Tuesday, January 20

On Tuesday, a good friend from Sacramento came over to visit. She's so awesome to drive all the way over here for a short visit. It was great to see her even though it was brief. During her visit, we went in to see Caden. After awhile she went out and my sister came in. While my sister was in the room with me, one of the neonatology fellows came to tell us he had just spoken with one of the cardiac surgeon fellows and he was going to come talk to us in about 10-15 minutes. I told Cheryl to go call Greg and tell him to come to the hospital right away so we could both talk to him. Up until this point, we had been unable to talk to any of the surgeons and were quite anxious to do so. Especially because we knew that on Wednesday mornings, the cardiac team has their weekly meeting to discuss the patients needing surgery. We wanted to make sure Caden was on their radar screen and that they would talk about when to do his surgery.

Greg showed up shortly and arrived before the surgeon. When he got there, we had many questions for him, but he didn't have any real answers. He did tell us he had a procedure scheduled with Dr. Reddy that afternoon and he would talk to him at that time and would give us an update later in the day. He said Dr. Reddy would be the one making the decision about when to do surgery. And, he didn't want to speculate on what Dr. Reddy might be planning. However, he did give us his cell phone number and pager number and told us to contact him after 7 pm last night so we could get the update. We were so happy about that because even though he didn't give us any answers, he was a contact person and he has access to Dr. Reddy, which we don't.

In the afternoon, Emily, our social worker, called me to check in and see how we were doing. I told her the truth, that we were very stressed and that every day it seemed to be getting worse. We just want to have some sort of timeline for surgery for Caden and feel that he is important to the surgeons. She was very understanding (it is her job, I suppose) and promised to talk to the neonatologist attending handling Caden's case. She said it's the neonatologist's job to be the advocate for the baby with the surgeons. So, she called him and called me right back, telling me that he was arranging a meeting with himself, the pediatric surgeons, and the cardiac surgeons for Wednesday. This is the first time I think all of these people will be getting together at one time to discuss Caden's case. There has been some discussion on the phone about him, but I don't think all three areas have all met at one time to make a plan. So we are very excited to hear what comes out of that meeting.

Then, last night, Greg called the cardiac surgeon fellow to find out what Dr. Reddy had said in regards to Caden. Again, he didn't have a lot of new information. But he did say that Dr. Reddy said they were going to aim for Friday or Saturday for surgery. However, he added that Dr. Reddy didn't really want to give us a day because he thought if it got changed, that we would be upset. The reality is for us, that we would rather have an idea of the date and if it gets changed we'll have to deal with it. But the not knowing or having any idea of when it would take place was really hard on us. So, the cardiac surgeon fellow told us he would get in touch with us on Thursday to get our consent for the surgery and hopefully it would happen on Friday or Saturday.

I'm feeling slightly more optimistic today than yesterday and that is good. I just want to know that Caden is going to be taken care of so we can start the recovery process and go home. We're not able to hold him right now and know that the longer that is the case, the harder it's going to be for him to bond with us. We want to be able to hold him and love on him like any parent should with their child. And, we can't do that until surgery is taken care of and he starts to recover. Hopefully we will get even more specifics on Wednesday.