Relief

Not many of you know that we lost Caleb's Second Skin arm splint. This is made to fit his arm and he wears it for 12-16 months at least. We haven't had this one for too long, and it has been three weeks since we last saw it.

Grandma looked everywhere. She felt responsible because she took it off Caleb's arm. It always sits in their bathroom upstairs or on the change table downstairs. But it wasn't.

For three long weeks I have been hoping that it would appear. I was too scared to make a huge deal of it and tell everyone involved, I was putting it off. I felt useless and irresponsible and stupid. How could we lose such an important (expensive!) item. We thought that maybe it got caught up in rubbish and it was long gone. I had even made a rough estimate of it's replacement cost in our budget.

Today was the last day of searching. It takes a few weeks to make and Caleb has his second round of Botox injections in a few weeks . . . they wanted to see his arm splint and check out how the arm is managing. I needed to start the ball rolling to get a new splint for this appointment, Caleb also needs to be wearing it (most importantly), and lastly, the company that donated for this splint wanted to have an afternoon tea sometime in the near future. Tomorrow I was going to ring up the manufacturers to organise a new one.

Grandma and I lifted the lounge chairs and everything in between. I think I have injured or strained my back doing so! Grrr. I packed up some of the million and one toys to put into the toy cupboard and dragged them over. I was going to turn that cupboard upside down to make sure the splint wasn't in here. Caleb likes to put a lot of things in here. It is a small cupboard of which he has access and likes to monitor.

In one small dark crack, behind the books and crayons and next to the blocks sat a little, lonely, scared and cold arm splint. Thank. You. ThankYouThankYouThankYou!

Talk about a sigh of relief and a LOAD of our minds. Unbelievable. Caleb would have put it away 'somewhere safe' thinking he was being a helpful little lad. In future when *anything* goes missing, that is the first place to look.

Small side note: Grandma did look in there originally, but cause it was dark and her eyesight isn't the greatest, she didn't actually see it. I should have looked for it earlier than today, I was just scared of confirming that we had lost it.

The final word? Relief.