How do you measure a year...

I watched the national news tonight. Typically I love to catch a couple of newscasts this time of year, to see the "Year in Review" pieces. The video from top stories and emotional moments... but tonight it just wasn't the same.

It's like time stood still this year. I saw the oil spill and remembered that it happened just about the time Max was born, and that we could have cared less. I saw the Chilean miners, and realized that too had been overlooked by our family, with our own real drama going on at home. I saw the earthquake in Haiti, and realized I knew my friend Jerry was there, as an Army soldier... but otherwise, it just didn't matter to me.

I felt cold and hard and cruel, not really caring about these moments, or being emotional for these people and their pain. But all I can think about from 2010 is our pain. Max's pain. How much we've endured, how much we've survived, how far we've come and what we've overcome.

Here is our year in review...

April 14th, my water broke.
April 16th, Max was born (15 weeks early, not due until July 30)
2.2 pounds, Max's weight at birth
April 21 Max undergoes emergency surgery to place a drain in his abdomen. His bowel had perforated and poop was filling his belly.
April 28, Max undergoes emergency surgery to repair a leaky valve in his heart. His blood pressure had dropped dangerously low.
June 3, Max undergoes exploratory bowel surgery where doctors find he has NEC (necrotizing entercolitis) and remove small section of his bowel to the outside of his body to heal
July 20 Max has the small section of his bowel removed and his bowel sewn back together, inside his belly.
August 13 Max has surgery to repair two inguinal hernias.
August 17, Max comes home!
123 days spent in the NICU.
Mother's Day, Father's Day, July 4th, Cinco de Mayo (Alex's 3rd birthday) Memorial Day, Labor Day, all spent in the NICU.
August 18, just 1 day later, Ella started kindergarten (her birthday was 2 days after on August 20)

This year, I can't think of life in terms of anything or anyone but Max. That's the way our lives have been. We have been turned upside down, inside out and backwards.... We've changed what we do, how we do it, who we can see, what we touch, everything. It's been a sacrifice and a struggle, and it continues even now.

Max has been sick for more than a month. He started with a cold, which turned into an ear infection, then early pneumonia, and now, he's getting breathing treatments every 4 hours, he's finished 2 rounds of antibiotics, and he's still not himself. He's eating less, wheezing, and we see the doctor again tomorrow. He'll have his ears and his lungs re-checked, and he'll get his 3rd RSV shot.

We don't see an end in sight, just yet. But we are blessed. God gave us Max. He let him live and come home. He has given us countless smiles and giggles and a wonderful Christmas together. But this has been a year of fear, and that fear continues to grip us tonight.

We heard last week, about a little girl, just a year old, a friend of a friend, who died. She was sick with pneumonia and woke her parents coughing in the night. 2 days later, she was dead. This terrifies us. We know that Max is just one sickness away from death. At any moment over these first couple of years, his body is just so fragile. That thought scares us more than anything. He has survived so much, we all have. We got him home, he's been healthy and happy and we so want to keep him that way. The thought of losing him, after all we've been through it it just too much.

So we focus on the present. We take care of him. We love him. We pray that God will let us keep him. Not just today, or tonight, but for 2011 and many, many years to come.