One Week!

Today is August 25th, 2011. We have one week from today (September 1) before surgery so we've decided to go into hiding to stay away from germs/stay healthy before the big day next week. Daddy (Daniel) is still working full time, up until surgery but Ethan and I plan to lay low and just hang out here at the house so we can stay well. We both have a little bit of a stuffy nose this week, but I've had that my entire pregnancy so not sure if I'm getting sick or just having a little more of the pregnancy congestion now that I'm in my 3rd trimester!

Goals for the next week: stay healthy, get/keep the house cleaned up (getting harder to bend over and pick stuff up as the baby gets bigger), find someone to watch the dog, enjoy some quality family time, put together my "care pack" for Ethan for post-op recovery, take some time to explain to Ethan what will be happening to him next week, and try to not go stir-crazy in the house!

Ethan's hospital sent us a nice picture storybook for us to read to him to help us explain going to the hospital for heart surgery. It shows some cartoon pictures of a child hooked up to all kinds of equipment (IV's, foley bladder catheter, ventilator, chest tubes, pulse ox, oxygen, etc.). Fortunately, he'll still be sedated while most of that stuff is still in/on him). When he gets out of ICU and is transferred to the step-down floor, he'll definitely be rid of the big stuff like vent, IV's, chest tubes, catheter so he should probably only have the pulse ox and maybe EKG stickers.

Please be praying for us to have the right words to use when explaining all this to him and for him to not be scared and that he'll be able to understand it all. Up to now, we've only told him we're trying to stay healthy for next week's pre-op appointment (on Wed., August 31) where they'll take special pictures of his chest bones (X-Ray) and that the next day we'll return and that he'll take a big nap (anesthesia) while his doctors work on fixing his heart so he doesn't get out of breath so quickly. He seems to like the idea of having more breaths so we're trying to keep it positive for him. He has no real sense of time at this age so we don't want to reveal everything at once and overwhelm him or have him worry about it for too long.

If anything else comes up between now and next Wedneday at pre-op (like having to postpone surgery due to illness, etc), we'll keep you posted. Otherwise, be on the lookout next Thursday for lots of updates about the surgery and recovery! We don't get updates during the actual surgery so don't be alarmed if it takes us a while to update post-op!