Tonight's picture was taken on October 1, 2006. Mattie was four years old and doing what he loved to do... build! One thing about Mattie was he loved to be close to me. If I was in one room, he needed to be in that room. If I switched rooms, so did he! So that particular moment in time, I was working in the kitchen. Needless to say, Mattie's philosophy was.......have tinker toys, will travel!
Quote of the day: To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. ~ James P. Carse
In October of 2017, I attended The International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP) conference in Washington, DC. I remember writing about one of the sessions I attended on the blog. Basically a researcher presented her study on the long term fate of parents of healthy children and parents of children who survived cancer. She was very clear that soon after treatment ends parents of children with cancer return to normal, or in some cases better than normal. Meaning in comparison to parents of healthy children, these parents reported lower mental health concerns. I couldn't understand her results which indicated that the trauma experienced by parents is not significant at predicting issues into the future.
The point of me rehashing this story was because I wasn't the only one who questioned this researcher at this session. There was another parent advocate there and she was equally as troubled. After the session was over, this other advocate came over to talk with me. She is from Iceland and we have been Facebook friends ever since. Today, my fellow bereaved parent reached out to me to let me know she is in the USA and plans to come to DC tomorrow. She wanted to meet up with me.
Given the incredible journey she has taken to get to DC, I couldn't pass up this opportunity. So tomorrow she will be visiting with me for most of the day. Which meant that I had to reshuffle my schedule and also straight up our home, as not everyone is used to cat and dog fur. I also baked some goodies for her, because to me when someone from another Country comes to visit, you want to make it memorable!
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