My Son the Doctor
Jenny was having a pretty rough morning. My son, who just turned five a few weeks ago, said this to her this morning on the way to preschool.
Don’t worry I’m working careful, hard, and I’m going to school really long and read my body books 145 pounds* so I can get my tools and fix your lupus and kidneys. I think you don’t have a strainer**. I wanna grow up and take care of my momma. I will build you a strainer.
That’s about all I can write about this, because I will look really stupid if I get teary-eyed sitting at my keyboard. He’s a really good boy.
*My son measures everything in pounds for some reason. I think it started with the phrase, “Me too”, which he would hear someone say and then he would respond, “Me twenty-four”, or something like that. He thought too was two and I think he also thought the numbers were a measure of how much you were in agreement with something. Then he learned about pounds as a measurement at school, and so now he measures effort, work, love, etc, in pounds. Time is about the only thing he doesn’t measure in pounds.
**My son is fascinated by how the body works. In one of his books, the kidney is described as a strainer, like the kind we use when we drain the spaghetti.
This post made me cry. Your wife may be going through a lot, but apparently you two have an amazing son to make up for that!
I have lupus too and I like to share your blog with my boyfriend. I always try to make it obvious to him that I’m sick and that I will always be sick, because I want to make sure he’s okay with that fact, if we consider spending the rest of our lives together. I’ve told him that I may not live that long, that I may not be able to have children, that I may be too weak and tired to do things. But just like you, he stands by my side through it all. My mom has lupus too, and my father is the same way, sticking by both my mom’s and my side, through all of the pain, fatigue, doctor’s appointments, medicine’s side effects, emotions, etc. Ultimately, I just want to say that I really admire you, and your love and patience for your family. And your advocacy for lupus. I pray that all this will go away one day. Take care
My son is just like yours. I was diagnosed his first day of kindergarten, and ever since, he’s wanted to fix me. He’s ten now, and plays video games, so he’s always talking about growing up to be a “healer” and finding a way to fix my “soldiers” (that’s how we explained the immune system to him).