T's Tubes: Gaining Perspective

During the stress of the past few days I put little to no thought into Thatcher's ear tube surgery this morning. I was not concerned in the slightest because it was ear tubes, literally a five minute procedure. T and I arrived bright and early at 5:45am. I brought him in his car seat because I couldn't hold him that long with my hands. Zach was home with the boys, getting Zane off to school. As I sat there, with my perfectly happy baby, not stressed in the slightest, I took a look around the waiting room. People were looking at me a little crazy and I couldn't figure you why. Then I noticed that all the other children had at least both parents, at most both parents and grandparents there with them. Some parents were teary eyed, clutching their little ones, visibly stressed about their children's upcoming surgeries. They thought I was a single mother (my wedding rings don't fight thanks to my nifty RA diagnosis) there with my super sick baby or that I'm just a terrible person, there alone not holding my baby, who knows.



Thatcher was a rock star, obviously. He did amazing, just as I expected, with his five minute procedure. He was the first case at 7am and we were home by eight it was great. He looked adorable in his little tiger jammies and yellow duck feet socks. He was super happy all day, dancing to music again. He had stopped swaying and dancing, we thought because he stopped liking music, now I think he probably stopped hearing the music. That's real sad, but he's better now, with just a little bit of bloody drainage coming from his ears all afternoon. They were of course infected today, but they drained all the infected fluid out so he's a new man. Hopefully this fixes the problem and he can continue to enjoy all the music he can handle. Hooray!

 He walked around, everyone was amazed by his walking and his ginormous size, he played with a truck, it was adorable.

On the one hand I'm glad that my experience as a heart mom, sitting through five hours of my son's open heart surgery,  has made me handle these moments with such ease. On the other hand for most of those parents in that waiting room their kids having ear tubes will be the biggest surgery any of their children will ever have, and that would just be amazing. I would take being stressed out in the outpatient surgery center waiting room, with my perfectly healthy ten month old, over five hours in the fancy private family rooms, while my son's heart's not beating any day.

But there are two sides to every story. Today I felt like the mom with the sickest kid in the room, not Thatcher, but my kid at home who is facing his second  heart surgery. That made my heart hurt, but it also made Thatcher's surgery day an absolute breeze. Who knows what other battles those family were fighting or what terrible things might be wrong with their other children. But from my point of view that's how I felt, like the mother of a sick child. Today while I was thinking about this, wishing ear tubes would be our biggest medical hurdle, I started remembering all the TET babies I have taken care of in my nursing career. For the past two weeks, everyday I went to work, I took care of a TET kid. They were all their for various medical issues, but every single one of them had a health history as long as my arm. Multiple surgeries, all sorts of other problems, some with Down Syndrome, all developmentally delayed, and all of them had G-tubes because they couldn't eat and gain weight. They had all had multiple long term hospitalizations and all were admitted currently for something other than their heart.

I'm sure God had a hand in this, it's just too big of a coincidence that I happened to have all these kids right before we were going to head down our new heart journey. Those are always the stories of TET babies I take care of, at all different ages. They all have multiple, complicated, terrible, medical issues. To be fair I only see TET kids in the hospital so of course they are going to be pretty sick. To those heart moms I am the mother in the waiting room who has no idea how good I have it. I have an my eighty pound, seven year old TET baby, who has only had one surgery, gains weight almost to a fault, is never sick, is at the top of class in school, and has only been hospitalized five days in his entire life. That's a dream to most mother's of TET children. An absolutely amazing, unbelievable dream. It's always good to gain a little perspective, there are always blessings to count, even in the worst situations. There will always be people whose lives seem so much easier than your own. There will also always be people who have bigger, harder battles than yours to fight. Look for the good and search for the blessings, no matter how long it take you to find them. They are always there. I have a best case scenario TET baby which meant our lives went on, everything was fine, and we got to have two other perfectly healthy baby boys. If Zane had been a super sick TET baby we wouldn't have had more kids and his illness would be our whole story, not just a small part of it. Blessings have been found and counted, perspective gained, all from my short time in the ENT waiting room.