Missing

I brought this picture to work with me yesterday for a frame.  It's one of his 1 year photos.  I bought a groupon for one of those cheesy mall photographers before this nonsense all happened.  I figured, it's only $18 so if the pictures are terrible, so be it.  Time passed and it was due to expire the end of June.  I really thought I wouldn't have time to use it.  Then a couple of days before it expired I decided to heck with it.  So what if I didn't have the perfect cute outfit.  So what if his hair needed a trim.  So what if he's covered in bug bites.  So what.  I paid for the thing, I'm gonna use it.  So I dressed him up in a cute outfit we already had and that was a fight.  I dragged him to the mall where everyone else who bought the deal was trying to use it so we had a wait.  He wasn't feeling it at first.  You can see he still had a bit of a tear in his eye.  But he got into it and I got some awesome pictures.  It was the very next day that his hair started falling out by the handful.  Even while we were there waiting for our prints I could tell I couldn't have waited one more day. 

When I knew his hair would come out I started really appreciating what he had.  I loved running my fingers through it and playing with it.  Sometimes I rub my hand over his head and peach fuzz and tell myself it will come back.  In the past week or two I've really noticed he's lost almost all of his eyelashes.  He's also lost a fair amount of eyebrows.  It makes him look like a cancer patient.  So today I couldn't keep my eyes off this picture.  It doesn't really do his eyelashes justice, but it does remind me what he once looked like and what he'll look like again.   I love my boy no matter how he looks.  I just wish he didn't look so sick.  I wish he looked like a normal boy.  I wish he had the life of a normal boy, whatever that is.

Tomorrow we have to go for his inpatient chemo.  The outpatient chemos are all done.  Counting this one we just have 4 more.  Then more tests.  And then one more and hopefully last surgery to remove his port.  The day we get out of the hospital from that will be a joyous day, indeed.