Yes, Santa, we are going to Australia, so please drop our presents off in a little cabin on Bream Beach. It’s near Jervis Bay, a few hours south of Sydney. We will be the ones dancing victoriously on the sand. Cheers!

In about two weeks, we will be celebrating Christmas on the beach, building sand-castles, soaking up the sun and enjoying ourselves Down Under for the first time in three years. Three very not easy years. Almost one year of surgeries and chemo and procedures and ICU and oxygen and NG tubes. And now we have had two wonderful years of recovery and work and love and struggle and happiness. And in all that time we have not been able to go home to Oz. We have not been able to afford it. We still can’t afford it, but sometimes you have to go anyway.

I have just dropped Gavin off at school. He skipped away from me shouting, Yay! I’m back at school! He has been home sick for 5 days. 5 days of barfing, fevers, coughing and mile-high anxiety for Mummy. 5 days of lying on the couch, watching way too many hours of telly. 5 days of watching his every move, analyzing his every blink. He is rail-thin and I am worn out.

This is really simplifying things, but Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. Then a lot of esteemed scientists did a bunch of other stuff and began producing antibiotics as we know them. Prior to World War II, bacterial infections of any kind were deadly. People dropped like flies from illnesses that we consider fairly treatable today.

In his 4 years on Earth, Bean has taken a boatload of antibiotics. I’m sure that his life has been saved many times by running IV antibiotics in a timely fashion. So. I am really, really thankful for antibiotics. They are seriously powerful medicines that we in the developed world are lucky to have easy access to. It’s too bad that we tend to abuse them, mostly by feeding them to animals, which is a whole other thing I really don’t approve of. And we also take far too many of them ourselves.

There have been times in the past two years when I have felt like life is what happens in between Gavin’s medical appointments.

Don’t get me wrong, things have slowed down from the hectic six months post-treatment when the Bean and I were flying around the city from our 10:00 at Bloorview to our 1:00 at Sick Kids. It would’ve been much easier with jet-packs, but until that fantasy comes to be a reality, we’ve been stuck with a Pontiac Vibe and stuck in traffic for more hours than I care to share. Hours filled with chit-chat, singing, DVDs and the occasional shouting match.

Wow. Okay, where do I begin?

First. Beanie is now 4 years old! The family gathered at the cottage to celebrate on Labour Day weekend. Auntie Lauren and Uncle Duncan flew from Vancouver to be with us. There were boat rides, hikes and canoeing. There was a mountain of presents. There was a Spider-Man cake, hand-crafted by Craig. There were swims, great meals and no mosquitoes. There was star-gazing. There was wine. There was play.

Only when you drink from the river of

silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top,

then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs,

then shall you truly dance.

– Kahlil Gibran

Last week my family said goodbye to my grandmother, Margaret Helen Parkes. Her body was returned to the Earth, to lie with her husband Arthur and her only son, Brian. In her 97th year, despite facing many adversities in her life, her mind was sharp and able, but her body had let her down. We knew that her time remaining here would be short, but it was still so very difficult to accept that she was leaving us. In her last years, she lost the use of her legs and then hands almost entirely, a loss that would have left many suicidal, but she faced those troubles with her typical dignity, strength and humour.

Bean and Daddy Airport Antics

Two years.

Two years ago on Father’s Day we took our beautiful child to Sick Kids in the evening. We were worried, concerned, alarmed. But we had no idea that the tank headed towards us was about to flatten us in its tracks. The innocence of the time before is something I’ve longed for in the past two years. There have been times that I have felt physically sick thinking about the day of Gavin’s diagnosis, wishing I could unhear the words, “Gavin has a brain tumour,” that Craig had to whisper in my ear in the ER, as I returned from getting a coffee.

First things first. After a very difficult day of blood, sweat and tears, we got Gavin’s scans done and the word has trickled down that they are CLEAR. After weeks of crushing anxiety and worry, I feel feather-light to know, with absolute certainty, that everything is fine, fine, fine.

Getting these scans done was a bit of a feat.

Last week I called MRI to confer with them about the “pneumonia situation.” I tried to dance around the issue by calling it a lung infection. The nurse I spoke with rather sharply asked, “Do you mean he’s got pneumonia?” Sigh. Yup. When I admitted that an x-ray had revealed pneumonia, the nurse told me in no uncertain terms that the anaesthetist would not agree to sedate him. But when I got teary and explained that our appointment was over a month overdue, she relented and made a brilliant suggestion. “Is he old enough, do you think, to try going into the machine unsedated?”

I am probably the only mama in history, upon finding out that her kid has pneumonia, to say “Wow, that’s a relief.” Yes, it’s true. Gavin has pneumonia. Obviously, I am not overjoyed about this news, but in comparison to other, extremely dire diagnoses, it feels kind of alright.

After our fun day in the ER on Monday, things didn’t exactly improve as much as I’d have liked. Tuesday Gavin was sort of okay but developed a terrible snotty nose and cough, Wednesday he felt well enough to go to daycare, but seemed very tired afterwards and then had a temp again that evening. Thursday he was energetic but had no appetite, and Friday I took him to see Dr. Jain again to confirm a suspected ear infection that was seen on CT. She agreed that his ears didn’t look great and we decided to do a round of antibiotics for that, hoping it would clear up the nose too.

I’m still in slow recovery mode after a frightening 48-hour period.

It began on Sunday. (Mother’s Day, naturally.) We’d spent the night at Bubby and Da’s house and Gavin slept kind of poorly but woke up bright and cheery. He was fine until about 9:45, then said, I feel weird and wanted to lie down. He had a fever, but not too high, about 38.5. Pretty soon the vomiting began and was pretty consistent until evening. We spent the day pushing fluids only to have almost everything come back up.