day FOUR HUNDRED and NINETY SIX

The New Normal

Yesterday

My seven year old

Politely asked the nurse

Could she please get the freeze spray first?

The IV is the worst part

At the start he

was too sick to care

That minor stick only a thousandth of the pain in his small body

Irrelevant

I thought I would watch him die

He was dying

White cell count elevated

Anemic. Blood transfusions needed

He had stopped talking

I lie on his stick legs in the

Metal hospital crib

As they fed the tube up his nose

On the day when he could no longer say my name

When the doctor came

With hope in the form of difficult choices

He said

“This will be his normal.

He is only three.  He will not remember a time before.”

And that was odd and at the same time

comforting.

It was also true.

And though I carried him back for the first treatments

Yesterday he walked beside me

chattering all the way

I have taken him to every single treatment.

I taught him to look away and to breathe slowly

When the IV had to go in.

There is no choice.

It has to be done.

Every eight weeks

The IV must go in.

This is the new normal for us.

Once, the hospital messed up and

sent me the bill staggering in the thousands for just one visit

For a fix that makes him well

and an artist, a good student, my living child.

His bill is covered because what

he has is a disability

It is the difference between

Living and Dying.

It has to happen.

The IV has to go in.

But the new national normal

Would change all of this

One of my senators called kids like him

“Burned out buildings”

Not worth the renovation

Not worth spending on

So I called and I wrote and I tweeted and I emailed and I signed all the petitions.

And I begged people I knew and didn’t know to do the same.

My own cousin wrote

“Trump will make America great again. Wait and see.”

And her sister wrote

“Why are you always so angry?”

Because this is the new normal.

And yesterday

He asked by himself for something

To help erase the last

Of the pain that stands between him and eight weeks

of wellness.

And every day I will check the news to see if it will be a day

That I can breathe a little

Or a day where I will fight on

Because this is the new normal.

~MG Gainer 5/18/18

MG Gainer:  English Professional for hire (Editing, Social Media, Instructor); proud WV native, so keep your jokes to yourself. Pronouns: She/her