So low and behold, the stressed out parents of last night (thinking Oscar had surgery coming up today), are tonight, more relaxed, sleeping, and generally feeling as if we can cope - because we know a lot of what is to come, emotionally and procedurally... of course we have done all this before, now - of course the surgery didn't go ahead today, and may not tomorrow, but we have now had 1 x the night before surgery, and 1 x waking up on the morning of surgery and trying to pretend is is not really happening, while we go about the business of preparing our delightful son for his big event!... so we are old hands. ( )
So hats off to Rebecca (who provided the 'practice run' perspective), and of course Joseph who has had one false start for surgery before the surgeons told them that they would have to wait (just as Rebecca's other three kids and Dad are waiting at home) because they had only performed that particular surgery a small number of times, and only on babies in worse heart failure than Joseph and therefore with bigger hearts... and they wanted to wait until his heart failure was worse and his heart bigger... !!! (three exclamation marks means utter consternation)...
and to Justine and Lucy and Dad Don who turned up today from Hastingsish I think, leaving the farm and the other kids, in good hands no doubt... and who (Justine) is up most of the night trying to breast feed her not so well new Heart Kid (about 8 days old, I think), who always says hello and chats, even though we all only introduced ourselves tonight (I was calling Justine 'Lucy', the name of her baby, cause I read it on the door of her room - the name on our door is Oscar Rigby, so probably should have picked that one. Duh!)
So there are blessings in having the surgery delayed, and there are lovely people with whom we share much of the journey (we will tell you about our nurses when we have decided who is our definite favourite!, there are three in the running, and we will try to read out the names in the correct order - that is to start with the third favourite, at the bottom of the list) ... Though it must also be noted that some parts of other patient's journeys we do not share in - Kat is from Dunedin, is about 22, is at Starship on her own looking after her baby while her partner and other child are at home - and she has been in the hospital for 5 months!
So if we have not said it before, once again we feel lucky to have the support we have, to have each other, to live in Auckland, for Oscar to have (as the cardiologist put it) 'the best one (congenital heart defect) to have', to not have too much financial pressure at this point in time, and to be on Starship's doorstep... We are also enjoying not having any other medical clinic appointments - as Fi said, we are kind of learning what it would be like to have a new baby at home, each day simply being devoted to Oscar and his well-being rather than the general running we do and love with Oscar, albeit with nurses coming in for blood pressure, heel pricks, multiple things connected to him, oxygen saturation tests and generally just because they are smitten with our son.
AND THIS IS one of OUR CATs, BELLA, she is a struggling alcoholic and she is really cute and we miss her when we are in hospital, and she says she misses us but, I'm not sure if it is not only about food.
and this is mamma-cat snuggling the cat-mamma
So surgery tomorrow, pobly. But if not, we are in good hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment