Saturday’s Fostering Blog
Alice was discharged only a few days ago from the Children’s Hospital and now I can’t help but feel a little out of my depth. Please look away now if you don’t like too much information… Everything seemed to be going so well since Alice had her bladder surgery, but something has changed and her bladder is now not draining in the right place. We have noticed drops of blood and mucus in her catheter bag and she seems to be having painful spasms in her bladder. Although after several phone calls to the Children’s Hospital the nurses assure me this is all normal, I still cant help but feel uneasy. You know when something doesn’t feel quite right, no matter what you are told the feeling doesn’t really change. I then tried to get hold of the on-call Urology Registrar, now that is easier said than done. The receptionist insists on putting me through to a general surgical registrar and as suspected they have no idea about the specifics of Alice’s surgery. For now I will have to wait until we return to the hospital in a few days.
We try to enjoy the rest of the weekend. But it’s a bit like when you have a splinter, you just can’t stop thinking about it. And no matter what you do your attention keeps coming back to that splinter. Fortunately we have a full weekend, with Charlie’s sister and family coming to visit. That means the girls have their cousins to play with and we get to have some adult conversation. The conversation quickly turns to stories from their childhood. It is lovely to hear them reminisce. Charlie is from a big family, so as you can imagine there are plenty of hilarious stories that come out of the woodwork.
Lauren and Annie love having their cousins come to visit. We don’t see them too often as they live over two hours away, and Charlie is usually working at weekends, but when they do see them the kids just pick up where they left off last time. They are similar ages which helps. What is also lovely is that all of Charlie’s family have accepted Alice, so she is able to join in fully as a “cousin” – included in all the fun, games and conversations. They have also learnt when she is being a bit controlling and they too like the girls have learnt when to walk away.
I love these days when you spend time with people who get our situation. They just accept how we do things and support us. There are times when I wished we live closer to family but for now we enjoy the special days that we have together.
A Less Ordinary Family – Our Fostering Blog
