Assembly Complete

The train table is completely assembled! Captain Adorable is happily playing with it as I type. It only took about 45 minutes-an hour, so I guess I could have done it last night anyhow. The instructions were friendly and the assembly was broken into lots of simple steps. I think perhaps I was overwhelmed by the number of steps last night (also I was rather tired...).

Disappointed Captain Adorable

My darling Captain Obvious is traveling for work again. He left this afternoon and he will be back late (like 11:00pm) on Friday. He's going to San Francisco. He has to travel for work much more than ever before. He also has three business trips in February. He enjoys his job, so therefore I am happy for him and I support him, but oh I miss him. And so does Captain Adorable.

This evening after dinner I tried to amuse my little one and myself (fill that empty slot when he usually plays with Daddy) by putting together the train table that Oma bought him for his birthday. I started by carrying an easy chair up the stairs to make room in the playroom for the train table. Then I carried the giant box into the room, fought it open, dragged out the contents, found the assembly instructions, and read them...and I realised that while it was not going to be complicated (well, a little complicated, but I've seen more difficult stuff from IKEA), it was going to be long. And I just couldn't face it. I decided to put it off till tomorrow, right after breakfast. As you can imagine, Captain Adorable was not too cool with this news. In fact, he was very disappointed. But I just couldn't face it. I disappointed him. Sigh. But tomorrow I will assemble it and we will build a fabulous train track together!

Once he got over his disappointment, he his usual sweet self, though. Right now he is upstairs, sleeping in his own bed while I type this to you. He slept in his own bed all of last night and for part of the night before that, so we will see how this goes...I do not want to push him out of the family bed at a super stressful time (mama in the hospital and sick and other people in his house to take care of him while mama recovers)...but I would like to go back to him sleeping in his own bed. I love him dearly and he is welcome in our bed any time he needs us, but I want the norm to be that he sleeps in his own bed.

An Email I Received Today

Only the names have been changed.

from Nurse
to Rose
date Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 3:05 PM
subject surgery date change...

Hi Rose-

Dr. Surgeon needs to change your surgery date a bit, he has to do another case on Jan 5th that involves several other doctors and it’s the only date that will work for them. SO—he would like to move your surgery to January 7th, he is leaving town on the 11th but really feels you will be 4 days out of surgery and doing well at that point. He doesn’t feel this should be a problem; our other Thoracic attending will be here, Dr. Other Surgeon to see you. But Dr. Surgeon said IF for any reason you’re not doing well he’d cancel his business trip. The only other option would be to move your surgery to January 6th – which we can do, but it’s more difficult to coordinate for several reasons, one being it’s not our normal OR day – so we have to plead for a OR room and plus we need to change clinic appointments for 7 patients – but it’s a possibility. Please let me know if the 7th will work okay– or the 6th if not.

Sorry for the change – I hope this will work okay.

Thank you,

Nurse



Nurse, BSN

Clinical Nurse Specialist

Thoracic Oncology- Surgery Branch

Explanation

I've been asked by several people why I am angry (see the post just prior to this one). I am angry because there is really only one day of the year on which I do not want to be having surgery or be in the hospital and that is Captain Adorable's birthday. January 6.

This year he is turning 3 and we've been talking about his birthday for months. He tells me all the time that he's going to have cakes at his birthday. He asks me several times a week if it is January yet. I am going to miss his birthday. His third birthday. This is the first time he's been cognizant of having a birthday and when his birthday is. his is the first big one. This third birthday I've been really looking forward to. I don't care about holidays or New Years or even my own birthday, but this one, yes I care. I really, REALLY care.

And the fucking idiot nurse fucked it up. And now I'm going to be in the hospital (maybe even the ICU) on my darling son's birthday.

Yeah, yeah, we can have a birthday party for him another time. And we will. Everyone says Captain Adorable won't know. Well, I think he will know. And even if he doesn't, I will know. And it sucks.

And I am a little bit scared of dying. It is a risk of surgery, after all. Especially a surgery like this where they are open up my chest and cutting my lung. A very small risk. But wouldn't it suck if I died on his birthday?

Anyhow, the more I think about this and write about this, the more I get caught up in the anger and dire predictions, so I think I am going to stop now, before these tears of self pity roll down my cheeks.

Surgery Soon

I have not written about this because I feel angry. I don't want to get all into it right now, so you will have to content yourselves with a short update.

I am going to be admitted to the hospital at NCI on January 4, 2010. I will have surgery on January 5, 2010. The point of this surgery would be to remove the two visible lesions in the upper lobe of my right lung. The surgeon hopes to do VATS (Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery) but may have to convert to full on lung surgery, which will require him to surgically break one of my ribs (and remove part of it!). I hope VATS works out, but I am prepared for conversion.

Home and Tired

I think we've been home for a little over 24 hours now. I am sitting in the family room, listening to the rain pouring down on the sky lights. I am tired, tired, tired. My poor Captain Obvious had to go to work today! Can't imagine how draining that must have been for him. I have hopes of posting pics and more about our vacation at some point, but I am going to bed now.

On The Way Home

We're in the airport Houston, waiting for our connection. I'm tired, having been up late last night getting everything packed for travel and up quite early (5 am) to get the plane.

Yesterday we had a fabulous time in the pool/thermas of the hotel where we were staying at Volcan Arenal. Inevitably, check out time rolled around. Boohoo. Next my FIL, Captain Obvious, and I went on a fabulous (but wet, since it was raining) zip line adventure. That was awesome and I'd recommend it to anyone. FIL's wife (Lita from now on) and Capt. Adorable did some hiking and hung out with another kid who was too young for the zip lines.

I will write more about the vacation once we are home, but here's one thought. I enjoy Costa Rica quite a lot, but I really hate the stupid bilk-the-tourist games that are constantly played. I think next time we might try somewhere else...