I’ve written before about missing kids when they go home, and have said that it gets easier with time. While that’s true for the most part, I still have my moments missing two different kids in particular.
This popped up in my FB feed yesterday.
We had Gronckle with us for about 9 months. When he first came to us everyone represented to us that his case was likely to go to adoption because Mom was not working her plan and Dad was in prison for a long time to come and no other relatives were on the horizon. After about 8 months there was suddenly a new relative who popped up who wanted Gronckle, and the case worker determined the relative was “appropriate” to take him.
One thing you learn as a foster parent is that “appropriate” is a moving target, depending on who is doing the evaluating. And it’s a low bar always. A parent or relative just needs to have the ability to meet the child’s basic needs. I’ve seen kids returned to a homeless shelter; the county didn’t require the Mom to have housing. I’ve seen kids returned to squalid housing. I’ve seen kids returned to situations with adults who made me verrrry nervous for the child’s safety and well being. I’ve also seen situations where the case worker pushes the parents to achieve much more than those “minimums” I’ve just mentioned – requiring housing. Requiring it be appropriately clean. Requiring adults in the parent’s or relative’s life be checked out. So so so much depends on the case worker.
I’ll just put it this way: I worry like hell that I’ll see Gronckle’s name in the news one day.
Scaring us half to death
Gronckle was our first medical kid. He had MRSA, the worst eczema I’ve ever seen, food allergies, and asthma. We wrestled mightily with the doctors to get them to prescribe him the special formula he needed. We handled him with gloves and coated him in bandages when he had a MRSA outbreak. We used the best damn eczema soap ever on his skin (SallyeAnder’s oatmeal soap). We coated him and slathered him and ruined clothes with Aquaphor. Hot diggety, we got that eczema and MRSA completely under control and managed his food allergies perfectly.
The asthma, though, scared the pants off us. He had a nebulizer, which he needed to use on occasion. One night when he was about 10 months old he had gone to bed with a runny nose but no fever or other symptoms. Around 1:30 in the morning Seth and I both woke up and Seth shot out of bed. “Somethings wrong,” he said. And he bolted toward the baby’s room. Somehow our instincts woke us both.
Gronckle had stopped breathing.
Seth grabbed the kid and did a sternal rub on him to try to get him to wake up and breathe while I got the nebulizer ready. I called the ambulance and got the nebulizer on Gronckle at the same time. We convinced him to take a few raspy breaths. Then he would stop breathing again for a full minute. Then he’d take a couple of breaths again. It was agony.
The ambulance got to us so quickly it was incredible. The EMT took one look at Gronckle in his blue, barely-breathing state, grabbed him, and shot with him into the ambulance to put him on the nebulizer there. Seth rode along and said for the first half of the ride Gronckle continued to stop breathing with regularity, and the poor EMT was gray, shaky, and had a tightly clenched jaw by the time they got Gronckle to start breathing more regularly.
By the time I arrived at the hospital they had given Gronckle a different kind of breathing treatment and he was so much better. They determined he’d come down with croup, panicked that he couldn’t breathe, and the asthma kicked in to make matters worse.
Between the nebulizer and the other breathing treatment, Gronckle was bouncing off the walls. I’ve never seen such a hyper baby before. He was already walking and running at that young age and would try to slither out of our arms and take off at incredible speeds. It was all we could do to keep him on a hospital bed in our arms to try to keep him safe.
It was a hell of a night.
Anyway, Gronckle did fine after that breathing treatment though neither Seth nor I slept soundly for several days afterward.
Present day
When that Facebook memory popped up yesterday I was astonished to find myself in tears. Honestly I don’t think about Gronckle daily anymore. And when I do think of him I feel a gut punch of worry about how he’s doing, but no urge to cry usually. Then today I saw an ambulance tv show where they were giving a 6 month old a breathing treatment and I had such a strong flashback to that dreadful night that I felt shaky and teary remembering it. It’s been 4 1/2 years since Gronckle went home but I still love that little boy so damn much.
When people ask me, “How do you let them go?” I have to reply that, “You just do because you have to. But it tears you apart.” I’ll never be whole because I love the children who have lived with us body and soul, and will always always miss them.
Mouse is the other kid I miss so much. She lived with us for about 18 months. She was our second medically fragile kid, and became the reason Seth went to nursing school. Her I do think of daily still, even though it’s been about 3 years since she went home.
Maybe there’s something about being with a kid who has teetered on the edge between life and death, and you feel like you’ve had a hand in making them tip decidedly toward life. Mouse was desperately, dangerously ill when she came to us, yet went home a happy, thriving, healthy, sturdy little kid.
Sprout is the third child who has teetered on that brink between life and death while in our care. And god only knows what it would do to me to lose her now. Things still look like they’re headed toward adoption but I won’t breathe easily until that actually has happened. And even so, it’s a tragedy that she can’t go home so I’ll always feel that. Foster care is so unpredictable and damnit, it’s fucking hard. Heartbreak and heartache are at the heart of it if you’re doing it right.
Even so, I don’t regret a single minute of it. Not even a second of it. I’d do it the same all over again.
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