A Powerful Lesson About Forgiveness | Jay's Experience

Last week our Monday morning started off like any other Monday. I got the kids breakfast, bathed them, and then we headed into town to run several errands. We stopped at the goodwill donation center, headed to Ross to get some new toys for Kinsley for another week of at home PT, and then we headed to Aldi to get our groceries for the week.

When we got home and got everything put away, Jay and I started playing a board game with one another. While playing the game he was sitting on his legs and then commented that his leg was hurting. I didn't think much of it and told him to stop sitting on his legs. After the game I fed the kids lunch, got them down for naps and quiet time, and then when I got my work done, we all went to run an errand at the post office. 

When we were walking into the post office I remember Jay mentioning that his leg was hurting again, and then realized he was limping on his right leg. The rest of the evening up until bedtime he limped around the house, but otherwise he was pretty happy. 

Tuesday morning when he woke up, he was screaming in his bed, saying that his leg hurt and that he could not walk. When asked where the pain was, he told me it was in his knee and when I tried and forced him to walk, he would just collapse on the floor and cry.

We took him to urgent care to get an x-ray and I was pretty unimpressed with the doctor that we saw. I told him that his knee is what was bothering him and he was super reluctant to do an x-ray at all, but then finally did one, and said that it showed nothing was wrong with him and that my next step would be to take him to another pediatric urgent care. 

I was livid because I wasn't going to leave one urgent care, just to go to another one. If I  was seeing another doctor I wanted to make the best decision and go to the one that was going to give us an exact answer. After talking to a friend on the phone and talking through all my thoughts and options with her, it struck me that I should call Em's former PT since she would likely know what to do. So I called, she told me he needed to get in to see a pediatric orthopedic as soon as possible, and emailed me a list of options. 

I called the doctor, and they got us an appointment for the following morning. Meanwhile I decided to reach out to friends on Facebook, Instagram, etc... to see if anyone had any experience with what this might be. A lot of people gave me ideas of what it could be... pinched nerves and growing pains were among the more common answers. Then a friend of mine from high school who is about to graduate medical school reached out to me and offered to help if I wanted. 

This is where the lesson in forgiveness comes in. I was horrible to this guy in high school. He was easily the nicest and smartest person in our graduating class... (I technically don't remember if he was actually valedictorian or anything... but definitely top 10). Anyways, I went through some rough patches in high school where I had really amazing friends and then through a series of events I would so something dumb like lie, or hurt someones feelings, or just be super immature, and by the end of high school I only had a small handful of people that would remotely tolerate me. I was kind of awful, and it's one of those things in adulthood that haunts me now. 

Anyways, so this guy that reached out to me, he and I were pretty good friends, and then I was horrible to him, and we basically haven't really spoken in about 10 years. And here he is messaging me at 10 o' clock a night trying to help me figure out what is wrong with my child to give me a little peace of mind over the situation. He helped give me a little list of things to talk to the doctor about in the morning when we went in, and was just so nice and helpful. It was such a great reminder to me to be kind. He had every right to just read my status about Jay and his problem, roll his eyes at me, and scroll on, but instead he decided to help me and look past the ways that I was rude to him so many years ago. I'm grateful that he reached out, and that I was able to also personally apologize for my high school behavior, and that it's a fresh slate again. It was a great reminder of the quote, "We will receive the joy of forgiveness in our own lives when we are willing to extend that joy freely to others."

The story ends with me taking Jay into the pediatric orthopedic the next morning where they did a hip x-ray because typically in children if they're complaining of knee pain, the pain is usually displaced from the hip. They saw nothing was anatomically wrong with his hip and that he had full range of motion. They said that a virus had settled into the hip joint causing the temporary immobility. Jay was been able to walk with a limp that entire day(Wednesday), and by Friday you would never have known anything was wrong. We were so worried about this entire thing, because when kids suddenly stop walking, it can be a sign of a much more serious illness, but luckily it was just a minor case of transient synovitis, and for that, we're grateful.