Code Orange Coping w/ College: Life's Lessons

With five kids, thinking about college can be daunting.  Just planning our next meal is enough to make me sweat! But, if my kids want to go to college, I’ll mortgage everything to make it happen. Hopefully that’s not necessary, but life can sometimes take unexpected and frightening turns. 

Case in point: It was ‘cousinin’ week, when all 15 first cousins get together at the farm to have fun. It’s time the kids really look forward to every year.  Unfortunately, our middle son, Caleb, wasn’t feeling well.  He’d been there for a day when he started throwing up. He tried to stick it out, but after 24 hours of not being able to keep anything down, he asked to come home.  A trip to the family doctor the next day had us rushing to Rainbow Children’s Hospital. 

We were still in the ER when the blood work came back. Caleb’s white blood cell count was over 680,000. The diagnosis was terrifying - we were told that there was little doubt that Caleb, our seven-year-old bundle of energy, had leukemia. 

We spent the next fifteen days in the hospital, five in the PICU, and another ten in the Immunodeficiency Ward. Caleb was a trouper, submitting to being poked, prodded, and tested several times a day, almost always with a winning smile. I saw a lot of that in the other children in the ward, many of them fighting ongoing battles with cancer, some more successfully than others. All brave beyond belief. 

So, when I start obsessing about money - which happens a lot when you’re trying to keep a fledgling business going, I think about those kids, some of whom may not ever get to college. They can teach us all a lesson about living in the moment, and cherishing the time that we have. 

Believe me, though, they still dream. I know they do. I recall after we were home, and life had returned to some semblance of normalcy. Caleb and I were discussing what he thought he might like to do. He told me that when the leukemia was gone, not ‘if’ but ‘when’, he thought he might like to become an architect.  

That is the kind of faith it takes to make your dreams a reality. And it is the kind of dream that I will absolutely make sure comes true, no matter what the cost!

Please enjoy. This is for the CodeOrange contest for the scholarship - it will be a difficult choice, there are many compelling stories out there!