After 4 days of bat terror, we finally felt safe and convinced that said bat had left the premises. Last night during America’s got talent, right in the middle of a particularly high rendition of operatic singing, the black terror of the night appeared (from nowhere), sending Russ and I under the covers and Adam screaming from the room in a pitch to further incite the bat! Said bat now escapes our room to the rest of the house. Once again Adam and Dustin swat viciously, missing by miles due mainly to their own terror. So, once again we lost the bat!!!! No pest company will come because they said that it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. And now we’ve been advised to either catch it somehow and check it for rabies or go for rabies injections because people often do not even feel bat bites if they’re sleeping! My usual amount of barely manageable free-floating anxiety has reached new heights. Any advice or help (preferably physical) would be greatly appreciated! (possibly even to the end of my days)

Usually, when I sit down to write something, I have been inspired to do so. Today, not so. My son is going in tomorrow for a second back surgery. Since the last one some five months ago, he has not been pain free. However, a few weeks ago his bearable pain crossed the line into unbearable. Convinced he had re-herniated he managed to get a quick MRI (thanks Pete) and a quick appointment with his Ortho surgeon. He was right and very luckily his surgeon agreed to perform surgery almost immediately.

We grow and learn from suffering. Period. So what lessons have we all learned so far through this painful experience.

My son has learned who his “bad time” friends are. They know who they are. He has learned just how much his family loves him. He has also learned that he truly has a wonderful wife with incredible patience and understanding. He has learned that he can bear things that he would have previously thought unbearable. We have all learned that people who understand pain are more compassionate. We have learned that those who don’t understand will often diminish the experience of others so that they might feel better about their own helplessness. We have all learned that the most dangerous people are those who believe that they know everything. This kind of arrogance creates the greatest weakness in human beings.

My husband and I have sadly learned that the professions that we believed to be the most caring are the ones where we sometimes find the least. We have learned to advocate. We have learned to stand strong from a weakened state. We have learned that we can’t fix all of our children’s pain but that we can do our best to hear them. We have learned to take one day at a time. We have learned that even with our history of people pleasing, we have limits. We have learned that our son’s happiness and our loyalty to that is more important than any social embarrassment that we may ever feel.