Get the Girls Out by Lucy Bloom

Author:Lucy Bloom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

6

Courage

Courage is an elusive beast. People talk about it in elevated terms, but essentially courage is just being able to push through fear without acting like a pork chop. And fear is just a feeling in your guts that can rule your every move.

I believe that everything you want is on the other side of fear. I think Oprah said that before I did. Honestly, courage is the willingness to push through fear, and everything you hope for is on the other side of that fear. At its most raw, fear is a horrid feeling and just suffering through it is courageous.

When my big boy Hudson turned six, we held a home-style shindig to celebrate. That was back when I had energy for kids’ parties, birthday cakes and lolly bags. We decided on a hillbilly theme, but it pissed with rain that day so we had forty kids plus a stack of parents piled into our house for toasted marshmallows and fireside songs. I still miss that huge open fireplace in the house we built. I dressed as Dolly Parton, and some friends’ kids did a hillbilly tap dance to the crowd of sugar-fuelled six year olds. Yeee-hawww!

At the end of the day, Hudson complained of a toothache. Half of his face was swollen, and it turned out he had a corker abscess under one of his molars. The next day, we were booked in to have the tooth pulled. Yeee-hawww!

I waited for my son to have his first major procedure: a big tooth yanked from his gums. I’d had my wisdom teeth out, and it sucked so bad – jelly for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After it was all done, the anaesthetist told me he’d noticed something strange about Hudson: my little boy had very low oxygen saturation levels in his blood. I was urged to follow this up with our GP the following week.

Naturally, I hit up Doctor Google that night. It was not good news. The number-one reason for low oxygen saturation in a child’s blood is leukaemia. The other reasons were lost in a blur as my eyes filled with tears and I sobbed and sobbed.

Many doctors’ visits later, and ten thousand tears, we had a diagnosis that was much firmer than a Friday night google. Hudson had a heart problem referred to as superior vena cava to left ventricle. This meant the vein from the head that feeds blue blood to the heart had an unusual offshoot vein that was sending blue blood into the oxygenated chamber of the heart.

In other words, Hudson’s blood was watered down. He was always a little cold. Tired sooner than his little sister. A funny shade of blue.

So when he was only six, he had major heart surgery. He showed such courage. But I guess he didn’t realise just how big a deal it was. He was on a conveyor belt he couldn’t get off. It was torture for me, his father and his grandparents. We sat in the hospital café at Westmead Children’s Hospital while Hudson, our beloved firstborn, was in theatre.

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