High Hopes, Low Expectations

Mar 21

When it comes to certain things in life, I think it’s okay to have high hopes and low expectations. In my opinion, high hopes with high expectations, only leads to disappointment.

I generally try live by this motto, but recently I did not.

Sam was supposed to start school today. He hasn’t been in school since October. I think I was looking forward to him starting school the most. When he came down with what we think is a stomach bug yesterday, I was selfishly pretty bummed. When I shared my feelings with Sam’s dietitian, her response was,

Not selfish in my mind. You want this for Sam and it was also going to be a break for you.

She was right. Clearly in this situation, my hopes and expectations were high. Give yourself grace.

We’re still home and hoping to keep it that way. Although, we are very done with this PICC line, it might just be the thing that keeps Sam from a hospital stay.

Before he started feeling sick, he was on track to be done with the TPN (food/nutrition through his bloodstream) by the end of April, which would mean no more PICC line. His g-tube feedings have been going really well. We are hoping this doesn't set him too far back and also know he likes to throw curveballs in the mix sometimes.

The prayer is that this is a stomach bug and not an intolerance to his feedings. As a of now, we are confident he has a stomach bug and hopefully he’ll kick it quickly.

On another note, we were able to take a trip few weeks ago. If you remember from our last trip, we had some memories to last a lifetime. On our way home, our flight was canceled. We weren’t able to get on another flight home until the next day. From that, we were each given vouchers from the airline. Abby had a soccer tournament in Florida so we thought we would use those vouchers and try our luck at another trip.

I say trip because when you are traveling with young kids or someone with special needs, it's a trip, not a vacation. ; ) Although it was another eventful trip, we had a fabulous time.

Here’s a very short version.

On the way there, our flight was delayed two hours, Sam peed through his sweatpants. We had to leave his wet shirt on because he was still hooked up to his PICC line. He pooped right before we boarded the plane, which held the plane up a little longer. Thankfully, we hadn’t boarded yet. He threw his suction machine (basically his lifeline) into the ocean. Red tide hit our beaches, but we had two fabulous days on the beach. Abby sprained her ankle in her second game. Our flight home was delayed an hour and then we sat on the runway for almost another hour. When we got home, we were locked out of our house.

BUT what we remember was absolutely perfect weather and a wonderful time with family and friends. We kept our hopes high and our expectations low. We had some bumps along the way, but we expected some of those and rolled with the punches.

Sam might not be the easiest guy to travel with, let alone leave the house with, but we want him to have the best quality of life and we have chosen to do what we can to give him that and not hold our other kids back despite his complexities.