Its Wednesday, so let' start cutting...

Five a.m. It probably doesn’t have much significance, or isn’t a big deal to most people, but in the Elliot household, it’s not a time of day that we see much of. We’re more night owls and thoroughly uninterested in getting up before the sun does. Even Thomas has adjusted and is more than happy to ease into the morning at his own pace. There is very little that would alter that for us; Haley’s Comet seems appropriate or a World Cup soccer match. The other reason is surgery. They always seem to schedule surgery early in the day. Such is the case today. Thomas is currently in surgery for various procedures on his private areas. In the interest of discression and modesty, I won’t get too specific, but he is getting circumcised and having 2 other procedures in the same area. I really hate that I haven’t kept you all up to speed, because there is a bunch that needs to be revealed. Just seems that every time there is something to write, I’m left without time or energy or both.

Oh well, no use crying over spilled blogs. This is a day surgery, so we’re only supposed to be here for 6 or 7 hours. Plenty of time to whip this puppy out. Today we’re at Medical City Dallas, which brings us to hospital #4 on Thomas’ bucket list of hospitals that he just has to visit. We checked in at 6 and scooted upstairs to get vitals and slip into a sexy smock (Thomas got one too). Then down to pre-op, which was (Still is I guess) a large room with about 10 beds separated by curtains. Every bed had a child of varying age waiting to meet with their doctors and get rolled into surgery. I can’t imagine how much tougher it is to deal with your child’s surgery if your child knows that something is up. With Thomas, we have a wild child who is blissfully happy at all times and almost immediately bounces back from anything traumatic. The other kids had fear and trepidation that you could see in their eyes. The doctors and nurses are obviously well acquainted with this, so they do their best to become their friends and make them laugh. It was a lot like watching a standup comedian warm up an audience, but there were 10 stages, so I could hear all of the routines.

We ran into one of Thomas’ NICU surgeons, Dr. Hermann, who had been a favorite of ours. He had performed the hernia surgery and when we saw him today, he remembered the exact bed that Thomas was in when Thomas was his patient close to a year ago. Great parlor trick. Then it was time to wheel Thomas out and scoot us to the waiting room. Medical City has a cool feature. They have monitors all around, similar to at airports that give you an update of the progress of the patient, procedure under way, procedure closing, finished. The nurse gave us a sheet explaining the monitor and said that she would write down a code so we would know which one is Thomas and still protect his identity. The tricky code is: ELL__T, T. Very hush, hush and complicated. Reminded me of the Navajo who were used to transmit messages during World War 2, inpenetratable. Wait…no…they just hid the vowels. Now Rebecca and I are sitting in the cafeteria, passing time til Thomas goes to recovery.

After this, Thomas has one more surgery, the tethered spinal cord. I’ll update you after Thomas gets out.