Misgivings & Doubts

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2010 9:09 PM, EDT

Today (Wednesday) was definitely a mixed bag of emotions. We arrived at the hospital at 9:00 a.m. sharp for our pre-op procedures. We are impressed with the facility and staff at Emory - everyone is very friendly and super-efficient. We got asked the same questions multiple times by different levels (nurse, NP, MD) of folks, had a brief physical exam, and then labwork, a chest x-ray, and another echocardiogram. That all went quite smoothly, but we did not get to meet the surgeon because when he was available we were in echo, when we were done he was tied up with something else, etc. We'll have to wait until tomorrow morning.

One difficult part was meeting with the surgery fellow, whatever that means, about the risks of the surgery and signing consent. He went over various things that could go wrong and the percentage chance of each happening. I know this is something they do for every surgical procedure, and that even getting your tonsils taken out carries some theoretical risk. But it was still not a good conversation to have. Most notable was my mistaken belief that the survival rate for this procedure is 99%. It is actually 97% (the charts they posted online were sort of confusing to interpret, and evidently I wasn't looking at the right one). Generally I am a person who would think, "oh, 97%, that's great!" But I think Matt and I are now thinking that our baby's risk of something major going wrong has just tripled, from 1 to 3%.

Part of the pre-surgery process is giving David a bath in betadine (spelling?), that orangey-brown stuff they swab you with before they do surgery. We got a little spongy bar of soap, and had instructions to give him a regular bath first, then the betadine. This was really hard for Matt and me - we just haven't given him enough baths yet, you know? He's only been home from the hospital for a little while. This can't possibly be the last bath we give him. It can't. There have to be hundreds ahead of us. He hasn't even gotten to splash with his big brother in the tub yet. There's so much work for him and Simon to do. This can't be his last bath.