Got Tums?

My stomach is churning a bit this morning. After spending the entire morning yesterday on the phone with doctors, I am now beginning the first steps on a somewhat "new" journey -- or at least, a new branch of a journey we've been on for the past three years with Grace. In a nutshell, we're starting all over with her clubfoot situation.

Do I want to be here, at this point? No way. No one likes going backwards, starting over. It's kind of funny -- ironic funny -- that my very last post expressed a new "beginning" for me regarding one major part of my journey, letting go of the events of the past, forgiving, and moving on. Maybe it's not so coincidental -- perhaps reaching that milestone has freed me up to now focus on the next stretch o' road in front of me, gathering up my emotions and energy and will and placing them on my daughter and her needs. Yes, we're starting over.

Grace's clubfoot has relapsed. It doesn't look great and of course I'm concerned. For a while now my mother-gut has been churning, hearing and listening and doing yet not quite believing that what we were doing was right for her. I have some fabulous new women in my life now, helping me along the way, filling in the cracks and voids so I am better armed to face what's ahead. It kills me to think that she never even needed that horrible surgery at three months of age, that it was completely avoidable, that the scar tissue clogging up her heel now wouldn't even be there if we had known. But no one can go back.

This afternoon my girl and I are taking our first journey-steps, heading over to a new pediatric orthopedic surgeon nearby. He comes highly recommended, and I'm sure he's fantastic with certain orthopedic issues, but how he handles clubfeet is yet to be discovered. Thanks to these women who have gone before me, I now have a list of questions (that I'm sure he'll love!) to ask, to better understand what's in front of us, what our options are. I'm doctor-shopping and he's my first stop.

I'm nervous. I said to Don the other night, I feel very similar to what I did when we first began this journey, at Grace's birth -- not knowing what all this is about, feeling inexperienced and lost, feeling overwhelmed and scared. After one of our earlier meetings with her doctor, I recall him saying that when she reaches the age of 3, this will basically all be over, save the occasional check-up in the future, older years. The age of 3. I remember thinking, at the time, as I held my newborn girl, that three years seemed an eternity. I remember telling Don that, while I didn't want to overlook those precious newborn moments due to looking in vain into the future, there was that part of me that kept muttering, "I can't wait until she's 3. I can't wait until she's 3 ..."

And now, she's 3. Well, almost. And we are so, so, so far from being finished. We're just starting it all over again. While I won't wallow in this, while I won't be swallowed up with regret and woe, I will allow myself to feel this, to grieve this, and then to take those first steps forward on this new leg of the journey. I don't know what's in store for her, but I do know this: she is one incredible, vivacious, beautiful little girl who will, I have no doubt, handle this better than her Mommy. :)

So here we go ...