I have shared with my kids so many times, the phrase life is not fair. It isn’t. Sometimes, crap just happens.

The last 16 months have been incredibly difficult with COVID, school being shut down, loss of family, etc. and the reality is, life is just not fair some days.

As I have told the kids many times, life is what we choose to make of it.

Two words, that I never thought that I would ever type, let alone say, Brain Tumor. But, there it is. My wife had a brain tumor!

4:00 a.m. on a Friday morning, I was awaken to my wife having a seizure. At first, I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but it was clear that something wasn’t right. So, after quickly assessing the situation, I called 911 and within 8 minutes 4 guys from the fire house were walking in the house. And as my wife was coming out of the seizure, reality started to set in.

Fast forward 4 hours, I walk into the ER to see my wife, that is how long it took to get someone to come over and watch the boys and I’ll get to them shortly. But upon arriving, I knew something was wrong because everyone kept saying to get Melissa that I had arrived. And just like that, Melissa, who was the PA-C that was taking care of my wife, walked into the room, closed the door and asked me to sit down. I don’t remember exactly what was said before or after the words Brain Tumor were spoken, life just became a blur.

As we walked out of the ER that morning, with a scheduled first appointment with a world renowned neurosurgeon 4 days later and the knowledge that my wife was going to more than likely need to have brain surgery with 2 weeks. As we drove home, life became we were left with questions unanswered, but the brain tumor, what he the future held, how do we tell and prepare our kids, will she live?

Rarely do I show that I’m afraid. I’ve always believed that the father, should show emotions, but at the same time, reassure his family that things will be OK, even if they might not be. But this was one of those times, that I was vulnerable. I literally stood in the kitchen and felt paralyzed with fear and couldn’t put one foot in front of the other.

After meeting with the neurosurgeon a few days later from the diagnosis, we felt prepared. We felt, like we had the person that could help and we had a plan. The brain tumor was removed successfully. And we are will be forever grateful for the surgeon, but this isn’t a short process or treatment, this will be for life!

That’s right, my wife will need an MRI every 3 months, for the first year. Then, in year 2, it will be every 4 months. And at some point, it will be 2 years, but this is for the rest of her life. And without going into too much regarding that, we don’t actually know how long her life expectancy will be? The original pathology report told one thing, but this weekend, it was updated with a more serious finding.

But we have vowed to make the lives of our sons normal and stable. We will continue to do for them and to try to make a normal life, in a very not normal time. Between COVID-19 and now this, it has been a lot on the boys and oh yeah, they heard everything when I was on the call with 911. They heard me ask God to save her life, they heard me tell the 911 operator that she wasn’t responsive because she wasn’t. They heard it all. They saw the EMS team. They saw their mother being put into the back of an ambulance.

Life is not fair! And neither is having a brain tumor and neither is being almost 10 and having to see or hear or hell, live this way.

To my sons – I’m incredibly proud of how you both have responded and stepped up during this very stressful time. I am proud of how you both have been there to give a hug, when I”m on the verge of tears. Our families future, is a little bit of influx right now, but we have a lot of people that are there to help, so today, and moving forward, we take it one day at a time.

2020 online school has been very interesting to say the least. Our kids will be online until at least January of 2021, if not the entire school year.

The school board, in my opinion took the most logical and safest approaches in how they decided to have kids return to school. The interesting thing for me, as a working at home parent, is that the kids are seeming to adapt easier to online school over parents that are working at home. The reality is, this isn’t easy.

This entire process isn’t easy for the parents trying to have conference calls or the kids that are trying to learn online. None of this is easy nor is it easy to even explain to the kids, as to why they are having to do all of this. But, the reality, in my opinion, is that this was the safest approaches.

We are in the first few weeks or online school and yes, there have been some bumps in the road. There was a outage of Schoology, but the teachers had a plan B in place and they pivoted to Google Classroom.

I really believe that we will all come out of this much stronger as a country. That our society will come out better. That companies will realize the benefit of working at home and a strong work life balance. But our kids will come out stronger and able to adapt even faster. And, for my kids, new life skills.

Never in my wildest dreams, did I think that I would be a home school teacher. NEVER! But that is what happened.

I haven’t really blogged and that is in part due to lack of time but also the lack not not exactly knowing what to say either. Do I talk about the facts? We are all living it. Do I talk about school and the challenges.

The reality is very simple, this all sucks. Home School. Not saying goodbye to your friends. The loss of Little League Baseball, YMCA Soccer, summer camps, sleep over with cousins and grandparents. The list goes on and on.

But we are safe.

We are safe and healthy. We are making memories, like me being your Home School teacher.

Has this been easy for any of us, no. Absolutely not, but we have been making it work. We are focusing on the positives now that are coming from this and today, that is all that matters.

But as we get closer to the next school year, there is a lot of discussions on what the kids will do. Go back full time, highly unlikely. Go back maybe 1 – 2 days a week, but wear masks, high possibility, or start online again, which is my ideal answer.

I just don’t know if the kids should go back to school? I don’t know if anyone knows honestly what the right answer is at this point? But, I am prepared to be the Home School teacher of the year for both 2020 and 2021 at this point.

More to come on this and other posts.

We are now almost 4 weeks post op from my major shoulder surgery. Wait, I didn’t mention this before? Right, I didn’t because I didn’t know how it was going to turn out.

