Work, Anxiety and Ex’s

I remember being shuffled into the hospital room and the many doctors and nurses coming in and out of the room getting Brandon settled in to his new safe place for the next four days.  While this was happening and while I was trying to understand and process how our world was changing,  I remember thinking how am I going to do this?  I am barely making it.  With working all day and sometimes really long hours, how am I going to make sure that he gets what he needs and that he is getting the proper doses and wil he take his insulin while I am gone?

I thought to myself how am I going to make this work?  I have to work and I have to take care of my son.

My job and the needs of my son were consistently competing.  I always felt guilty, a constant gut wrenching anxiety over took me. I felt guilty because I had to work and during the summer Brandon’s A1C skyrocketed.  I felt bad that I had to call off of work or skip a networking event because of my son.  The tugging at my heart of making money to put food on the table and getting my son to all of his appointments and being there to monitor and make sure that he received the insulin he needed was making me sick.

As a single parent there is always that struggle to strike the right balance of being at home with your children and keeping your job.  I remember when the kids were younger that constant feeling of failure was with me every day.  When the kids got older and were able to do things on their own I felt a little more at ease.  However, the anxiety returned that day in the hospital when the staff was floating around us.  How am I going to do this?

I would like to say that my ex-husband is highly involved with his children and knows what is going on with Brandon’s care.  I would like to say that he is my support team as we wonder along this path of diabetes.  He did make a valiant attempt in February to say that he would be there when he was sick or needed to go to the doctor.  The really sad fact is that he has not been around.  He doesn’t even know all the changes Brandon has been through with his insulin or that he did a saline trial with an insulin pump and he determined that he didn’t like it.  He hasn’t even talked to his children since July.

When I look back at all that we have been through since February I look at my son and see how he has struggled and how he has triumphed.  I see the days when he is sad and frustrated and the days he feels like he is a champ.  Through all my anxiety and worry I am the one that holds his hand when he is scared and chokes back tears to show him how to be brave.  No matter how hard this journey is or how tired I become I know that I get to experience this with him and watch him grow every day into a super brave and confident young man.  This is what helps me to make it work (along with phone calls to my best friend and daily conversations with my higher power.)

Every ex-spouse has a reason that they divorced and often we have negative feelings toward our ex’s.  We often curse them under our breath.  I have felt and done all of those, but interesting enough the feeling I have for my ex husband is sadness.  I am sad that he does not get to see Brandon grow and develop in to the wonderful human being he is becoming.