Looking over my shoulder...

We watch Scrubs reruns frequently in this house. It's a fun show, especially the middle seasons. TiVo picks it up--the one in the living room that is actually on the TiVo network, and the one in the bedroom that isn't because we don't really need to hook it up in order to get a few things here and there to watch in bed.

A few days ago it picked up an episode that I'm not sure we want to watch. We weren't in the mood for it when it came up, and perhaps we won't watch this particular episode for awhile. The backstory of the episode is that a patient who had been in the hospital for awhile and was everyone's favorite was supposed to go home after being cured of some sort of disease that had something of a risky treatment. Unfortunately, a bumbling idiot who was being dismissed as an intern ended up giving her an infection by touching a dirty glove and then not washing his hands before shaking her hand to say goodbye.

The episode that we didn't watch begins after this, where we learn that because this patient had gotten an infection, she was going to die. Plain and simple. Nothing could be done for her. It didn't seem as though the hospital staff had any knowledge of how she had gotten infected. The episode deals with the typical grieving process as the woman's death approached and how some of the doctors went through it just as much or more than the patient.

That's all it takes, is one little mistake.

So anyhow, not the most cheerful of posts, and not the most cheerful of topics, but things like this sit there in the back of my mind, as something that we don't talk about much, that we don't address because it's PROBABLY not going to be an issue. There's not much reason to think that The Boy won't be just fine after all this is over, with maybe some aftereffects of one kind or another that are still better than not having had him treated. There's not much cause because the prognosis is still good and his care has been great.

But.

Maybe it's the disease and situation as a whole, or maybe it's this little nagging issue of "what if" that makes me treasure every little thing about The Boy. Every milestone that he reaches brings me relief, that I'm glad he gets to ask for juice or use the screwdriver or put on his own hat, so that I can be sure to see it.

And, by the way, I won't apologize for bringing you down, if that's what you are thinking after reading this. No one ever asked us, and no one ever said they were sorry for handing our family this giant crap sandwich.