Ghee and Guilt

I should be napping right now.  Carter was up all night last night with an all too familiar cough. The one that cannot be treated, the one that causes him to gag and throw up, the one caused by a reaction.

In a moment of weakness, I gave Carter ghee or clarified butter, mixed with a little honey. It was about a teaspoon, and he loved it. When you clarify butter, you removed all the lactose out of it and are left with pure milk fat. A lot of people do well with dairy in this form, even though they can not tolerate it in other ways.

I was looking for more fats to get into his body, something to help him feel full. The screaming for food and stealing and eating food off the ground, wore me down.  But we now know that Carter is not ready for dairy and won’t be any time soon. We also know that we need to start a probiotic, and I will order Gut Pro as soon as it’s back in stock.

But what about the guilt? What do I do with that? I have a very sick little boy with deep circles under his eyes and rough red cheeks and a cough that makes him cry. Someone told me today that guilt isn’t always valid, and that’s true. But it sure is easy! It’s easy to wallow in the guilt and the why me’s, it’s much harder to dig down into yourself and find the strength you need to overcome, to keep fighting, to keep living.

I have been waiting for this to go away. To get a knock on the door with a certified letter that says “Carter can eat anything now. He’s all better”.  I haven’t wanted to acknowledge the truth. And without the conversation I had yesterday, Thanks Nichole, I don’t know when I would have admitted the truth.

I have a sick little boy, a chronically ill little boy and he’s going to be like this indefinitely. He and I are on a journey together and we are bound to take wrong turns and I need to be ok with that. There is no map for us. No one has journeyed this path yet. We are the pioneers traversing this new land, living on little more than fear, adrenalin and hope. It is no longer about the destination because we don’t know where we will end up or when we will settle down.

The important thing is that we are moving, even if it’s backwards sometimes, we are still moving. The fear has not paralyzed us.  The adrenalin and hope push us onward. We are still moving and if we are still moving, then we are still alive.