Fear is the mind killer

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965.

I have not written in months. I have composed various blog entries in my mind, but have not found the time to commit them to keyboard.

I would like to write about how wonderful Sebastien is. How we adore his impish smile. How his joyful laugh, almost indistinguishable from his older brother's, rings through our house and our hearts and brings a smile to our lips. How, after doing a 'military-style drag crawl' since he was six months old, he has finally, on new year's day, figured out how to do the 'classic baby crawl'. How he pulls up to standing whereever he can. How he has learned to clap and wave bye-bye and is starting to sign "all done". How he has 4 little teeth that transform his look from a baby to a toddler. How well he has been sleeping and eating. How much his dad and his sister and I adore him.

Instead, I am writing to fight my fears.

I knew when I found out I was pregnant with Sebastien, with his due date so close to Harry's birthday, that this time of year, during his first year of life, would be stressful. I keep trying to tell myself, it is normal to be stressed out and worried after what we went through with Harry, but that does not mean it is going to happen again.

I tell myself daily, Sebastien is NOT Harry. He has not come for the same life. He has come for his own set of life experiences and his life will be very different from his older brother's.

I hate fear. I hate what it does to me. It steals happiness, sucks joy, leaves one withered and dry and brittle. I don't want to just manage my fear. I want to banish it, destroy it, obliterate it and to replace it with sunshine, hope, love, laughter and joy.

I am kind of amazed, though I guess I shouldn't be, at how fragile I feel. I've generally thought that I've been managing pretty well since Harry died. I felt happy and so positive through my pregnancy with Sebastien. Up till now I have just been drinking in with joy each little moment, soaking them up and seeking to stay present to each wonderful moment with Sebastien.

The only indication we ever really had that Harry was getting sick in November and December of 2007 was that he was a fussy eater and his sleep pattern / night waking was getting worse not better with age.

By contrast, Sebastien has been a great eater, enthusiastically eating everything we've given him and eating more in one sitting that Harry would eat in a day. He has been a good sleeper too. To bed by 7:30 and only waking between 5 or 6 am to nurse then sleeping till 8:30 or 9:00 and napping a good 2-3 hours a day.
So, I've been managing fear really well. Confident that Sebastien is not Harry and will not repeat Harry's life experience.

But then this damn virus hits like at tsunami and I am reduced to rubble and left a crumbled mess in its wake.

Friday night, Sebastien spiked a fever of over 40C and I had to take him up to Emergency. Seeing as how well our *last* visit to Emergency with a baby turned out, it was gut wrenching to have to take him. I couldn't face going to Children's Hospital again, so instead I went to the urgent care centre at the community hospital in our neighbourhood. Turned out to be a good call. There was only one other person in the entire waiting room. And though the admitting nurses probably thought I was a bit of an over-reactive Mum, I gained some credibility when they went through their list of questions and hit the "any family history of heart disease, cancer, diabetes ... etc." Reporting that his older brother died of cancer at 16 months gives me permission to be paranoid, even in their eyes.

The doctor checked him out, ears and throat, heart and lungs, bowel sounds, glands, abdomen. All looked fine. Sent us home with a declaration that it was viral and nothing to worry about.

The fear starts to creep in because Harry had a basically identical viral episode at the same age. He was 8.5 months, it was in December just before Christmas. He spiked a fever in the night hours before we had to fly to Guelph for my doctoral thesis defense. He was feverish for 2 days, the day we arrived in Guelph and the next day when I defended my thesis. Then the fever disappeared as fast as it came on and he broke out in a tiny red pin prick rash. I always felt so guilty that I didn't take him to the doctor's. I had figured it was just a flu. We'd arrived in Guelph in a snow storm and were locked out of my mother's apartment for several hours while we tried to find her land lady to get a key (my Mom was in Poland for Christmas already). Then I had to defend my doctoral thesis, then spend several crazy days trying to get all of the changes finished to submit the final copy by the December 21 deadline. Harry was fine by the time we came back to Winnipeg so we didn't take him to the doctor here either.

I'm kicking myself for not having the doctor weigh Sebastien in the examining room. There was a scale there and I tried to weigh Seb while we were waiting. It was nearly 4:00 am so I wasn't thinking too clearly. But I *thought* he weighed about 9.7 kg or just over 21 pounds.

Well, we came home and went to bed. Sebastien has been mostly okay, but a bit under the weather. He hasn't wanted to eat as much. The fever broke mid-day on Sunday. Then on Tuesday afternoon he developed this rash, tiny red pin pricks all over his body. So I took him to our family doctor this morning.

Why does Sebastien have to have basically the same damn thing now of all times?

The doctor says he looks fine. He knows my fears so he always checks Sebastien's abdomen really well. His tummy feels fine. It is just a virus. Babies get 7 to 9 viruses each year. He will be fine.

But damn, I had the receptionist weigh him on their scale. Under 19 pounds. Not even 19 pounds. That doesn't seem right. He has gained less than a full pound in 2 months? I have long suspected that their scale is off. Now I am just spinning. If he is not gaining weight properly what does that mean? How can he be eating so well and not be gaining weight?

Ahhhhhhhhhh - I want to scream. No, no, no. I will not let myself get sucked into a vortex of fear. But god, the pull is so strong. I need to find a baby scale and weigh him again. Can a virus cause cancer? Can a virus trigger a glitch in your immune system which triggers a glitch in your DNA and causes it to mutate? If it were so simple then Harry's cancer would't be so damn rare, right? If it were so simple Big Pharma would be all over it selling us a high priced vaccine. But wait, no Big Pharma has no interest in a cure or prevention for cancer. Cancer is one of their biggest money makers. They have no interest in curing cancer. So maybe it is that simple. I don't like profanity in blog posts, but I really only have one thing to say, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK.

Go away, go away, go away. Fears, worries, anxiety go away. You are not welcome. I want you far, far, far away from me. I want to be busy living my life and enjoying my life and being happy and cheerful and full of laughter. I don't want to wallow in this muck.

How many days until March? I just want Sebastien to turn one a healhty little boy. Is that really so much to ask? I want to stay in the good, positive, joyful and happy place that Harry showed me existed. I want to get out of January and February unscathed.

Cynthia