Waiting in the Car While the System Takes Its Time

Today, I will leave work again.

Again with that same explanation, the same look, the same quiet calculation of how much more time I can take before it starts to matter.

Third specialist appointment.

You would think by now there would be movement, a decision.

Something concrete.

A plan.

A shift.

But instead, it feels like standing still while everything that actually matters is moving in the wrong direction.

There’s something deeply wrong with a system that schedules alleged important appointments for a parent at school pickup time and calls it care.

As if life pauses neatly around their calendar.

As if children don’t need collecting, work doesn’t exist, and families aren’t already stretched past capacity.

So the kids stay home.

Again.

And I sit here wondering, will this just be another conversation?

We will have to tag team today as they want her in by herself for the first half , it is only me her and the kids.

Another “let’s monitor”?

Another version of nothing dressed up as something?

Because from where I’m standing, this isn’t abstract.

This isn’t theoretical.

This is watching your child fade in real time.

Slowly.

Relentlessly.

In ways that don’t fit neatly into appointment slots or polite clinical language.

And somehow, I’m expected to sit calmly in a chair and wait for consensus.

I’ve thought about calling triage this morning.

But what for?

To be told to go to the hospital?

To start another process?

To explain it all again to someone new?

Everything feels like a loop.

A system built on delay, repetition, and passing responsibility just enough to keep things moving, but not enough to actually change anything.

What I want, what any parent would want, is simple.

Not reassurance.

Not more discussion.

Action.

A line in the sand that says: this is serious, and we’re going to treat it that way.

So today, I will go again.

Not hopeful.

Not defeated.

Just done with pretending that this level of care is enough.

If nothing else, today has to move.

As always I have to be the one to force it.