long time in that zone shapes you and molds you into a more resilient, patient, empathetic and selfless person. Like, I’m acutely aware that I’m becoming a better person. Aware I’m being formed into a better mother.
My sweet little snoozing babe demands I embrace that change and continue going full speed ahead. And so many of those cheesy lines seem to be true — he is teaching me about resilience. About faith and perseverance. He is a little miracle who was born ten weeks early, amazing us all, and now we’re here asking for more miracles.
He takes naps, and plays Lego, and bobs his head to his favourite song. He gives a cheeky wink and eats a lot of croissants. He is taking things in stride and he makes all of this doable. One glance at his face and I know we can do hard things 🤍
So tonight we sleep in cosy real beds, with real duvets, we’ve got yummy food in our cupboard, and we can sleep easy knowing people all over are praying and caring and loving and helping us, being the village we already knew we had. So thank you, truly.
💕
Mighty Mercer 
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