Life as a Leach

I started this 3 years ago or more, when one of Abby’s specialists started asking us, “When’s the next big thing?”  He meant surgery, of course, and I hated how the “big things” in our lives were Abby’s surgeries.   That night, I used the chalk board on our coffee table (really a repurposed toy chest) to write The Next Big Thing.  Then I listed all of the fun things we were looking forward to and their dates.  This practice has stuck with us, and the kids love it!  They get excited to see their birthday on there, or that a special event they are involved in made the board.  It keeps our focus on all of the fun things we have going on instead of drifting toward the negatives.   I updated the board today.  As you can see, we have lots to look forward to in the next 2 months!

Last week, Abby was at feeding therapy when we saw our awesome feeding GI (yes, she has two GIs!). He knows about Abby's surgery series, so he asked, "When is the next big thing?"  Knowing exactly what he meant, I filled him in on this upcoming surgery that's now less than a month away.   Since then, I've thought a lot about the phrase "The next big thing."  Given that our life tends to revolve around surgeries and appointments, it is easy to get sucked into focusing on the next surgery.  It's bad enough for me to do it (which means very little sleep leading up to surgery!), but it's just not healthy for my kids to dwell so much on surgeries.  In the year leading up to our Make a Wish trip, we often focused on trip planning to keep our mind off of Abby's five surgeries that year.  I decided tonight that we needed to focus our minds on things we are looking forward to, rather than the surgery we are all dreading.   So, the kids and I sat down ...