Surgery

Ahn-Bao had his palate repair surgery early in the morning of Friday, June 20. Everything went as planned according to his surgeon, Dr. Clay. One nurse held him while another two nurses wheeled her in a wheelchair to his room in the pediatric ICU where we met him.

The first 24 hours were pretty tough to see him in pain and know that in some ways we agreed to do this to him. As soon as he was eating and drinking, lots of applejuice, yogurt and applesauce, he was allowed to move out of the ICU and to the regular pediatric area of the Children's hospital at Saint Marys Hospital. By Saturday afternoon, he was playing and walking around and even maneuvering the casts on both arms with great flexibility.

Meanwhile, Aunt Cindy and cousin Abby had turned our home into "Camp Stollberg" for Yasmin, Elias and Kia. They all came for a visit to the hospital on Saturday evening (right after going to "Kung Fu Panda" at the theater, with popcorn, unheard of!) Sunday morning, Ahn-Bao was ready to go home and everyone, especially Mom and Dad were glad to have all sleeping in their own beds.

We ran into a nurse working in the pediatric ICU who we had met back in 2004 when we attended the pre-adoption counseling class at our adoption agency. In the intervening 4 years, they had adopted twice from Korea and it was great fun hearing how their family (and ours) had changed over the years.

Casts for 3 weeks and soft diet for 6 weeks. Antibiotics for a week and pain meds for a few days and hope for the best.

Appropriate Level of Parental Concern and Attentiveness?

So, on the day before Ahn-Bao's palate surgery, Bob noticed that at the "Cafe Presto" restaurant across the street from Saint Marys Hospital, they had a breakfast special for $3.99. Bob had a theory that while Ahn-Bao was in surgery, when we were just waiting, that we could just go across the street and have breakfast.

When he posed this plan to Sherry, she offered that he was welcome to go have breakfast, but that it seemed inappropriate not to be waiting very close by in case his parents were needed. Bob's retort was something to the effect of, "what, are the surgeon or the anesthesiologist going to come running out of the operating room demanding that his parents come in and sew something up?" After 22+ years of marriage, Sherry's response was to merely ignore his protests.

When Bob later posed his suggestion to test its appropriateness on Aunt Cindy, and Abby and even Yasmin, they of course all sided with Sherry's appropriate level of parental attentiveness and suggested that the parents should stay nearby in case they were needed.

After Sherry had attended Ahn-Bao back to the operating room and had stood by while he closed his eyes, the nurse, Mary in the Pre-op area suggested, without prompting (although, Bob was alone with her for a short amount of time) that we should take this opportunity while the surgery was going on, to get some breakfast. Her rational theory was that when he came out of surgery, he would need us at full speed and well-nourished as we may not have much opportunity to eat again for awhile.

This of course prompted quite a reaction from Bob.

I had the $3.99 special with bacon and toast and Bob had ham and an english muffin. We were back to the waiting area in plenty of time to wait for another 2 hours.