Heart Families

When you have a child that is afflicted by a Congenital Heart Defect, it affects your entire family. When you find out your child has a CHD your main focus is now directed on him, you worry, you fret, you don't sleep, your mind goes a thousand miles a minute trying to figure out how it happened, what you did during your pregnancy that caused it, what you could have done to prevent it, what you can do to correct it, you think and pray that you could be the one that has the defect and not your child. What you don't think is how everything you are thinking, doing, acting is effecting your other children or the rest of your family. In the early moments of this diagnosis, I was sobbing. Then I became distraught and distant. Followed by short tempered and bitter.  I trying to be brave when I was terrified, I had to show him that I was not scared for him, that he need not to be afraid and that every thing was going to be just fine. If only I believed it myself.
I researched and researched online every waking minute. I found lots of information on his specific defect but I could not find a child that was diagnosed at or even around his age for this specific disease, this worried me, cause I am a fantastic researcher however I  found no one...I wanted desperately to find someone similar so he could familiarize himself with what he was about to go through, but failed. Only to find out from the surgeon, it was very un-common for his defect to be diagnosed this late in life.

I completely threw myself into my son and comforting him with his disease and pending surgery. Sadly, I left out the other important people to me. Once I realized that not only was my son and I dealing with what was to come, everyone else was as well... and I needed to get my head on straight. The girls needed me and so did Jer. There was still school work to be done, Christmas presents to be purchased, a home to be cleaned, clothes to be laundered... they still needed me and maybe they needed me more. My son was avoiding the subject, when I wanted to talk about it and the next moment practically sitting on my lap for reassurance. My daughter just wanted to talk about it all the time, what to expect and what could be the potential outcomes...they are beyond extremely close, best friends for 11 years. Jer's daughter needed me as well. While I am not her Mom, I love her as if she was my own. She has a different bond with my son, of course most of the time they are always the last ones at the table and that is their special time...I know it sound strange, be they can sit there while finishing their dinner and laugh about nothing at all. These children, all of them and Jer are my life and I needed to get back to normal stat! If I didn't there would be a down spiral for everyone. All the same, I still was not at my prime. I would go to bed and just lay there and cry... and Jer knowing what I was dealing with, not that he was not dealing with same exact thing I was, he was reassuring and comforted me.

His CHD affected us all, and we all needed to be strong and we all needed to be brave and we all needed to be supportive to my son and to each other. We are a family and we stuck together and on December 13th we took my son to the hospital, supported him, loved him and comforted him until he came out of surgery and then we supported him even more while he recovered in the hospital. I supported my son, they supported him. They supported my need to be with him in the hospital until he came home and understood that he needed me just a little bit more than they did at that moment. Jer supported the girls when they needed him the most. We are a CHD family and CHD families love and support each other in a special way brought forward by someone with a special mended heart.