No news?

    No news is good news, I guess.  I haven't had time to write and it is making me sad. I have so many thoughts and ideas popping into my head all day long but no way to jot those idea down and definitely no way to actually sit down and write about them. I will do what I can.
     Things have been stable and calm for at least a month. So, now that I just said that, tomorrow night is going to suck. I haven't totally let my guard down and I don't think I ever will. Colin is only on one behavior med and it seems to be working. I wonder if maybe we weren't over medicating him by having him on (at one point) 3 medications? The heart issue that he was having (you'll have to go back and read up on that if you don't know what I am talking about) seems to have gotten better. He still has the issue, he is just right at the border of it being a problem. It has improved, but it is still an issue. He has a list of 2 pages of medicines that he has to avoid (or the heart issue will become a problem). He is trying really hard to be a good boy, I can tell.
     I am going to leave with a poem that a friend sent me. She reads my blog and she has the poem at work. She thought of me and thought I would connect with it. Boy, did I connect! I think it explains how I feel being Colin's mom. I think if you read it, you too, will understand how I feel about being Colin's mom.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by  

Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reservedI am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.