A really long day!!!!

Step 1: Get up at 5:45 AM.

Step 2: Send an email that I forgot to do the night before.

Step 3: Leave the house at 6:35 AM.

Step 4: Stop for a Chicken Biscuit (meal one in the car)

Step 5: Get on the express way travel to Hospital.

Step 6: Arrive at Hospital at 7:50 AM.

Step 7: Check in at Patient Registration at 8:00 AM. I am 30 minutes early. I was supposed to be there at 8:30

Step 8: Fill out multiple forms, sign my life away, check and re-check social security numbers, birthdays, and every other aspect of our lives.

Step 9: Wait for a really long time while the hospital patient coordinator figures out their new software, as today was the very first day they began to use it.

Step 10: We move to the “waiting room” and wait for about an hour.

Step 11: CT Scan at 9:35 AM (it was schedule for 9:00). Now they told me on the phone that the CT scan would take 45 minutes so as I am walking back I tell the technician that I need to call up to day surgery to let them know that we will be late for out 10:00 AM pre operative appointment.

Step 12: Technician looks at me and exclaims “What!! A CT only takes about 10 minutes!”

Step 13: Put on really attractive shinny blue lead x-ray apron and wait for my DD to put on a hospital gown.

Step 14: DD finally has CT Scan, which really only took about 10 minutes.

Step 15: Technician escorts us up to the surgical reception area and arrive at nearly 9:55 AM.

Step 16: Fill out more forms, sign more forms, I am wondering what happened with the electronic (supposedly paperless) filing system they are breaking in. My stack of carbon copies is growing by the minute.

Step 17: Sit down with second Patient Coordinator and again experience delays as she is learning how to maneuver the new software system. I count at least six different individuals that were all consulted as to which screen they needed to click on and which box they needed to check as well as which account number they need to link to which file and how to get it to send the necessary document to the printer. It then took the same additional six people to figure out how to print these documents (for the paperless system) for me to sigh again.

Step 18: Move back to waiting room again.

Step 19: Wait for about one hour.

Step 20: 11:00 AM, have consultation with an Anesthesia P.A. More questions, more answers. The DD keeps referring to anesthesia as “the amnesia” but then it is sort like amnesia….

Step 21: Nurse escorts us to the lab.

Step 22: Arrive at the lab at 11:30

Step 23: Sit in lab with about 15 other families all waiting for some kind of test. In the hour we were in the very small lab waiting room I saw a woman come in wearing what can only be describes as Herman Munster black platform open toed shoes. She had a black Goth thing going on as her hair was jet black and erratically styled as well as a few well placed tattoos and black leather studded belt and black t-shirt. Her daughter was similarly dress as she had small toddler Herman Munster shoes these were off set and softened a bit with white ruffled socks, a black puffy crinoline type skit with a pink top. I observed another rather countrified woman who appeared to be in her pajamas with her three children who for some reason were all bare footed.

Step 24: We decline the numbing cream as this would take an additional 30 minutes to take affect and having been at the hospital since 7:50 AM we both decided that the DD would just suck it up for the brief moment of pain in a tiny stick in the arm.

Step 25: I quietly lean over and instruct my DD to not touch anything as the room was full of small children that we all either drooling or gnawing on the arms of chairs or tossing their bottle around the room. My mind was a wash with images of bacteria growing on every flat surface. I nearly panicked when one toddle tossed his bottle across the room and nearly missed a bull’s-eye face full of bacteria laden formal.

Step 26: I was totally freaking out when I thought of all the various unpleasant thing that are covering the bottoms of the six bare feet that are streaming in and out of the lab waiting room.

Step 27: Get up again and dose my hands and the DD hands with a generous helping of hand sanitizer.

Step 28: Finally get escorted back to a small room where a lab technician administers the necessary swabbing and sticking and she draws about 4 small vials of blood all the while we get to listen to a small child who apparently was having an internal organs removed through his nostrils as he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

Step 29: We get a neon orange band aide for her minor boo boo and as we exit the room we slather up with more hand sanitizer and quickly head for the parking deck.

Step 30: Pay $4.00 for parking and calculate that I have been at the hospital since 7:50 AM and I am pulling out of the parking deck at 12:40 PM so we have been at the hospital about five hours. Yea for us.

Step 31: Find the nearest gas station as I was running on fumes and was in danger of being stranded in unfamiliar territory.

Step 32: Make a wrong turn and then have to back track to find the expressway.

Step 33: Get so absorbed and excited that I have finally found the sign to the expressway that I ran a red light.

Step 34: Get back on the expressway at 1:15 PM.

Step 35: Finally back in familiar surroundings we stop for our second meal in the car and drive thru for a burger at 1:40 PM

Step 36: Arrive at third appointment of the day. The orthodontist at 1:50 PM

Step 37: Pay way to much for two small plastic appliances that will reside in my DD mouth.

Step 38: See the exuberance on my DD face as she joyfully shows off her perfect brand new smile sans braces!

Step 39: Leave the orthodontist at 2:45 PM and drive home.

Step 40: Put my car in reverse and breath a sigh of relief that the day is nearly over and suddenly I find that my car has unexplainable made a be line for the nearest Dairy Queen for a well deserved ice cream cone.

So that was my day.

Day one in our journey towards my daughter’s surgery in a few days. I have to share with you that the one who I will not name has been jumping on me from moment to moment waves of fear wash over me and I begin to run my storehouse of god’s promises through my brain. I fill my thoughts with God’s word and I keep them looping in my brain until the fearful thought are pushed out.

The babies I saw made me wonder what was wrong with each one. The children in wheel chairs, the thin pale children in the chemo caps, the small children with tears streaming down there faces recovering from what ever stick or painful poke they had just experienced. It was a sobering experience and my heart broke for each mother as I watched them cradle there tiny babies into to what ever test or procedure they were there for.

I am ever so thankful that my DD is of an age that she can fully comprehend (as well as she can) what is about to happen. She knows that the tiny stick will only last a few short seconds and she understands why it is being done. She understands that there are some things that about this upcoming surgery will in fact be painful.

As a mother I have to tell you I was so proud of how my DD met each new thing today. She never once complained about how long it took. She never whined about being bored, well maybe once, she never gawked at the children with very obvious disabilities, she would just smile at them and then turn her page and continue reading.

She was amazing today and I know she will meet the coming challenges with the same peace and patience.

Y’all she is just too totally happy with her new smile!

Thank you Jesus that we got to end a very long trying day on a positive note.

Blessings

Robin