Chance was hospitalized at about 13 months because he dehydrated while being really sick for several days. This is the event that we feel caused Chance to go deaf. It was this illness that overtook his little body for about a week and made it so that he threw up everything including breast milk. The doctors had been telling me to just give him a tablespoon of water at a time to keep him going, but it did not work. He was throwing up even the tablespoon of liquid I gave him and finally, his little eyes had no tears left when he cried because I left the room. And he cried every time I left the room. He had thrown up on every outfit I had put on, and I was digging clothes out of the nether regions of my closet that I never wore. The cycle I had going was, I would get dressed, Chance would throw up, I would change my clothes, Chance would throw up on me etc. etc. etc.
I managed to get clothes into the washer and then to the dryer, but they were all stacked in a mountain of a pile in the hallway as I had no time to fold them. The entire time I was throwing clothes into the wash, Chance was sobbing so I did the bare minimum and then attended to my baby.
The hospital stay itself I remember quite well. I held Chance a lot and the nurses tried to get him to eat. He wouldn't even go for the popsicle he was offered which tells you the level of crisis he was in. Chance was given intravenous fluids which he did not like. At all. He kept trying to yank that tube out and we kept trying to ensure that it stayed in. By the end, it was double taped around his hand to the point that it was hard to see his little hand.
It was a rough time for Chance. He slept fitfully, and sometimes I could get him to sleep for little bits while laying on me in the chair by his bed.
I still vividly remember how small and vulnerable he looked laying in his hospital crib.
The nurses were great and at one point, one of them brought in bubbles and started blowing them into the room. Chance perked up a little at this and it let me see glimpses of my happy baby again.
Then someone brought in a blanket from Project Linus. At the time, it looked a little mature for a barely one year old. There were no little duckies, or toy trucks on it, but instead a boy playing soccer. That's right - soccer, with the words goal and soccer interspersed with jerseys and soccer balls. At the time, it did not look like Chance at all. I was grateful for the blanket and Chance liked it, but it did not seem like a baby blanket.
But was it predestined to be Chance's blanket or what? Back when Chance was in the hospital, I could not even imagine my baby playing soccer. We had not found out he was deaf yet, but soccer has never been a sport that was on my radar screen. I personally did not even know the rules of soccer and in my family growing up, no one was interested in playing soccer.
Now that blanket totally looks like Chance. It was just the right blanket for my little Chancers.
My heart warms each time I see that blanket in the house. I don't think I ever pick it up or wash it without thinking about the wonderful people who made it and their labor of love in delivering their blankets to little children at sometimes painful and confusing times in their lives. And I love that it is a soccer blanket.
That blanket and Chance were predestined to be together. And the construction of the blanket is of such a high quality that it stills shows little wear and is still here to remind Chance that someone cared and gave him a blanket that foretold a small part of his future.
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