The Land of Suck

“It could be worse, it could be ..(fill in the blank)..” I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said this to us in the last few months.  They don’t know what to say and are trying to look on the bright side of something awful.  They are trying to offer us a twisted kind of hope. I wish they would stop.

“At least it’s not cancer.” This is the most frequent one we hear.  Cancer is a kind of scary that everyone knows.  JRA is the unknown to them.  They just don’t understand, and I know that if I do anything other than smile I will cry, or scream, or cry and scream.  It won’t be pretty.

In my mind I know that there are a lot of “worse” scenarios.  Forgive me if I don’t see them right now.  I have a different sound track in my head. The ones I hear are the “Might Have Beens” and “the Sounds of Her in Pain” and they break my heart. I have become short sighted until all I can see is the tragedy in my own household.  I don’t have time to play “what if”.  There is neither time nor energy to spend on imagined catastrophes.

Could this be worse? Yes. Are there a million other nightmare scenarios in which this would be the better option? I don’t know, but I’m sure there are a few. Would a better person be sifting through all of it to find the silver lining? Absolutely.

I’m not that better person.

The fact remains that dead would be worse.  The rest of it is firmly in the Land of Suck. Pointing out all the other ways in which this could be bad or worse doesn’t help.  It’s just playing with words. That it’s not the worst you can think of doesn’t make it any easier.  The fact that you would say so out loud just makes you one less person we can turn to.

So what do you say?  What can you say to parents in the Land of Suck”?  You can say, “That’s awful.”, “How horrible.”, or even “Wow.  That sucks.” and I with that I will completely agree.

Better yet, you can say “I’m praying for her,” and our gratitude will overflow.