Lighting the Darkness

Whatever you celebrate, wherever you are… be a light in the darkness. From a recent post I wrote for St. Baldrick’s: Lighting the Darkness By Krissy Dietrich Gallagher, mother to Austin, 2012 Ambassador Kid My grandfather died on December 21, 1982. The shortest – and darkest — day of the year. Cancer, of course. My […]

Automatic

You’ve heard it all over the media these past eight days: The teachers in Sandy Hook were heroes. And they were. No doubt about it. But they were also just teachers; they were doing — in a most basic and ordinary sense — what teachers do, all over the country, each and every day. Teachers […]

27 Acts

I know many of you, like me, have felt hopeless in the face of such tragedy. Wondering what you can possibly do to ease the pain and suffering of the families in Newtown. The answer, sadly, is little. There are no words strong enough to bring their children back, no teddy bear that could replace […]

Holding

This one might be a little rough, so consider yourself warned. As so much we’ve seen and read and watched has been rough over the past few days … Mark and I had that horrid conversation the other day, that I imagine many parents of the sick have had this weekend. It’s a rather gut-wrenching […]

Familiar

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly we can revert back to our old roles. How seamlessly we become who we once were: the patient and the advocate, the comforter and the distractor. It’s as if we never left that old hospital world; it all feels so familiar, so deep in our bones, even […]

“Minor”

Austin is having surgery this Friday at Akron Children’s. Surgeries, actually, two procedures rolled into one. They’re minor and non-cancer related. Just a long overdue tonsillectomy and finger repair. You may remember that his swollen tonsils (besides keeping us all up at night) prevented him from being sedated for his May MRI, requiring us to […]

Only One

Yesterday was our last day as patients at Rainbow. No, we haven’t magically moved to some elusive category of you’re-so-healthy-you-need-no-more-follow-up-care (but if such a category exists, I’d sure like to be placed in it someday). No, no, instead, we are switching hospitals. I know, that one came as a shock, right? We love Rainbow, that […]

Clinic of Miracles

Austin had his two-and-a-half year scans today. He went briefly to school to partake in the Grands Day celebrations, but I picked him up at 10:30 and we headed down to Rainbow for a long day of procedures. First an EKG and ECHO, because he needs clearance from cardiology before his December 7th surgeries (tonsillectomy […]

One Voice

I worked pretty hard to keep my political commentary off the blog this year, hence the recent scarcity of updates. (Of course, if you’re my Facebook friend, you know I certainly didn’t hold anything back there!) Today’s post is not specifically about politics, although it does contain some of my political views, which should come […]

Gratitude

I was going to post about Halloween today — with pictures of the boys in their various costumes: the packaged Target variety for trick-or-treating (which has been postponed until Sunday) and the we’ll-indulge-Mommy’s-crafty-side variety for Storybook Character Day. But it all seems a little inappropriate in light of the destruction and suffering being caused by […]