Still Afraid After All These Years.....

Babygirl and I are sitting in the waiting room in CHOP Nephrology.  We got here at 7:30 with the goal of being the first patients in the clinic, hopefully with the outcome of being the first patients OUT of the clinic.  Our appointment was originally scheduled for yesterday, but we got a call a couple of weeks ago telling us that the clinic was closed for Martin Luther King Jr day.  Could we come in a day later? 

Well.  I already had taken off from work for Monday and Tuesday so that I could get her to Nephrology on Monday and Neurology on Tuesday. And we'd been lucky enough to snag a 10 AM appointment with Neurology so we'd be able to start home before noon.  So, what's the problem?

Nephrology clinic is a morining clinic, first-come-first-served, and they've just dumped two days' worth of kids into one days' worth of clinic.  It's gonna be a madhouse.

And Neurology is in another city, 24 miles away, and if we get the best possible timing we will be negotiating the larger of those two cities at peak rush hour. 

Just shoot me.

But it's either that or travel 400 miles twice in one week in the month of January, and, lordy, given our today-it's-spring and yesterday-we-got-8"-of-unpredicted-snow type weather, THAT is something devoutly to be avoided. 

So here we are, gassed up and ready to run like lunatics to the parking garage as soon as they turn us loose.

Packing for these trips still tells me something about my interior world. 

It's been more than 4 years since the last time Babygirls was hospitalized.  It's nearly SIX years since the transplant.  It's approaching 7 years since the last time I believed I had gotten my sickest kids through their worst health crises, and that we were all good. 

I packed, for a simple overnight:  Two pairs of jammie pants, two full changes of clothing, a spare sports bra, a pair of sandals (because you need something quick to put on your feet if you're running for coffee at 2 AM in the hospital.....). Wait. Whoa.

We did Babygirl's blood work LAST WEEK here at home, and I'm assuming that if there was a crisis brewing somebody would have called us and made us come in. 

But I can't overcome it:  The superstitious belief that if I am Just Prepared Enough that everything will be okay, that Babygirl herself will be Okay, when I know that ship sailed and sank in April of 2011.                                                                                                                                                                     
I really need to grow up.  Babygirl certainly has.

DeeDee