I am hesitant to write anything about our pre-admissions visit yesterday. On one hand, it’s a little “look at me, feel sorry for me” even for my attention-grubbing self. On the other, kids have surgery every day and when it’s your kid who is having surgery, there’s little more comforting that remembering that fact. And so the latter wins out. I will most likely be doing a lot of “we”-ing in this because I’m not entirely sure that I’m ready to address how I am feeling or what I am thinking.
We like the surgeon. This is so critically important it sort of surprised me. Not that he has experience or credentials, but that he sat with us for half an hour and explained first why we were doing the surgery, and then how it would be done, and after going over the risks, he explained the many fail-safes they have in place to do their best to keep any of the risks coming to pass. We toured the Pediatric ICU where Lucy will be for the first day after her surgery, got our time, and then were seen out to the lobby to reel a little bit before we were picked up.
And so now we have a plan. We know who is getting us to the hospital, who is watching the baby while we are there, when it will start and when it should end, and where we will go to see her when it is all over. The PICU is not nearly as bad as the Neonatal ICU was when she was born, although I did well up with tears when we left–it isn’t fun and games there but at least the patients are larger. We know we like the hospital, the nurses, the doctors. We know where the cafeteria is, and where to go to get non-hospital coffee.
There’s still a lot we don’t know, of course. And the list of risks involves some pretty heinous stuff, although mortality is at the very lowest point of riskiness. We have to have a lot of trust. Thankfully, we do.
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I am both a wreck and completely handling this all Remarkably Well. Simultaneously,even. It’s the strangest feeling to have this pain bubbling under the surface while knowing that it’s not there because I’m not processing things. I’ve been able to reduce the anxiety through exercise and distraction, the depression is mostly contained by the Welbutrin, and the lack of concentration/memory is just going to be there until this is over.
I am becoming less and less afraid that this will be The Thing That Drives Me Over The Edge. That my lack of breakdown indicates that it will be coming later. I have to keep reminding myself that I had my breakdown, I got help, I have people who know that I have Major Depression and am being treated for it, and that I will not just lose it and off myself. It will be a long time before I get over the residuals of this fear, but it’s normal, I would imagine, for children of suicides.
I am trying to keep using words even though I feel sometimes as though half of my vocabulary has been sucked out through my ear. Even when I stammer or use the wrong word or mangle the pronunciation, I’m trying to use them anyway. I feel somehow like words will be my salvation through all of this. Words and love.
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I am switching to a paper journal to log the rest of this experience, I think. It warrants a book of its own, and besides that, I feel the need to buy myself something special, to treat my feelings as important instead of as a burden, and to coax my words to stay with me.
As Steff would say, “[I] don’t know whether to shit or go sailing.“
I hope the rest of the time passes as quickly as possible for you (and the family).
I have similar fears of an imminent breakdown (although for very different reasons) and one thing I have come to accept recently is that much as I don’t want to happen – I might still just have one [a breakdown] one of these days. But I now have a much better support system in place (husband, in-laws, therapist, friend) to help me through it if it does. That is a huge comfort to me – knowing that I can fall and there will be someone there to help pick me up.
The support system is huge, Gina. I’m glad to hear that you have people there to pick you up–it’s easy to forget when you’re in the throes of misery and fear about the misery.