Trust

This was going to be a quick post in facebook, but it seemed like it was getting too long...

Well, it was a tough afternoon/night.  After talking non-stop for four hours or so (morphine induced, I assume), Alejandro declared he was dizzy, closed his eyes and lay down (in that order) and slept for 3 hours.  At first, I was concerned because he's had two episodes in the past where his blood pressure plummeted and his reaction was pretty much the same, so I went to get a nurse to check him out.  His BP was perfect.  He was just wiped out from lack of sleep the night before and chatting up a storm for so many hours on end.  The boy in the bed next to Alejandro was thrilled to have such wonderful entertainment.

However, when Ale woke up about 3 hours later, he had intense pain in his right thigh.  Nowhere else, thankfully, but this was so incredibly painful he was completely overwhelmed.  I felt so helpless watching him suffer so much and not being able to do more than hold him and tell him how strong and brave he was and that by tomorrow he would be feeling better.  All he wanted for hours was for me to hold him with a firm grip on his thigh (it must have been like a severe cramp).  All this- and more- is to be expected from antibodies, but knowing this doesn't make it any easier.

Now, he is fast asleep.  He's been sleeping peacefully for a few hours and I'm just praying for the pain to be gone, or at least bearable, when awakes.  How do you explain to a four-year-old that this medicine is actually good for him?  That the pain is part of the medicine doing its job.  But somehow, I think he does understand.  I've asked him to trust me.  And to do that, I have had to put my trust fully in what the doctors are doing here.  And I've actually done that, which doesn't come easily to me.  It's a strange sensation.  One I haven't had in such a long time. Maybe, in part, it is due to the language barrier.  The nurses have limited English and my German can be summed up by "please, thank you and 'no meat'".  So if I don't trust them, I will make myself beyond crazy and will be of no use to anyone.  Trust.  I've asked Ale to trust me and in turn, I have had to do the same with those here.  It's a new sensation I will have to add to all the others this disease is teaching me.