Stress

I am under a lot of stress, often. In fact, I have to actually shut down and ignore certain things, things which I really should have strong feelings about. My daughter, who has suffered from severe eczema all her life, is not going well. When she gets sick (as preschoolers tend to do), she experiences an eczema flare like you've never seen. What's stressful about this particular episode is that we only just completed treatment for a skin infection, and it was UNDER CONTROL for perhaps the first time in over a year. All the healing we achieved, all the rigid medication - gone, because of one stupid virus. So I sit here and listen to the child scratch, scratch, scratch - I can almost smell the blood she's drawn. I know by the sound of her breathing whether or not she's scratching. It's worse if I restrain her, by far. Plus, the screaming. It feels like something is touching my brain, and not in a good way. I know we'll get to a happy place again with her skin, someday. Tonight though, I just needed to get these thoughts out into the void, and out of my head. A kind of release valve, you could say. Because on top of feeling this stress, I feel guilty about having to ignore her agony. I feel guilty because I'm her mum, and I should fix it. I am exhausted from the constant surveillance, the hovering I have had to do in order to keep her from scratching. Monitoring every dose of medication, every morsel of food that goes into her mouth, everything which touches her skin. Tonight, I can't do any more of it. I'm sorry, my precious baby girl. I'm sorry I can't cuddle it away, and we just have to weather this storm together. I'm so sorry that this is your life, and I wish I could make it all go away. For both of us. 

XO

Sarah