Hi, tired, I’m Dad.

If you are reading this, thank you for taking the time to be invested in Archie and the Zimmer family as a whole. We don’t have a clear direction for these posts at the moment. It will be more of a space to provide a general overview of things that have happened in the past week, two weeks, etc. Just as importantly it will provide us the space to vent and get our ideas in the open.

Back in October when Archie had his first seizure, I had only been home from work for maybe thirty minutes. I rode with him in the ambulance full of adrenaline while he laid there sleeping, exhausted from his own brain fighting him for twelve minutes. The fight in that little human was greater than any heavyweight boxing match I’ve seen. We arrived to the hospital in Annapolis and the whirlwind was just starting. Medical personnel rushing to treat Archie, more medical personnel asking what had happened, more medical personnel asking for my insurance information, more medical personnel probably wondering if I was processing everything around me. And just like that he was going to Children’s National in DC via Medivac.

I cried the whole forty-ish minute drive into DC. My biggest fear in life is letting my family down and in that moment I was not able to be there for Archie. My brain realizes that nobody could, but as a father my heart overruled. I had to leave those fears in the car when I entered yet another emergency room. It was time to be strong again for Hannah and Archie. I had been up at 3:30 the previous morning to head to work outside of Philadelphia, so while getting my emotions in check and waiting for Hannah and Archie to arrive, I closed my eyes.

Everything after that moment, even up to today, has rushed by in a blur. It has also been the longest months of our lives. I am lucky to have Hannah truly leading the charge between keeping our house afloat, coordinating all of our doctor appointments, in home visits, and trying to find ways to make me feel happy and appreciated. She is a superhero in every sense of the word.

People ask how we are doing and it is a really hard question to answer. If we lay out everything in front of us, we are going to instantly dampen that person’s day. Bottling it up isn’t the answer either as we will wear down even faster. If you see me smiling, please know it is genuine. I have my best friend in my wife helping me along, a feral two year old who makes us laugh constantly, an AHC champion who still smiles and coos to everyone around him, and an ever growing support system that we are still finding out just how deep its roots go.

We are all stronger than we realize. Hi, tired, I’m Dad.