Une Envie de Sel

 My wild child. My sparkler. My turner-of-heads and conjurer-of-tales. My little grifter, my paper moon, my caster-of spells.

 Tomorrow, she (along with daddy and me) head back to the clinic where she had her first two major surgeries for her annual cleft clinic.
"Annual" makes it sound like routine, and it is. The cleft clinic is several hours long, most of a day, but it involves only evaluations...evaluations by the entire team that is involved in treating a cleft condition. That means plastic surgeons, ENTs, pediatric dentists, orthopedic surgeons, and the list goes on.

 For the first year or two, this was really a piece of cake for us. We were well-prepared for the surgeries, the paperwork, the payments. But major surgeries are one thing with a baby, a child too small to really grasp what's going on. They are a whole different ballgame with a sentient child who can verbalize her feelings and her fears.

 There's that, and then there's the fact that she stopped breathing following her last major surgery. Three times. That, I'm not afraid to say, was a life-changer for me. It didn't seem to impress the surgical team overly much, but it scared the living daylights out of me. And I have never forgotten it.

 So it is that I'm basically a nervous wreck going into this cleft clinic. We're not facing the next surgery for five months or so, but nevertheless, on the inside, I'm a puddle of nerves.

Do I worry for her? No, not really. It will impact her a bit more because her thought processes are more complex at this age. She is more capable of understanding both pain and fear. But this next surgery directly affects her powers of speech, so that in a matter of a few short weeks she will find herself much more capable and more competent than ever before. I'm quite sure the payoffs will well outweigh the immediate consequences for her.

For me, on the other hand, it's quite a different matter. I am struggling with the demons raised by that last surgery and its complications. The immediacy of the concept of the fragility of one small child's life. Fragile as a dragonfly's wing.

That's what has been giving me nightmares for the past couple of nights. 

Yesterday, when we were at the playground, Q carelessly dropped her "beloved" kitty notebook and pen on the ground (in the midst of a battle of wills with us over leaving the climbing wall). A boy, easily four years her senior, and extremely handsome at that, saw her dropped  notebook as a potential "in", and scrambled to pick it up for her. He all but offered it on bended knee. 

And, I mean, like I keep saying, she's THREE. 

So no. I am (mostly) not worried for her. 

She's going to be just fine. 

She's going to have the world at her beck and call. 

We all know that. 

I am really a great deal more worried for ME.