My nineteen-year-old son came home last night for Spring Break. This is a wonderful thing. He completes me. Well, maybe I'm overstating it. But I've often said that if he weren't my son, and if he were about fifteen years older, I'd marry him. You would, too if you knew him.
He's helped me with all these children of mine for the past eight years (since he was eleven). Along the way, he's learned a bunch of stuff most people never do. For example, five years ago I fell in love with a little blond-haired one-year-old boy from Denver. He happened to have a ventilator attached to his neck by two long, plastic tubes (he was a 25 week premie, born with Crack flowing through his tiny veins along with the blood, and horribly under-developed lungs).
Needless to say, a bit of training was needed before I could take him home.
Kris volunteered to learn with me. He and I drove the 120 mile round-trip to Children's Hospital in Denver so many times I lost count. There we learned how to suction stuff out of his little trach tube (ick), how to do daily cleaning around the tube ('cause the stuff leaks out sometimes), how to replace the trach tube weekly (that was kind of scary). Also we learned how to troubleshoot the ventilator, how to give little man breathing treatments, and how to feed him through his g-tube (a feeding tube that goes into his stomach with a little cap on the outside for easy access). When we got Kameron, he was kind of a mess.
Now he's an amazing six-year-old boy. But that's another story...
Kris is a pretty typical guy. He hangs with friends, goes snowboarding, plays Halo online, gets the occasional speeding ticket, and hates his English class - sigh.
I think he's the most amazing young man I've ever met.
That's what's happening here. What's happening in your neck of the woods?
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