Powerful squiggles

This past week has been the best and worst week of my life. It started in the wee hours of Monday morning when I got out of bed knowing that very shortly I would be handing my 4-year-old son over to a team of surgeons to fix his leaky heart. We had been upbeat and positive about the whole situation, particularly in front of Possum. We only found out that he had a congenital heart defect (AVSD) in the first week of July so it’s been a lot to get our heads around in a short time.

Possum’s Heart

I don’t normally post a work-in-progress on here, but considering the circumstances, I thought it was only appropriate to share my new picture book, Possum’s Heart. Possum, is of course my almost 4-year-old son who will be having open heart surgery in the next 3-8 weeks. We didn’t know there was anything wrong with his heart up until a week ago, so it’s all happened very quickly! The prognosis for him is excellent, however we still have to go through the trauma of open heart surgery. He’s old enough to know something is happening. My concern is for his emotional state; I figure the surgeons have the physical stuff covered. This book is my way of preparing him for what lies ahead. (For full details of the situation, please visit my parenting blog, Big and Brave.)