1) "Awesome!"
2) "Cool!!!"
It will NEVER be awesome or cool for a 6 year old or anyone else for that matter to have to go through something as craptastic as that. While I am grateful for my son's health and his generous donor, I really wish that people would put a little more thought into their response, instead of issuing mindless knee-jerk reactions.
Addendum: I don't want to be misconstrued as an ungrateful asshole. These two comments were delivered months apart by strangers for the most part. I got the feeling that they were probably taken aback and off-guard by the thought of Ryan having a transplant and/or cancer and didn't know how to react. Their comments just rubbed me the wrong way because they seemed so thoughtless. They weren't delivered in a sincere "I think that it's wonderful that he's healthy" type of way. It was more like, "I think I heard what you just said, but I'm just going to say whatever first comes to mind because this conversation makes me feel really uncomfortable and I don't know what to say and I'd like to change the subject." Sort of like in the beginning, when Ryan was first diagnosed and the ER doctor at Huntington Memorial came in to tell us that Ryan *might* have leukemia or a blood infection or some other bullshit, and they were trying to find a bed for Ryan at a children's hospital, but were having a hard time, so we might have to go home and come back in a few days, but it *really* wasn't a big deal... Sorry for the run-on sentence. He was talking really fast because he was nervous and didn't know what to say. He ended up sending us to COH that very night, and when I read the discharge papers in the parking lot, one of Ryan's diagnoses was LEUKEMIA. He seemed really nervous and just rambled on and didn't know what to say or how to just be honest and talk slower and tell us that our kid had cancer. I will never forget that conversation.
Jason thought my post might sound ungrateful or judgemental and I just wanted to clarify my reasoning. I am just venting.
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