Cross Country

I am freaking nervous. My 10-year-old is about to do the Run-Walk Challenge (aka Cross Country), and I have no idea if he’ll make it or not.

This isn’t your standard, “my son doesn’t like running” or “he’s not a sporty kid and hates the cross country” situation. My son loves sport. Loves running. Loves climbing. Love anything and everything active.

But his heart function has started declining again. He had chest pain during a 5-minute practice run around the school oval just 2 days ago. We’re back in this situation of living more on edge.

I get nervous every single year watching him do the Run-Walk Challenge - wondering whether he’ll make the full distance, or will pass out somewhere along the way. These are rational fears, as it’s exactly where he’s headed. We have to wait for these stress-inducing symptoms to kick in, as one factor his cardiologist is looking for to help indicate when it’s the right time for his next Open Heart Surgery.

You read that right, his next Open Heart Surgery. If you’re new to my blog, our HeartKid had emergency Open Heart Surgery at 4 weeks of age, then a second Open Heart at 7 months, and we’ve been waiting for this third ever since. We’ve been living on about 8 years of bonus time, as the original guess for his third surgery was age 2; he’s turning 11 in July.

Right now, I’m sitting outside the school with a lump in my throat. My stomach is churning, wondering if today is the day he faints for the first time? Is it the first time the school will need to call an ambulance for him? If he gets chest pain on this run, will he actually tell a teacher instead of not telling them like 2 days ago? He’s brilliant at self-managing, but will peer pressure mean he doesn’t slow down if he knows he needs to? Will I see him run back into the school grounds with his classmates, or will he have not made it part-way around the course?

This life as the parent of a child with Congenital Heart Disease is such a difficult one to describe. These cycles of heart-function decline we help our kids walk through are full-on for everyone in the family. Random bedtime conversations about dying and Open Heart Surgery are a reality I never thought in a million years I’d be having as a parent. But they’re a very real part of our world.

So I’ll be standing on the sidelines watching and waiting for my 10-year-old to make it back into the school grounds. And if he doesn’t, I know that we’ll get through it.