The boy I've Lost and the one I'll gain

                    Another emotion you wouldn't immediately expect to feel when your child's life and health are being saved is grief. I found myself not only fearing Row's death but part of me felt like, whatever the outcome, my son would be gone. The son I had known for the past 6 months (15, really) would be gone and replaced with a stranger who wouldn't like the games, songs, and snuggle positions that my first son did. I worried that I would take my "normal" child to the hospital and trade him in for a "special needs" child. I feared that I would no longer know how to care for this stranger and that I might even have trouble loving him the way I loved "my son."

That is and was a horrible thing to think, that anything, ANYTHING, could diminish my love for my baby. Yet there the thought sat, like a rock in my heart. And I grieved. I grieved for the little boy I had known and adored, just in case he truly would be lost to me. I grieved as I had when he first displayed his illness, and I had to lament the loss of the son I 'd assumed we'd have.

Well I accepted Row as he was then, and I have done it again now.

He is my son. He is perfection.

The rest is irrelevant.

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Fortunately, my misgivings this time around seem to have been fairly unfounded, since now, from the other side of this drama, Rowan seems to be much more like his old self than I'd expected, and once he's fully healed and has had enough therapy to regain his mobility, he will be  himself.

This is a great relief, and though the years ahead will require a lot of work (as if "normal" parenthood doesn't, right?) and Row will be behind for a while, eventually he will level out and lead a normal life. He'll get to live because of his scar.

He will be The Boy Who Lived.