After spending the better part of three weeks in two hospitals, here it is, in reverse order.

The Ugly:

10. One sludgish gall bladder loaded with stones and the propensity to make many more. 

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9. One very narrow central bile duct, too slim for a stone.

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The Bad:

8. That hospital smell. It sticks to you like a pack of Camels.

7. Reams and reams of doctors, each requiring individual assessment and constant discernment during communication. Each ream has rotating shifts of 4 to 6, with one fellow, and several attendings. Pediatric floor docs. Pediatric GI doctors. Cardiologists. Nephrologists. Adult GIs. Adult GI ERCP specialists. General Surgeons. Radiologists who don't even make a physical showing. And, of course, anasthesioligists. There were just so many, even if this time (PTL) we were spared ENT and Infectious Disease docs. They are my least favorite, as lots go. No offense.

I have found that doctors (even ENTs and IDs) universally mean well and many are gifted practitioners or journeying towards being very, very good at what they do. I appreciate them, I really do. I am well aware that my babies could not live without them. But, especially when there are just so many of them, they require a mindfulness that is exhausting. And, unfortunately, it doesn't always seem like the mindfulness is reciprocated.

If there was one thing I could say to residents, and fellows, and even grown up experienced doctors it would be this: "Be mindful of your patients. Listen to them. Look well at them. Be ever mindful of them." So often doctoring, like lawyering,  takes place in the library stacks, or out in the corridors, or buried deep in the file. I understand how it happens but I know that it is not the ideal. Be mindful.

It is really true of all relationship, isn't it? God, let us attend to our relationships. Life breathes there.

6. I missed my opportunity to hang out with Sally Melville. What a drag!

Oh well. I am sure that there will be other opportunities to weep and wail in her presence and maybe, by then, I will get that sweater sleeve done and I won't have to feel bad about explaining how it is that she helped me turn the corner on my knitting yet it still took me the better part of six months to finish the last quarter of one silly sleeve.

Can you hear me say to Nylah, "Baby, do you have some kind of fear that you might actually be successful at something someday? Why oh why would you build then bolt a door to completion of a great idea??"

And my Daddy, snickering in the background, "Well, the apple don't fall too far from that tree, now does it, Sissy?"  

 I say "Be quiet, y'all. I am trying to complete my good bad and ugly here."  

The Good:

5. Completed knitting. One blue scarf for Nolan. One Mason Dixon baby sweater prototype. Some of the many strips of  garter stitch fabric (quintessential hospital knitting) to weave amongst some, as yet unpurchased, light lime (or baby blue) suede for a Suss Cousins pillow, hat tipping to Pamela. : ) And completely spindle spun lavender pygora - well over a year in the making - finally done.

And yes those are unwoven ends and less than completed seams. I forgot to pack my needle. Hopefully, the prototype sweater won't go the wayside like Raeah Faith's Sally sweater. I don't think so; in fact, I think we can call the prototype practice for future seaming and I am okay with that. Bitty Baby will love it. 

I tried some Debbie Bliss sample squares but it was too much, given that my brain was occupied with being mindful to all the doctors and my boy. So, I let it go and enjoyed my pillow strips. 

Completed suduko too. Suduko is okay but there is really not much to it. It is all the same process. I don't really get the thrill. Once you figure out the tricks, it is always the same. As far as I can tell (and, granted I am not the brightest light on the field) the only thing you can do is the same thing but faster. If the goal and promise is speed, then I definitely choose knitting.

4. One boy entering the hospital and one boy exiting the hospital. All extraneous details are only minimally relevant.

3. One perfect donated heart, keeping on. One good pair of recuperating kidneys. The sacrificial love of a liver, who  bravely took a hit on behalf of his friend the gall bladder. A pancreas who rightly stayed out of the fray. Blood which contains evidence of neither HIV nor hepatitis. No PTLD. And, apparently, no tumors unrelated to PTLD. These are the very miracles of my boy's life. And mine.

2.  A boy who thinks his life is normal. "Everybody gets sick, Mom." My eyes can only well with tears of wonderment and joyless acceptance and, honestly, I would like to be more joyful about the whole acceptance thing. Still, I am the optimist of the family but it is my boy who can, as he reaches for the dilaudid and a bag of anything Frito Lay, overlook the scars on his belly and chest and say, "It's okay, Momma. It's okay."

1. Fabulous, fabulous friends. A great church. And an unbelievably good God who takes pleasure in surprising His children, namely me, with immediate and lavishly answered prayer, complete with a black gospel choir singing from the heavenly rafters as encouragement rains down.