From an excerpt from an email to Vanessa, who had to tolerate even longer stretches of my bad grammar, and serve as a virtual shrink while she was at it:

What is heaviest on my heart now, in spite of the operation and the nightmares that seems to conjure in my primeval brain, is the fact that while I am worrying over Joaquín, Pedro is fighting hard to come out, apparently with ease but the climb is slow, and slippery; each step Pedro gives forward makes me glad, and immediately reminds me that Joaquín has yet to take the steps Pedro has been taking since his birth, and that concerns me, and then immediately once more I think of Pedro, and how my worrying over Joaquín is impacting him, and I torture myself in some kind of a cycle that leaves me exhausted.