Please, sir, can I have some more... patience?

Today was the day we've been waiting for. We thought it would be the big day when we'd get Jonathan's big scary surgery on the books. He had three appointments.

Some of his appointments were in the Cancer Center, just because that's where his surgeon works. He doesn't have cancer. But the Duke Cancer Center is super nice, I mean, as far as cancer centers go? 

After the first appointment (simple blood draw to check things like white blood count, etc.), we went over to radiology for a CT scan. They had complimentary coffee?! I was so tired that I accidentally grabbed the wrong k-cup thing and made myself a nice hot cup of decaf. Womp womp. I still drank it.

Decaf coffee should actually be green when you brew it, just as a warning. 

He did not want me to take his picture, so of course I did and am now posting it on the world wide interwebs. I still love him even when he's inching toward the Derelicte look. 

Radiology waiting room while Jonathan had a CT scan. Heck yes I turned off the TV. 

So two appointments down and it was only like 9 AM. We decided to go on up to the clinic where the surgeon works, even though Jonathan's appointment wasn't scheduled until 11 AM. He got settled and I went down to find some proper coffee. He had to fill out a billion questionnaires and such since he's a new patient in that clinic, which is kinda weird because um doesn't Duke have this Maestro Care thing they talk about and have signs about all over, which is an electronic medical record? So instead of having him hand-write all of his medications and medical history, couldn't they... you know... look in his electronic medical record for that? There I go trying to apply logic to hospital operations again.

And what do we do with the Tangerine and Buff copies? 

There we sat, watching awful daytime TV, reading magazines, filling out forms, and wondering what was taking so long. The hours passed. We sat in that clinic waiting area for about 3.5 hours before getting called back to a room.

Hurry up and wait. 

Jonathan's TPN was still going all morning. The infusion was complete while we were still in the waiting area, so I unhooked him and did the heparin lock and he gave himself his lovenox shot right there because we really didn't care by that point. We were the waiting room veterans. 

Getting just a little bit tired of waiting. 

So, hooray! Only 90 minutes past our scheduled appointment start time with the surgeon, we had a room in the clinic! Jonathan got a warm blanket, and we... waited.

If you look closely, you can see his partially pus-filled JP drain, which is pulling the ick from his pancreatic pseudocyst. 

We met Whitney, a med student working with the surgeon, who talked to us for at least five times longer than our attending surgeon ever has. She was great. But our expectations for surgeons are pretty low where bedside manner is concerned.

Finally, the surgeon came in. It was at least 2.5 hours after our scheduled appointment start time, and 4.5 hours since we arrived at the clinic. He was in the room talking to us for maybe 10 minutes tops. He showed us images from Jonathan's previous CT scan (12/30/13) and from today's scan so that we could see the differences.

Image from the 12/30 scan - bright white at bottom center is the spine, and all that black space is the air that filled his abdomen when they perforated his bowel during the procedure on 12/20. The air has since been drained. 

I didn't get a pic of today's scan, but basically just imagine that one above but with no big black air pocket, and you can see that his pseudocyst is noticeably better now than it was three weeks ago. Which means... no big scary slice down the middle and scoop out all the bad stuff surgery! Well, at least for today. The plan is to do another CT on 2/12 just to see what's up. But if the JP drain keeps pulling out puss and the cyst keeps shrinking, that means it's healing and there's no need for major, scary surgery. Jonathan does have to put all his effort into eating, because if he can't in a week, they'll take the TPN away and do an NJ tube instead. So he's pretty motivated to try to eat. He's on raglan to make his stomach contract and process food, because as far as the docs can tell there's no medical reason for him to not be able to eat real food. I'm happy that it's motivating him to eat a bit at least.

I dropped him off at home at 3 PM or so, went to CVS to get his new medicine, and headed to pick up the kids. I got them a bit early and was feeling all proud and supermommy-ish, so I offered dinner at Chick-fil-A so they could play in the play place. Ordered food, went into the play area with the kids to take off their shoes, saw them bringing food to our table and went out of the play area to let them know which table was ours, and BAM. I didn't realize Gideon was following me, so he ran at full speed into a very heavy glass door that was also closing at full speed.

The time between falling face-first onto the floor and finally crying was SO. LONG.

I scooped him up and went to the register to ask for ice, showed them what happened and instantly had three cashiers making super scared faces and the manager was there talking to me about how it's probably not a big deal, just a bruise, but gosh doesn't it look bad, and maybe I'd want to go to Urgent Care?

So off we went. I really thought it was probably fine, but then I was freaked out because head injuries freak me out. And this was the first time I'd seen the super-insta goose egg and I'm already just a smidge stressed and prone to freakouts, so yeah. We went to urgent care. Where they remembered us from last time I was there with the kids and Evelyn was the patient. We're regulars.

His hair's hiding it a bit here. I promise it was much more terrifying in person. 

Gideon's fine. It's a bruise. It's ugly, and he might have a black eye soon, but it looks worse than it is and he doesn't appear to have any other problems. These are good things.

So then I got the kids home and left them with Jonathan, who's totally capable of caring for them while I'm out for a couple hours (THIS IS HUGE) and sped and road-raged my way to session one of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class. I'm aware that it's probably not great to speed and tailgate on your way to MBSR, but I was running late and I hate running late and see, you know, the past four month's worth of posts here for ample reasons for my stress.

Tomorrow morning Evelyn gets her canine tooth pulled. I'm hoping it goes well enough that she can go to school immediately afterwards, because I really really need to get some work done. Fingers crossed.