Things I'm Worrying About Today

Remember our childhood when the only thing we worried about when we hopped out of bed in the morning was how soon we could get outside to play? Adulthood doesn't work the same way. It seems the more mature you become, the more worries lay upon your shoulders.

My greatgrandson, Nolan, who is almost 10 months old had a febrile seizure yesterday and it's turned our lives upside down. There will always be a tiny fear in our hearts that it will happen again and there's no escaping that fear. It goes right along with the deep and enduring love we have for that little baby. With any kind of luck that seizure will be an aberration in his journey through life that will never occur again.

That's my top worry of the day but there are lots more. I'm worried about a possible root canal, possible surgery on my knee, my children's future, my grandchildren's future, and a host of smaller things.

You can see that my worries are all about what "might" occur and not what is occurring at the moment. My daughter prefaced her phone call to me yesterday with a host of, "Everything is all right and everyone is all right and there's nothing to worry about", before telling me what happened to Nolan. She knows me well and if she had started out the conversation with, "Nolan had a seizure", my heart would have stopped.

Kim told me to read about these febrile seizures on the internet and I did just that. They are fairly common but there is a chance that others will follow if he's feverish and that's why we'll never be able to completely relax our guard over Nolan. Maybe in 5 years or so from now we'll have put the worry far to the back of our minds.

It's clear that the only thing really worth worrying about is your family and the people you love. Anything else drops to the bottom of the list. Nolan is such a beautiful, happy baby with a huge family who loves him dearly but even without the seizure we'd all still have little worries in our minds about his welfare. He's important to us and we want only the best for him.

Certainly I'm worried, but I'm also hopeful that he will be just fine. We'll be watching out for him!