And now we wait....

Waiting is perhaps the hardest thing....I am not, what one would call, patient, but over the years, this boy has taught me to slow down...take the world in.

Years ago, when Javad was truly the littlest, he spent six months in the PICU at Emanuel. It was the old PICU, the one with no windows and the nursing station in the middle. I spent many a night talking with nurses, doing the crossword puzzle, having my life in the PICU. Each morning I would wake up and get ready for work, then come home to the PICU. It is not the beautiful place we have now at Randall, but it was home.

During that hospitalization, my friend Juli and I trained to walk the marathon. Each Saturday she would pick me up, we would go for our training walk and then she would drop me off at the hospital to be with my boy. We did this for six months of Saturdays, each week walking longer, strengthening our bodies and lungs to finish that final goal of 26.2 miles at the Portland Marathon. Javad was released in August, just in time for the home stretch. Juli and I walked the marathon in October, then in November we walked the Seattle Marathon. It was a glorious accomplishment...one I have not completed since, but the training, I now realize, was preparations for the road ahead of us.

We are here again...now in this beautiful room with a view of the mountains. I joke that we paid for this room, although with all Javad's hospitalizations, it might not too be far off. He is being taken care of by many who knew him as a baby. Nurses marveling at how big he is, yet how he looks the same. I know that they, too, are concerned. They know that what is happening with our boy is not good. He is having seizures...ones we can't see. They are giving him meds that sedate him and, although in time his body may adjust, he is sleeping...all the time. I know his brain needs to heal...we will give him time.

Meanwhile, we wait.  Waiting is the hardest part. I want him to growl that he is unhappy...I want him to point to his eyes for his glasses...I want my boy back. This will require patience. Like training for the marathon, the results will not be seen overnight. We have weeks, months ahead of us. Times where we have to patiently walk, knowing that the journey will not lead to the end. The training is the hardest part. There seems to be the task without reward.

We will train with the boy, knowing that we are making him stringer with each move we make. We will build our team to make him the strongest he can be. Each task before us done with diligence, each movement with meaning. Time is not our enemy, but rather our friend. A blanket of healing will surround him, surround us, to train for the journey ahead.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Marathons take time...time that feels as if it moves too slow. At the end, when we receive our medal, our boy growling and smiling, the time will be worth it. Every moment of work and sweat. Every tear shed will find victory at the end.

But until then....we wait.