Meet my "BFF"... Bob

Happy Birthday!

Do you remember when you were six years old?  There's some really great things about being a little kid.  At six, your parents are larger than life.  Your mom makes the best cookies in the whole world, and your dad can fix anything.  You don't worry about having enough money to pay the mortgage or buy the groceries.  Your biggest concern is whether you should ride bikes or play tag.  Everything is new and the world is full of possibilities.  Who knows?  Magic could be real.  Why not?  At six ice cream tastes better, puppies are cuter, and birthdays are still the highlight of your year. Childhood is a magical time. 

When each of my boys turned six, I loved watching them play outside, discover new things, wrestle with that new puppy, and go to first grade.  First grade was the big year.  It was SO much different than Kindergarten.  Kindergarten was for babies.  First grade was the real deal.  You get to go all day, and your teacher held the key to all the knowledge in the world.  Their favorite subjects were PE and recess...they were still boys after all, and getting to eat lunch at school with your friends made it taste that much better.

I loved their curiosity, their absolute hunger to know things.  The toddler questions had morphed into a quest for greater understanding.  They also began to explore new things like sports and music.  I watched them consider things like...do I want to play basketball or soccer?  Do I like to sing or maybe play an instrument?  They also developed a passion for collecting things like beanie babies and matchbox cars.  I learned to be wary of some of their collections.  To my surprise, Michael liked to collect bugs and small frogs in his pockets, and Ryan was into collecting bees for awhile.  He would catch them with a butterfly net and put them in jars.  His passion for "bee collecting" ended when he finally got stung.

When Christopher turned six, he entered first grade seeing it as an exciting new adventure into learning.  He was in the big leagues now.  He had spent two years in Kindergarten, and now he was in the real world of school with all the BIG kids.  No more of that baby stuff.  He was thrilled about getting to be there all day, and so was I.  That meant six hours of "me time".  I had big plans for all the time I was going to have to get things done without any interruptions.

The year began as planned, but then there was an interruption.  It was small at first, just a small bump under the skin near his J-tube.  We decided to just watch it for awhile.  Maybe it would just go away, but that turned out to wishful six year old thinking.  The bump got bigger, redder, and angrier.  The doctor ordered liquid antibiotics to be given through his J-tube in order to calm it down, but the bump just got bigger and angrier.

As the bump got larger, Christopher grew intensely irritated with it.  In his six year old mind, this made absolutely no sense at all.  He kept trying to wish it away, but that didn't work.  Then he tried "making friends with it."  He decided to call his bump, "Bob."  He insisted that we call it Bob too.  I think Bob must have seen this as an invitation to stay because Bob wouldn't go away. 

As if on cue, the fever started.  It was just a little one at first.  In fact the doctor didn't even qualify it as a real fever.  He said to call back if the fever went over 100 degrees.  I don't know why fevers and emergencies have to happen at 3:00 a.m. in the morning.  It would be so much easier to handle at 3:00p.m., but at our house it always seemed to happen that way.  Predictably, I called the doctor in the middle of the night with the news that Christopher's fever was now REAL.

It had been awhile since we had rushed to the emergency room in the middle of the night, but I guess it's like riding a bike.  You never forget how to do it.  We gathered up all three rings of the circus, and headed for the hospital. 

Unfortunately, lots of other people were having middle of the night emergencies too.  Christopher and Bob would wait six hours in the emergency room before being admitted to the hospital.  Neither one of them were very happy.  Being in the hospital this time was going to present us with some unique challenges.

Christopher in the first grade.  He is at the school science fair.  His entry was called, "How Many Times Does My Heart Beat When I. . .".  So cute!!!

The biggest one was that Christopher was no longer a baby.  He could understand language, and he could anticipate things.  He knew what we were saying, and he knew it meant pain for him.  We could no longer discuss his situation openly in front of him without upsetting him and scaring the daylights out of him.  We had to choose our location, timing, and words carefully. 

Another problem was that Bob was not the only one who was ANGRY.  Christopher had enjoyed relatively little medical intervention for quite some time.  At six, he was very angry about having his world turned upside down by being put in the hospital.  He wanted to do six year old stuff...play outside with his friends, go to school, and work on that bug collection.  Being in the hospital was not supposed to be a part of being six, and he was openly hostile to the idea.  Who could blame him?  It didn't seem fair to me either.



The more days he was in the hospital, the more upset Christopher became, and Bob proved to be very hard to get rid of.  As far as Bob was concerned, He and Christopher had become "BFFs"  (that's the shorthand kids use these days for Best Friends Forever), but he was not the kind of best friend that anyone would ever want...he didn't pay attention in school, he was terrible at tag, and he didn't like bugs...lol (shorthand for laugh out loud).

If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you can pray like this:

More tomorrow...