The day was suppossed to be a really good one. Finn's best friend Tate was coming to spend the day with us. His mom was out of town on a girl's trip and all of his siblings are in school all day. So his dad just needed someone to watch Tate for the day while he went to work. Tate showed up at 9am ready to roll. His dad mentioned that he had a meeting in Pueblo but that their oldest son was sick and hadn't gone to school. He thought he would take him with him to his meeting, but depending on how it went he might come back early to pick up Tate and just be done with work for the day. Sounded good to me. We were just going to play and hang out for the day.
The boys had immediately sprinted to the toy room when Tate arrived, so it wasn't until after I had said goodbye to Tate's dad that I went down to say hello. Not even 1 minute after walking into the toy room I realized that Tate was sick, too. I heard a horribly wet cough and the sniffling indicative of a runny nose. Oh shoot, no what?? I tried to collect my thoughts and decided to ask Tate to blow his nose. I got him a tissue and it turns out that he doesn't know how to do it! Finn has been blowing his nose since he turned 2, so I was kind of perplexed. But then again, the nurses at the hospital have always been amazed at Finn's nose blowing coordination, so maybe we've just been lucky? Anyway, I decided to have Finn and Tate sit on the couch on opposite ends and turn on a show while Finn did his morning treatments. I figured that would give me a half an hour to collect myself. Not even 10 minutes into the show Tate was up and running around again, toys going in his mouth, touching EVERYTHING he could find. Finn finished up treatments and I tried another tactic--let's go outside! It was a tad on the chilly side and Tate's dad had him dressed in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. So, I pulled out some extra sweatpants and sweater and bundled them up and out we went. Except that Tate didn't want to play outside. After just five minutes he was racing back to the toy room.
At this point I was stressed and frustrated. I called a friend to talk me through it. I'm grateful for a friend that, while she doesn't understand CF and sometimes thinks I'm a bit too crazy, she told me that if it was causing this much stress now to think about how I would make it through 6 more hours. She felt that Tate needed to go. The question was where. You can't quite call someone and say, I have a sick Tate and we can't have him here. Can he come to your house?? Umm......no. I also didn't have his dad's cell phone number. And I wasn't sure that he knew about Finn and CF (and not to mention an unvaccinated infant). Tate's mom knows. In fact my friend said to me, "Everyone knows about Finn." Well, she's right, sort of. Every MOM knows about Finn. This was definitely not a daddy-thing (unless you're Finn's daddy). So, I put on my momma bear clothes and did something I didn't want to do. I texted my friend--on her vacation--and asked for her husband's contact info. I told her that Tate was sick and that whenever he was able to come back and get him, that would be really helpful. Thankfully my friend was quick to respond. Even more suprising was that apparently Tate's dad had decided not to go to work, but instead had gone home with his older child and was making calls from the house. He was able to get to our house in just 10 minutes, and just like that, Tate was gone.
As if that wasn't hard enough for me to (I felt horrible having to send him away), Finn broke down. He was so sad that Tate had left before having lunch and that their play date ended way too early. It was at this point that a hard situation turned to heartbreaking. I called Finn to come sit on my lap and I told him a story. It was about 2 friends named Finn and Tate. But there was something special about Finn--he had Cystic Fibrosis. I asked Finn if he knew that. He nodded his head yes. I told him that because Finn was special and had CF, that playing with Tate when he had a cough like that wasn't a great idea. I don't remember all of the words I used but I told him that it was better to send Tate away now and play with him when he didn't have a cough instead of playing now and having Finn end up visiting the hospital. He sulked away, and I sat there and wanted to cry.
Finn rarely gets play dates. It seems someone is always sick--either the friend or Finn. I mean, he honestly only gets a half a dozen play dates a year. We go to play group when we can, but now that it's moving indoors, I'm worried we are going to have a repeat of last Thursday. It stinks and I don't know what to do about it. The reality is that next fall he is going to be in preschool and will be around kids like that all of the time. That thought terrifies me! But I feel it will be important for him to go to school. I'm just going to have to get over the fear. But I guess I have one more winter to protect him--and that's just what I'm going to do. Especially since I have no idea how we would do a hospital stay while I am nursing Bree. It stinks that it has to be this way. I hate it! I have tried to stay away from being negative about Finn's disease in front of him. I don't want him to think that I will ever hate anything about him--including CF. I don't want him to be negative about his disease either. I want him to be accepting and a strong CF fighting little guy, optimistic about the future. So, I lifted my chin up and got up off the floor and carried on with my day. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't hard and that I liked it. And I have a feeling it's the tip of the iceberg in the CF parenting department that I had convinced myself I would be able to avoid. And when he's not looking, it's just the beginning of many tears to come.
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| Painting his pumpkin last week--and yes, he was singing |
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| Here it had turned into dancing and singing. |
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| Finn's green pumpkin is proudly on display on our doorstep. |
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