I’ve been working on the galleys for Nick’s New Heartfor the last four days. In some ways it has been exciting to read my work again and again, in others–grueling, but either way it has been a learning experience. I have even cried when I read some parts of the book, even though I knew what was coming or the out come. I’m proud of my work, and it has been work. Thankfully work that I’ve enjoyed. I believe that that my book will help other families that have a sick child, especially ones with a heart transplant child in them. That would make all the work worth while. Tomorrow my manuscript will go off to become a book I can hold in my hand. That is exciting. 

On one of my heart transplant web groups there is a new mother that just found out her baby is going to need a heart transplant when it is born. Nick was born before they really started offering newborn hearts, but I remember the fear I had when he was born with a bad heart. I can still feel it today. I doubt that fear, in some form, will ever really go away. It takes so little for that feeling to come rolling out and wash over me. You would think that after nineteen years it would ease but it doesn’t. It is just as sharp today as it was then if I let myself think about it.   

Nick will be graduating from high school in a couple of weeks. I was asked today how I felt about that. I said that I’m excited about it. When you have a child that was as sick as Nick when he was born you see every milestone as a plus–an achievement. I’m not sad that my baby is growing up but happy that he did. Graduation is just another amazing step in living.