A few months ago, I tore my labrum completely, from the top of my shoulder to the back throwing baseballs to my son’s baseball team. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was pitching to my son when I completely tore it though. But, when I did, I sucked it up and finished batting practice to him and the last two batters and hoped for the best, but knew what I was probably dealing with.

The recovery process hasn’t be easy, because for almost 3 months I protected my shoulder from doing any heavy lifting. I compensated and lost muscle and mobility. Now, I’m having to make up for that. I’m also doing physical therapy for 6 – 9 months. That is right, 6 to 9 months of physical therapy and having someone help me get that back.

It is going to be a long road ahead, but we got a Peloton bike that I am riding for cardio endurance on a daily basis and I’m doing daily exercises. I still will not be able to pick up a baseball for 12 months, but I would rather take a year off and coach and not throw, than never be able to play catch with my son again.

I see this deep rooted passion on my of my kids and it is one that is driving them each and everyday. A passion for life. A passion for sports.

I hope that drive and determination never fades.

There are days that I feel like giving up! Work. Family life. My commute freaking sucks. And giving up, seems like a great short term solution.

This has been a tough week. Work has been nuts. I’ve been working 65 – 80 hours a week. The commute has been close to 3 hours a day. The work load has just been crazy, to the point that I’ve walked to the line of no return and have struggled to walk back from that. The thought of giving up, crossed my mind multiple times.

And then on top of all of that, there has been struggles all week with school. Multiple support calls. A new change to medication. Multiple melt downs over the loss of taking away electronics. At some point, after 3 hours of melt downs, I was ready to give up and throw in the towel.

Being a parent is hard. Being a child with ADHD is hard, if not harder to be honest. As a parent, I can recognize and understand certain facts, but a child, may not have that ability. And this week has stretched me thin and challenged me in many regards as well. But I thought about giving up.

I need a break. I need to sleep. I need for my son to be better, not in the sense that there is something wrong with him because he has ADHD. But because he isn’t able to control his emotions and out bursts.

Rarely do I get a break. Rarely do I get to sleep a full night, either due to work or kids or stress or because the day ended in the letter “y” or all of the above. And I can’t tell you how many times at 4:00 a.m. that I’ve thought about throwing in the towel and giving up.

And then something amazing happens. Something almost unexplained or something that as a parent, I like to think of as grace. I get a glimpse of the moments that my son is calm and playing well with other kids. Where he is socializing appropriately and not causing a scene or having an outburst. And it is in those moments, where he will apologize for his behavior, tell me he loves me and holds my hand, that I realize, that I am not giving up.

I can not give up on my son. I will not give up on him. I know that he is trying like hell and sometimes, damn it sometimes he just can not help it. I see it. I see he tries to stay focus, long after his medication is out of him and he can not stand still. I see that he is trying to do 2 tasks, when he can only do 1 at the time.

I love my son. I love him more than he will ever know. And he will never know the struggles that we have gone through, the financial expenses, because it doesn’t matter. I will sacrifice everything, to give him what he needs, because I am not giving up on him. Not now. Not tomorrow.

NOT EVER!

I have struggled with the thought of gratitude lately. Not for the logical reasons, but I think because of just life.

Let me start off by saying, I am grateful. I am grateful for my family, and for the life that we have. I am grateful for healthy kids. I am grateful that we have a roof over our heads at night and food in our cabinets. I am grateful, that very soon, we will be debt free.

I am grateful.

But, I sometimes find it hard to stop and find the gratitude in things. Sunsets. Sunrises. Listening to the birds at night. Hugging my kids. Kissing my wife.

I am trying to stop and notice more. I’m trying to take the moments to have gratitude, even when I struggle finding it. Because in all reality, I/we are truly blessed.

Today, 2 years ago, I lost my grandfather, one of my best friends. A man that taught me so much about life. Living. Focus on the important things and people and not to waste time on the rest. I am grateful for him. And I miss him everyday.

One of the worse feelings of my entire life, was when the medicine that we gave my son for his ADHD did not work. Helpless. Scared. Numb. All feelings that I went through in a very short amount of time.

We made a change to one of the medications that my son was taking and he had a severe reaction. Insomnia. Agitation. Irritation. You name it, he had it.

So what do you do when the medicine did not work? I stopped it. I refused to see my son suffer one more day with it. I did what I thought was best.

We have changed his medications again and this time, it seems to be working a little better thus far. But, we are waiting to see over the course of the next several weeks, if he has the right dosage for school, which starts in a few weeks.

Priorities change, day to day. They can change hour to hour even, let alone, year to year.

Somewhere in the last few weeks, I realized this and the importance of priorities. They went from what was important for me, and more specifically, a piece of paper, to realizing how much I needed to spend more time with my family.

I need them, as much as they need me.

Growing up, I wasn’t a priority for a my father. His career came first. His priorities, came before me. And interestingly in a conversation, he told me that my kids wouldn’t remember things when they are older from today, yet I remember the feeling that I had 30 years ago when he decided to work late instead of taking me to a basketball game.

I need to be able to throw baseball with my son. I need to be able to play Legos with my other son. I need to be there for my wife. I don’t need to be spending 20 – 30 hours a week on my masters.

Priorities, they are crucial as a father and recognizing how they change and how we react to them changing.