Mei-Ling tonight

We keep looking for the tiniest sign that she is looking better, doing better, feeling better. I think her color is better by the end of our visit, and she smiled more. Her IV got caught in her baby blanket last night so they had to re-site it and it took several tries, her veins were rolling. Tonight she slept in my arms the entire time her antibiotics went through her IV. Wednesday they will be doing some tests on her kidney function. We will all hold our breath waiting for those results. They said tonight that the infection is no longer in her blood stream which is fantastic news, but now they think she may have more than two spleens and are certain she will need at least one surgery to try and put things where they belong. Our tiny girl is not out of the woods yet, but we are hopeful and fear is lessening. Its an unspeakable fear anyway. None of us dares to mention the gravity or severity of what we all keep silent in the very back of our thoughts. Its not a place any of us wants to go, even for a second as if a speck of such a thought might bring bad luck. So, we avoid that place and instead seek that glimmer of hope, that ray of sunshine, that faith that all will be well, we honestly know it will work out o.k. but all of us have eyelids rimmed in red, that moist redness that shows we have felt overwhelmed.
I tell Melanie to lean on me, I have been where she is and I know what it feels like, its not something you ever forget. In my cedar chest I keep the little undershirt she wore when we frantically drove her to the Emergency room nearly 17 years ago. It was cut off her lifeless body, like in the movies, cut up the front, down the arms and across the chest. Emery wonders why I would want to keep such a thing, (men grieve and deal differently with pain than women) but I know why I keep it, its a reminder to me of just how precious life is. Melanie will find her reminder of this time and keep it put away someplace safe. Not ever pulling it out to look at it, but instead, finding it when looking for something else...you don't want to forget, but you don't want to remember either. Its just something tangible to remind you of all the emotions you never want to experience again.
If you have lived it, you know what I mean.