surgery news

hey sweet love=) we went to charleston last week for an upper gi and to see dr hebra and schedule surgery. i've been meaning to tell you about this since then, but i wanted to throw some pictures in here too and i keep forgetting to bring my camera to work. work is where all my internet time takes place...and i still didn't remember my camera but i decided enough was enough and to just tell you about the appointment already. sorry for that unnecessary introduction... the upper gi went relatively well: of course you hated it-screaming the whole time and clinging to me and terrified. i was worried you wouldn't drink the contrast that was completely necessary (the point of the test was for them to see what happens between your esophagus and your stomach-and they would only be able to see that if you drank a drink with barium contrast in it...) so we bought you a new cup for this very occasion and talked about it all morning...and i was standing at your head and holding your hands and your sweet little teary eyes were staring at me and i would say "take another drink and we'll be almost done" and every time i asked, you did it and they saw what they needed to see within about 5-10 minutes and it seemed easy as pie. well, maybe i wouldn't go that far. but you did SO GREAT and you were so brave and i was so proud of you and basically, it went much better than i expected. you even kept drinking the contrast after they were done. maybe that was because they flavored it like kool-aid and i don't think you had ever had kool-aid in all of your 2 1/2 years. and then of course gigi had a surprise for you for being such a big girl. so the best part of the upper gi was that it is NOT a hiatal hernia. which is great news (this means that there IS some sort of diaphragm between your esophagus and your stomach that's up in your chest). if there hadn't been any diaphragm there they would've had to un-do the nissen (the top of your stomach wrapped around the bottom of your esophagus to keep you from throwing up all the time-that surgery was done when you were about 7 months old) and they maybe would've had to un-do your g-tube and then re-do all those things. it would've been a MUCH more complicated surgery, and while it'll still be complicated, it won't be quite as bad as we thought. did that even make sense? it felt very confusing to type. onward. stomach and spleen and colon is still in your chest, and there is still some sort of "membrane" encapsulating those things so they're not flowing willy-nilly around your lungs, and that's a good thing. it may be some sort of mysterious membrane, or it may just be a very thin and weak diaphragm (as a result of the last surgery) that's holding the stuff down, but either way it needs to be fixed. so we scheduled your 11th surgery for june 10th. i'm trying not to think about it too much because you're doing SO WELL right now and it breaks my little mama heart to imagine you going through surgery and a week-long hospital recovery but i'm trying to remember to just pray for safety and success when i get anxious. it really does help. thank you Jesus=) in other news, we're moving in august. we have some hunches but we should know definitely where we're going in the next couple of weeks. more to come... i have failed at making a list of the cute things you're doing so i would have it right in front of me when i go to tell you about them. the main thing i remember right now is how you say things like "him is eating him's chicken nuggets" and i love your mis-use of pronouns. i know you'll fix that one day but i'm loving it right now. daddy and i have started talking like that too sometimes. i'm sure that's not annoying at all to any of our grown-up friends=) sweet baby. i love you so much. i'm in an "all-business" mood right now so i can't think of other stuff i need to say. but it will come. and so will pictures=) mommy