Holiday Memories....Marking a Journey to Normalcy

Each year at the Holidays I think about how far we've come on our journey. From that first Christmas when we broke Max out of the hospital on Christmas Eve probably against doctor's orders but after nearly eight months in the hospital we knew we could care for our son as well as anyone else and if we didn't make a break for it we would never get out of what had become our prison. I'm sure many of the doctors doubted our sanity and thought we'd be back sooner rather than later. But it was time to go, time to get some semblance of normalcy for our children. When better to start than Christmas? I'll never forget us rushing to get Max hooked up to all his machines, doing his IV for the first time by ourselves (thank God for the very kind nurse that came out at 8 pm to walk us through the process) all the time trying to get the tree up before midnight because Ellie was terrified that we'd never make it in time for Santa's arrival! We were successful in not killing Max and beating Santa.....mission accomplished! Some of my favorite photos are of that Christmas morning, Max hooked up to multiple machines, Ellie running from gift to gift and Michele and I feeling "normal" for the first time in nearly a year.

Since then we truly have made incredible strides, mostly due to Max's defiance of the odds the medical world had given him. We now have very "normal" holidays. Max loves to dig into the Thanksgiving turkey, this the child who would never eat. He loves to play with his Christmas gifts, whether it be a bike, a scooter or a soccer net. This the child who would never run. Yes we have come a very long way!