Lachlin & Cormac's Story

My three kids are “frequent flyers” at the Alberta Children's Hospital. 

Since our oldest son was born 5 years ago, I have been asked on various occasions to describe what our “experience” with the Alberta Children's Hospital has been.  Looking back, only initially does our encounter with the hospital seem to fit in the category of “an experience”.  After our first several admissions in 2002, our time at the hospital quickly evolved from a mere experience - into a completely different way of life for our family.

If I could have painted a picture of what I anticipated our life to be as new parents, it certainly would not have embodied g-tubes, central lines, surgeries, case conferences and sleeping for months at bedside in a chair.  And it most positively did not encompass the reality of standing over our newborn baby in the throws of life-support with the certainty of his future looking far more bleak than the possibility of his survival. 

 I quickly learned that we as parents don’t dictate what our children’s level of health will be anymore that we can choose what they will look like.  As parents we didn’t have a choice when it came to what our next few years would entail.  Our concept of “normal” quickly dissolved into a puddle of tears swimming with grief, denial and fear.  As the ability to make everyday choices seemed to slip through our fingers it became more and more evident that our lives would revolve around the never-ending job of keeping our kids healthy.

But through our journey with the hospital we have evolved and grown into educated advocates for our children.  The staff at the Alberta Children's Hospital has taught me everything from to how to change tubing and flush lines, to stimulating our child who is no longer breathing.  I now have skills that we never thought I’d have – nor did I ever want to have.  My vocabulary now contains language that sets me apart from other mothers, but has given me the advantage of being part of the same team as the physicians that care for my children.

But perhaps the most important thing my children’s caregivers have taught me is how to hope.  And believe me, when your newborn is flat-lining…sometimes that is all you have. 

I love our kids with all my heart….but I didn’t choose this journey.  We didn’t choose to live on pins and needles and at the beck and call of my children’s unpredictable health scares. When your child is sick, it is heart-breaking…and it is scary.  Sometimes I am asked how I do it everyday.  And I say, “What’s the alternative?”  I love my kids unconditionally and will continue to do whatever it takes to make sure they are the best they can be.  No…I didn’t choose this road.  But the staff at the Alberta Children's Hospital did choose this life.  They chose to heal here so that our kids would have a fighting chance at life.  And I thank God everyday that they did.  They have become family.  To me and my kids, they are true heroes.

The Alberta Children's Hospital is the backdrop for my kids’ baby pictures.  It’s where I learned, first hand, what it truly means to trust another human being with what I hold most dear.  It’s where I have witnessed miracles and where I have felt the deepest pain.  It’s where I have been more scared than I’ve ever been in my life and where I have celebrated my child’s tiniest accomplishment like it was the biggest triumph in the world. 

And through it all I have never been alone.  There has always been a nurse crouched down beside me, experiencing with the same intensity of emotion what my child was enduring…or a doctor’s hand is always firmly on my shoulder offering strength and guidance.  The Alberta Children's Hospital is where I spend 3 days a week, and therefore is somewhere that I feel just as comfortable navigating as the shelves of my own pantry.  It is where I feel safe, understood, where others don’t judge visible tubes and medical equipment.  It is a place where people – the staff or other families - will lean down to touch a child’s head…as if they were perfect. 

Quite simply…it is where we became a family.

Lindsay, grateful mom