Better the Devil You Know ...

Have you ever noticed that for every saying spouted there's one that says the exact opposite. You know - "absence makes the heart grow fonder" vs. "out of sight, out of mind". I wonder if it is a Law of Idiom Physics - "for every action (or idiom) there is an equal and opposite reaction (or idiom)".

Here's the two that I've been thinking about a lot these days: "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" vs. "better the devil you know than the devil you don't". See, outside the hospital, and in life in general I think we all fall into the "grass is always greener" camp. I'm not saying that we're all materialistic s**ts. What I mean is that a bit of envy for what other people have is natural. The fact that I want my straight hair to be wavy and Tonia wants her curls straight doesn't mean we're going to exchange wigs made of each other's hair.

So here's my ultimate "grass is greener": one of our kids is sick and yours are healthy. And that's OK. Because the the Law of Idiom Physics applies here, inside the hospital. I was talking with one of the moms this morning in the 8D family kitchen. Her daughter is one month older than Benjamin and has a tumorous cancer. There have been all kinds of life-threatening complications for this poor kid with no end in sight, and to top it off the mother is 5 months pregnant. So we're swapping stories about treatments and protocols and side-effects and what-not, and I'm thinking to myself "thank God we're not in their shoes". And right then doesn't this woman say to me "At least we don't have to go through what you must be going through"!

I was completely floored. But I also realized that here, in the hospital, we see so much of other people's health problems but only in a very superficial way, while we go to great lengths to learn everything possible about the disease which affects us. How do I know that the little boy with one eye and what looks like a hearing aid implant isn't going to have a life-altering surgery tomorrow and will be home in 2 weeks. People must walk past Benjamin's "fish tank" and think "that poor kid - not even walking yet and already a bone marrow transplant", not realizing that he's had no such thing and that we're just in this room temporarily because it's currently available and it's big. This over-zealous educating of our tiny corner of medicine to the exclusion of everything else brings about the "better the devil you know" attitude here. I think if you asked any parent here about their child's illness there would be a qualifier tacked on to their response: "But at least it's not..."

So all this to say we know our devil, and accept it, knowing that it is being fought and beaten. And speaking of devils, Benjamin is doing great. He is doing his best to wreak as much havoc in his small corner of the universe before his next course of chemo starts on Tuesday. He is now only connected to the IV for as long as it takes to give him a dose a day of the one antibiotic which can not be given orally. He spends as much time as possible on the floor, and has very quickly picked up crawling again. He is now trying to pull himself up on anything he can reach. He loves watching me play Sponge Bob on the PS2, and wants to hold the controller himself. We went down to the ENT clinic this afternoon to scope Benjamin's throat again in anticipation of next week's treatments (everything looks great). He didn't even fight the mask we put on him, I think he was so happy to be just getting out of the room. We were hoping that the doctors would give Benjamin a 48 hr pass before the next course starts, but it doesn't look like his nutriphils will allow for that. But that's the thing about Benjamin - you never know with him.

And as for the Law of Idiom Physics and whether "the grass is greener" or "better the devil you know", let's remember what a great idiom physicist once said: "It's all relative"! (Get it? The Theory of Relativity? Oh, leave me alone, I'm tired.)