With a full year of life under Matthew’s belt, I take stock of how far he has come as well as some lingering after effects of his time in the NICU.

In this episode we take the Deuce home and begin actually living with our son. Not lost on us is the fact that he was released on Easter Sunday. Certainly we felt like he’d risen from the dead.

You’d think that having your child’s doctor tell you he’s ready to go home would be cause for exhilaration and joy. Honestly, my sense of him was that he was still so fragile I didn’t feel entirely ready to leave the safety of the NICU. It was a reaction I never thought I’d have.

With the Deuce safely back from surgery, you’d think we would breathe a sigh of relief. I was surprised to find that the accumulated stress weighed on me more than prior to the surgery. But even as I was falling apart, the Deuce was showing signs of improvement.

The day came for The Deuce’s surgery. The stress of accompanying his transporter to the OR was unlike anything I’ve experienced. I went back to his pod and we waited. More time passed in those two hours than I thought possible.

Conceding that your child’s options have dwindled to only one course of action is a difficult concept to digest. As a younger man I might not have accepted the news and just put my fingers in my ears. Talking to a surgeon and agreeing to allow him to cut your child open is not your ordinary chit-chat over coffee.

The diplomacy of a NICU physician could teach the UN a thing or two discussing difficult subjects. Our doctor didn’t spring the question of surgery on us, but began mentioning that we *might* have to discuss it. A day or two later he suggested we might want to consult with the surgeon. I began to push back because I didn’t think we had an accurate grasp of just how much fluid was escaping from the Deuce’s thoracic duct.

Science rests on a foundation of data. You can’t do anything as an engineer, chemist or doctor without having data. Sometimes you have data, but that data is bad, that is, inaccurate. After more than three weeks in the NICU we thought the Deuce’s condition was improving for the simple reason that there wasn’t much fluid draining from his chest tube. But is no fluid draining out of the tube automatically indicative of healing? Well, that answer would be, of course not.

I was a bike racer for many years; it’s a sport that demands strength, aerobic fitness, the calm of a Zen master and lightning-fast reflexes. Racing is chaotic, chaotic in a way that can make everyday life seem pretty mundane. It has, however, illustrated a great many lessons about coexisting with others and taking care of yourself. If ever I need a reality check on something, I often run it through the lens of cycling. In this episode I take a look at some advice I received before a bike race. You’d think bike racing wouldn’t impart kernels of wisdom about life, but like almost any endeavor, if you pursue it for long enough, you begin to find ways in which your best strategies in sport can often be applied to everyday life.

In our sixth episode Matthew experiences his first significant setback and our sense of his progress and his prognosis receive a recalibration. The parents of another baby suffering the same sort of effusion show up at the NICU and their experience is quite different from ours.