When I was growing up, I had my share of injuries and illnesses. I wasn't a sickly kid, but I spent a fair amount of time at the ER or in the doctor's office. Every time I hurt myself and had to go to the doctor, I explicitly remember how my dad seemed more upset about it than I ever did. I'd think to myself,
"Geez Dad, It's just a broken finger." "This will only take a couple stitches." "I'll get some antibiotics and stay home a couple days, and I'll be fine."
But from the looks on his face, you'd think that every injury, every illness, was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I used to think that he was just being overly sensitive and kind of ridiculous.
I also remember one the first times I had to take my son to the ER. Not the "We're inexeperienced first time parents and paranoid about everything" trip, but the first legitimate injury that could reasonably be called an "emergency." I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn't fall asleep that night. I was kind of a wreck. It was like I was re-enacting some random moment from my childhood, but from my Dad's perspective.
In about 30 seconds of parenting, I learned something that had escaped me in 28 years of being a son; that there are fewer things in life scarier than seeing your kids get hurt and knowing that there's nothing you can do about. In this country alone, hundreds of thousand of kids are suffering from assorted cancers and their parents have the unenviable postion of having to watch them struggle with it. If you ask me why I'm doing this, I'd say, "it's for the kids." But it's also for the parents and families who suffer along with them.