A World With No Sick Children

There are many stories for one who has an experience that transforms them from one who hasn't seen reality to one who has -- from Siddhartha to The Matrix's Neo.

The message that is always repeated is: once you've seen reality, you can't go back. Blue pill or red pill?

I have entered into yet another community, that of Make-a-Wish parents. And so I've left the at-least-familiar world of just cancer and entered into a world filled with cerebral palsy, heart defects, congenital abnormalities.

Or, as M-A-W says, "life-threatening illnesses."

Before Little Warrior was diagnosed, I really did live in a world with no sick children. I mean "sick" yeah -- colds, rashes, even asthma.

But not Sick Children.

You can know something exists ... all those diseases, all those challenges ... and not know. There is a certain knowledge that only comes through direct experience.

I don't know how to explain it. But whether I wanted to or not, I took the red pill. And though I regret all the things that Little Warrior has gone through, I do not, by itself, regret the loss of my innocence.

Painful truth is better.