A Prayer

On one of my last nights on the night shift at work a few weeks ago, a coworker (who has the somewhat deserved reputation of being crazy) and I said a prayer for E, my stepdaughter.  She had been in the ICU days before.

Perhaps it was the prayer, perhaps it was the natural progression of a life teetering on the edge, but she is back in the hospital, and this time because she voluntarily requested a feeding tube.  She wants to be well enough to go to an eating disorder treatment facility that she hasn't been to yet, which sounds promising.  She needs to be "medically stable" to attend, which means gaining at least 8 lbs...  No easy feat, tube or not, when her mind is torturing her.  I wish her well. 

We spoke on the phone earlier, and at one point she said, "I hope that if you have a child, that my dad is more emotionally invested in that child, because from a kids' perspective I can tell you that it really hurts that he isn't emotionally involved in my life".  Ouch. Have I ever mentioned how glad I am that I'm not a man?  Very glad, very very glad.  Hy husband tries to be involved, but as I type this, my stepchild is in a room on the telemetry unit that I work on, at the hospital where my husband has worked for the last 15 years, with both a sitter and a security officer posted outside her door.  I might also add that my husband oversees the security department, and his ex wife has been complaining to the administration department and his coworkers about the treatment of E...  Any sense of privacy was out the window a long time ago.

E doesn't realize that it's hard to go to work in a place where there is no protection of privacy.  Friend and foe alike are "up in our business", and it's a heavy burden, even for me.  Fielding questions from those who feign concern only to broadcast family matters in their gossip circles is no fun at all.  Nor does she understand that her dad, while his heart is absolutely breaking on a daily basis because of her disorder, can't be so emotionally involved that he loses all sense of joy and function in life, which is what her mom has done.  It's a difficult, no-win situation...

I meanwhile, need to be successful in school...  But it's hard to focus when the drama of her situation takes front and center stage.  Some detachment is necessary for survival, as sad as that is.