52 Portraits, 22/52

I’m posting this week’s entry from the hospital where I’ve been for most of the last 5 days alongside my husband. He had been ill for a few weeks with a mysterious illness that just wouldn’t quit and which led us to the ER twice.   Thursday, I got a call from my husband’s doctor while I was shooting a session with a family in Cambridge. He was trying to reach my husband but he wasn’t answering his phone.  He couldn’t tell me more other than that he needed to speak to him.  Frantic, while the kind and patient family I was shooting stood nearby waiting, I called my husband who moments later called me back to say that he needed to be admitted to the hospital that night.

I am thankful for a kind babysitter who was watching the girls and who stayed well beyond the expected time.  I am thankful for a friend who raced over to relieve the babysitter, feed my daughters and put them both to bed that night since I wasn’t home until nearly 9:30.   I am thankful for clients who were understanding when I cancelled all sessions last weekend and clients who have had to wait for their sessions that had already been shot but not edited. I am thankful for friends and family who have jumped in and taken the girls for hours at a time in the last few days so that I could be here while we try to sort this mystery out. And it is a mystery.  It’s never a comfort to hear that your husband’s case has become the talk of the hospital and that the experts are thus far stumped but also, fascinated. I suppose that helps since it means that many eyes have read the charts and many hands have poked and prodded my poor husband and every test that could be run has been run.

We’re slowly getting closer to some answers and while nothing is official yet, I am holding on to the hope that we will soon have an answer and a plan to kick this nasty illness to the curb and get on with our summer.   I’m ready for this just to be another story in our past– that crazy May that we had when the kids were really little, something that we talk about over  beers someday. I like to think that I already appreciate the small moments  and that I already had a good sense of what’s important in this life.  Still, you never really realize how great those simple, everyday moments that you spend together as a family are until someone is missing from the moments.