Nervous DAD!
The idea of surgery for a seven year old is very difficult. Today Haley made a couple of big decisions and I can’t tell you how proud I am of her for making them. We have been doing stretching off and on for ever. More recently we have been doing stretching and core muscle exercises more consistently but we are still not very consistent. Today when we were getting ready for bed I said we should do stretches tonight and Haley said yeah. She then said I think until the surgery we should probably do stretches every night even if I don’t get to have stories. We’ve read stories to her every night since she was a few months old. I was so proud of her for making that decision. It’s much better than the ones I’ve made related to running lately at least I got out tonight.
After we did our exercises and we were laying down we prayed that God would make the surgery and the recovery easy. We also discussed the idea of hard work to make something easy. She was actually telling me that she told her PT she would look back and be happy she did this and I explained about the word perspective. Some times I’m very much like my dad but one of the things he taught me very well was that it helps to have the words (vocabulary) to explain your thoughts and emotions.
After that conversation we got on the topic of how they would put Haley to sleep. She said “so they will just give me a pill and I’ll fall asleep and then they’ll take the pill back and I’ll wake up.” It took me a little while to figure out what she meant but once I understood I explained about IV’s and how they would leave it in but stop putting the medicine in it. They would still leave the IV to give her water and nutrients because she would not likely feel like eating after the surgery.
Lastly we talked about the surgery room. She has realized that we will not be in the surgery with her. I think I managed to communicate it to her without upsetting her too much. We started with saying we will be there when you go to sleep and when you wake up in answer to her question of you’ll be there the whole time right? She finally decided to ask about how we were saying that we would be there and I explained that doctors would not likely let us in the operating room because we are not doctors. She basically took that idea and ran with it.
She is a bright kid I know she do well but I’m praying for her every day. I can’t help it I’m just a little bit of a nervous dad.
