At some point over the summer, I had allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy of a totally healthy baby and a completed construction project, all wrapped up in time for Christmas. Our reality is a chest x-ray that still looks lousy, despite our strong little girl showing absolutely no symptoms, and a construction project that will roll right on through the new year.
It would be dishonest to say that I was anything other than heartbroken today when our follow up doctor's visit, a visit that is typically the final checkpoint in the dismal journey of this condition, revealed Lo's lung still partially collapsed, gunky, and with the causes unclear. This is something that happened after her surgery, something that should have cleared by now, and the fact that it hasn't has all the best and brightest scratching their heads, and naturally has me holding my breath all over again. For now, we wait. Two more weeks. Then we get more images and just hope for the miraculously perfect recovery that we'd assumed was guaranteed. I no longer have a clear path for the 'worst case scenario'... because no one seems to know, or no one seems to want to say. And so, we just live as normally as possible and bury our heads in the sand for another few weeks.
Or in our case, thankfully, I can bury my head in plaster dust and lots of banging. Our long planned little yard overhaul is underway. Smith and Roo are less than thrilled about our Christmas decor including flapping plastic, but I am grateful for the distraction. I have always loved living in construction, and while some might be daunted by the combination of a crawling baby and the various hazards that multiply daily, so far it just feels great to be making progress. On something. To be in control of the chaos, here if nowhere else.