It has been a while, but here we are again - the children's hospital. The fever has persisted and there is some pain in a shoulder, which could indicate inflammation. Smallsteps is generally pretty resilient to these kinds of pains, but she is complaining a lot more than with normal illness, so we have to check it out to make sure.
Obviously, this isn't ideal for anyone and throws the entire week into further disarray.
Better safe, than sorry though. Since we have the possibility for healthcare, we should use it. When I was a young kid, the only time I was at a hospital was when I required stitches. And this parental aversion to hospitals is part of the reason my own illness went undiagnosed for 9 months, pushing it from severe to chronic - something manageable to something very hard to control. It has affected me for almost 30 years now.
sliding doors.
It is impossible to predict what life would have been like having had lived in the body of a healthy person, but I assume that on any ways, things would be for the better, even though there are positives to facing health challenges too. One thing I am pretty certain of however, that career-wise, I would be better off, which would probably have translated into a better financial position.
health is wealth
Obviously, this is not how people usually frame this statement, but health is wealth because it expands opportunity to earn in so many ways. Whether it is simply taking less sick days, or the opportunity lost by taking too many. It also determines the potential to travel and which kinds of jobs are available. The pool of job opportunity for a healthy person is far larger than for an unhealthy person, but often it takes being unhealthy to realize how lucky the healthy have it.
This is the "don't know what you've got til it's gone" effect, as loss is a good motivator for reflection. Once gone, some things are unrecoverable and potential unattainable. But one aspect of this becomes that loss of future potential is always present also, but it isn't necessarily quantifiable or even noticed, because we never knew we had the chance to begin with. This might mean we aren't emotionally affected by the loss, but we are still impacted by the loss of it.
I have often tried imagining what it might be like to have lived to the hypothetical of full potential, but it is unimaginable. There are so many interdependencies involved that move one part, and everything else changes, possibly quit drastically.
Life is far simpler not thinking of these things.
Life is easy. Just live, and what will be, will be. Accept it as it comes, strive for nothing and be happy with whatever outcomes arrive, no matter how painful or joyous. The trick is, to not care about anything at all.
does that sound humane?
Or is on the extreme end of the psychopathy spectrum?
Hard to say.
I am relatively stoic in much of my thinking and behavior, but I am a long way away from total disconnection from all care. Also, closer than most.
What would a family be, without care?
I don't plan on testing the behaviors necessary to find out - but I might run some mental simulations at some point to see if I can get close and justify a position for it.
With a sick child though, it is hard to imagine a world in which I don't care about her or the outcomes of her health. I have imagines the worst case scenarios of many things surrounding this to prepare, especially when she was young, but the imagination can never fully reflect reality, it is always just a limited depiction, like a cartoon character can be recognizable as a person, but the reality of a person is far more complex and takes into consideration many more variable that affect it.
I hope my daughter will be back to healthy soon, because as a parent, I am looking to maximize her pool of potential, so that she can have more options to explore and hopefully, find the parts of experience she loves - and do more of it.
Right now, it is just sitting and waiting for tests and results, and doing what we can to make her feel as if the future is going to be better than the present.
There's always hope.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
This is written on a phone, so might have a few more typos than normal.