Once upon a time, I was a parent with an infant that had a tonne of food allergies. I started this blog when she was a toddler because it felt like an appropriate response to the stress and management of those barriers.

For the first two-and-a-half years of our daughter’s life, our framework for understanding “scary” was largely built around exposure to sinister foods. Kids at the playground, daycare, and every gathering we attended were literally coated in things that could take my kid out. We figured it out.

A couple years later, scary got significantly scarier. Our daughter (at two-and-a-half years old) began a new saga layered with brain tumours, stroke, rehab, surgeries, endocrine deficiencies, and never ending treatment and therapies. It was a rocky transition from plain old anxious parents to caregiver parents.

Shit happens. Shit happens to good people. Shit happens to little kids. Shit happens that you cannot prepare for and for which you cannot assign blame. And it comes in never ending layers. Some layers are sweet and rewarding and enlightening. Some layers are just fucking brutal. Most of those layers blend at the edges and all of those messy layers are shared with friends, family, specialists, and others who touch your world.

Life is a layer cake of good, bad, and ugly. But you figure it out because you have to. Take it one bite at a time.

Who else is working their way through this kind of layer cake?

There are more people in this kind of complex medical situation (and much more complex) than I ever realized. Like all of them, we’re trying to find joy and hope and to figure all this out as a family. Our kid is kicking ass and taking names every day, but there is no guarantee about what the future will hold.

We are not alone, but we are learning as we go, and learning comes with frustration.  I get salty.  I like swears. (They’re therapeutic and sometimes nothing else will do.)

I am not, in any way a qualified professional, so please don’t take anything I say as sage advice. I’m a parent, with a kid who has some significant and life threatening medical conditions.  She has an older brother, who doesn’t.  My partner and I are doing the best we can.  I’ll keep you posted.