Hug your children

Riley has spent the last several days feeling overwhelming sad and angry. He does not want us to touch him or talk with him. He tells us to stop talking and to go away. This is so hard for us to hear. We want nothing more than to scoop him up and to tell him that we're going home and that we'll never, ever have to come here again. We don't want him to feel pain or to be poked and stuck with needles or drugged with sedatives anymore. We want to love him and to hear his voice and to see him smile. We miss our little boy so much. My whole body aches and I feel so sick. I just want him to come home and to sleep in his own bed, to play with his cars. I want to hear him in the backseat of my car reading the street signs and telling me that he sees a Porsche or an Audi or a Volkswagon. I want him to ask us to read Busy Town and Cars, Trucks, and Things that Go (aka Goldbug). I want him to sit at the kitchen table and eat a big bowl of pasta with olive oil and cheese on top. I want him to keep teaching his baby brother all of the letters of the alphabet. I want to see him play baseball again. All of those things seem like a dream now, like something that I made up. I don't understand why this is happening.

Riley is now in surgery. There was some concern that he is developing an infection because his white-blood-cell count was rising. His blood-sugar level was also high, so he was getting a insulin drip this morning. He was taken down around 8:45 am. We were told that surgery could take six or seven hours.

We need him to get better so that he can come home. I just want to hold him and kiss him.