Today is my birthday and I thought a good time to reflect on my year.  It sucked.  Honestly I can say, without a doubt, that my 41st year was the worst year of my life.  Let me recap.  My daughter had a seizure a week after my 40th birthday that caused paralysis of her left side that lasted for six months.  She has still not fully recovered and I’m not sure she ever will. The doctors are stumped…what’s new?

Then my son needed to have a 12 hour surgery to fully reconstruct his internal organs.  That surgery took six weeks to recover from and a lasting, life altering situation that he deals with multiple times a day and night.

After that, just as he was learning his new normal, my daughter had a seizure on her 6th birthday that set us back again with development.  That was crushing and I’m still pissed because birthdays are precious to me, and if it can happen on a birthday it can happen any time and the possibility of a seizure has us worried on the reg.

Soon after her birthday, summer came and it was a lot of care-taking which definitely takes years off my life, but was virtually catastrophe-free. BUT, Kelsey did have surgery to remove hardware from a surgery the year before.  So more anesthesia, immobility and wound care.  Oh and they left a staple in her back which required removal post-hospitalization.  But that’s all catastrophe-free for us and “no big deal” when it comes to our rap sheet.

I could write a book.  But would this year of my life be one chapter or five? Who knows.

As I look ahead, I see healthy kids (KNOCK ON WOOD) who are doing well in school.  They have off today and tomorrow (lucky me!) and we will spend the day shopping and dining with friends and family.  It also happens to be my husband’s birthday and we were lucky enough to get away for the weekend to celebrate.

I can also look back and recognize that even through all those trials this past year there were also so many things to be grateful for.  And that’s life isn’t it? If we don’t know this at 41 than we may never figure it out.  Life is about every up and down along the way and how we choose to focus on it makes the days we experience full of gratitude or dismay.

So Happy Monday, happy birthday to me and my love, and in honor of Rosh Hashanah, “Leshana tovah tikatevee v’tichatemee,” which means, ‘may you be written and sealed for a good year.’  I love it.

Xo,

Kim