We’re becoming fixtures at Children’s Hospital. That is both good and bad. Gage knows where we can park the car, he can navigate all of the elevators and get to the dialysis floor. Normally Gage is running off energy that has amassed at school. He darts in and out of hallway nooks running ahead of me and waits for me to pass him while he jumps out thinking I will be surprised every time.  He’s comfortable.

No one thinks he is sick as he jumps to hit signs that are high on the walls showing directions to this or that. He runs full steam ahead to dialysis. I am not going full steam ahead to dialysis. I am walking slowly to dialysis. I carry his bag, my bag with my computer and my very large and heavy calendar. I’m unable to use a PDA or a small pocket calendar; it has to do with how I can’t look at a whole month at a time to see what is ahead of me in one glance. I have always needed a big, bulky calendar. It’s a curse.

Sorry. Tangent.

Anyway…as we arrive at the top floor I hope that they are running on schedule. Because I will tell you that "5 minutes" in hospital time is at least triple outside of the walls of the hospital. Our watches are different. Five minutes means 15 and 15 minutes means about 45. I know there are emergencies. But still. It’s irritating. Gage’s life is disrupted enough. And us leaving dialysis up to an hour late on any given night is the difference in us eating together as a family or Gage having a small amount down time at home before bedtime.  His recent comment to me through tears on the way to karate was "I don’t get to play at home anymore!"

I try to work when I am waiting at CH but aside from checking email and making a couple of calls to keep work flowing, it is difficult. It’s not that I can’t find a quiet corner, or that I don’t have the time. Gage is literally attached to a machine for 3+ hours. So I have time. It’s the mental energy I don’t have. After checking him out of school and making our journey (which by all standards I have no right to complain about – we are 10 miles from our children’s hospital) I change from Working Mom to Mommy. And it’s hard to enter back into Working Mom mode.

When I enter through those doors, I am no longer advertising account executive, business owner, post office drop lady or accountant: I am Mommy. There is a mental shift somewhere on the drive over. All the talk is about school and what day it is and how many days until dialysis again, and how long it will take to get there, and what to drink before dialysis, and are we running late, and do I have kitty and blankie, and we hope he doesn’t get the corner chair, because everyone opens that cabinet and he can’t see the TV and it bothers him and he hates that chair. Hates. The Chair. In That Corner. There are, let’s see, approximately no times that we don’t discuss all of those items on the way to dialysis.

The thing is; I love my job. The account executive one for which I am paid a salary. I love that my job allowed me the ability to freelance and start our business and work around our kids’ schedules. I love my clients. I love the work I get to do for them and I have the best of both worlds when I get to work at something I have a passion for and also have lunch with my child who is ear-to-ear grinning happy that I am there. And then later in the day I get to get notes that say "Today Mommy came to lunch with me it was very fun today. Mommy+Gage"

So, even though I can work, I don’t want to because when I enter that hospital I no longer feel like a business owner. I’m a Mommy who wants everything to run on schedule that day. And who wants her child to survive this and also is greedy enough to want her child to cope well. To cope well enough to have a full life of possibilities. I’m just like every other parent in that hospital.

That being said, it’s difficult to concentrate on work.

I’ve had trouble letting go and letting Julian, who has offered numerous times, to take Gage to dialysis. I mean really, it’s not that difficult to pick up the boy and get him there. But I will say that when we enter through the doors and my 7 year old boy becomes a patient, I become only Mommy. Not working Mom. Not wife, sister or daughter. And I’m okay with that. I have to make it work with all of the other parts of me. But for now, being Mommy rules.

Life at a Children’s Hospital is like walking into a self-contained world, where time moves at its own speed and families in medical limbo are welcomed into waiting rooms with warm smiles. Knowing, understanding, compassionate smiles. And one day, their scared faces will transform to show that they have become used to life inside those walls and they will welcome another parent sitting across from them. It’s how the cycle works. It’s a reality. My reality.