Flu enlightenment.

JT is home sick. Again. So is his sister, now, but I digress. The flu has hit our home hard.

Last Friday, after a playdate where JT was a little challenging (he's usually super laid-back at these playdates, and he was just a little more insistent and strong-willed this time, nothing too dramatic at all), we had to go pick up Z from work.

Within 2 minutes of getting in the car, JT started. It takes 20 minutes to get to Z's work, then 20 minutes back. It built. And built. And built. It was epic. He was screaming, thrashing, sweating, clenched, and so simultaneously sad, angry and frustrated that it was horrifying.

I had flashbacks to JT, at almost 3, sitting under a table doing this exact same thing every single day. Me having to put him in his room with the door shut to protect his sister and to protect me. He was so locked in his world, so gone, so unreachable.

I was terrified. My stomach clenched up. I could feel my blood pressure rise. What if? What if this is going to be our normal again? What if I have to relive all those days? What if everything we've worked so hard for is gone?

About five minutes from home, Z and I gave up trying to console him. We sat silently in the car, just his screams and yells filling the space. Z looked at me after a few minutes and said, "This is just so sad. You can hear how his little mind works, it's just bombarding him." In those few minutes of listening, shouts of 'no seat belt' 'lemme outta here' 'wanna go home' 'light green' 'please go' 'i'm stuck lemme out' 'just go' 'lets get out of here'... and so, so many more, poured out of him. Almost like he was begging.

He calmed down right after we got home, and within 30 minutes had started the vomiting. Poor kiddo.

But that feeling of terror, of the 'what if', that's hard to shake. It's always there, just waiting for something to pop up and remind me of the past. I hate that. I hate feeling like I'm walking uphill in sand, and any moment we could just slide back down.