I'm doing some laundry and I noticed that the furnace was on
AGAIN! WTF? It's not that cold, even in the basement apartment. And if you are cold, put on a sweater or something, but for the love of Pete, don't turn on the fucking heat until October.
With the last of the money from
fuzzpsych's grandmother, I went to Zellers and bought a Jolly Jumper. Shannon's not quite sure what to make of it, but she doesn't scream when she's put into it, so I'm going to take that as a positive sign. She should figure it out soon enough, and then she will scream, but only when we're taking her out! :)
The surgery date is looming ahead. We're both under constant stress and unease. The next two weeks are going to be maddening...not all anticipation is good. Adding to this is another layer of stress coming from my mom. When we told both sets of parental units about the surgery and about our wish to not have them come down to the hospital and wait with us, my in-laws agreed to that without argument and will only come down when it's a good time for Shannon to have visitors, but my mom is being argumentative.
Let me set the stage for Shannon's first heart surgery (PDA Stent and Bilateral Pulmonary Banding...also called the Hybrid Procedure) on 2004 Dec 07: the grandparents (my in-laws and mom) want to be there. I would rather that they didn't, but
fuzzpsych wanted them to be there for support, so I relented. I don't play well with others at the best of times, and being under so much stress, I couldn't handle anyone, so I went into the CCU waiting lounge across the hall alone.
fuzzpsych felt like he was being pulled in two directions and he also felt that he had to entertain the grandparents while at the hospital. I felt pressured and high strung for most of the day until my sister stopped by in the late afternoon. I started to calm down. While my sister was there, the grandparents left to go home (thank the gods) and after seeing Shannon one more time, we went back to my sister's place with her on the subway, had a bite to eat, then met up with
clawfoot and
epi_lj for the Spongebob Squarepants Movie.
All in all, not a very pleasant experience. We both had enough on our plates with the Hybrid procedure without
fuzzpsych having to deal with family and me trying to avoid them. It clearly didn't work very well. This time, we decided to do this one alone, calling with the result as soon as we knew what was going on.
But that's not good enough for my mom.
When we told her the surgery date, she argued against our explicit wish to not come to Sick Kids. She's even using strong arm tactics to guilt/pressure my in-laws (who are being incredibly supportive about this) into changing their minds so that she can be there. I understand that she's terrified. But she has no right to make this all about her. She made the case that if something happens, she wants to be there to say goodbye. But this is open heart surgery with a heart-lung machine and the whole works. If something happens (touch wood that it doesn't), it will happen fast. There won't be time for the kind of goodbyes where Shannon can hear them. It will be too late for that.
I know it's morbid and negative to think like this, but this is why they have survival rates for surgeries.
I want her to understand that we're not doing this as a punishment or to marginalize her importance in Shannon's life, but that as her
parents we have to be as focused as possible and we can only do that without distraction from the parental units.
fuzzpsych is going to talk to my mom about this sometime this week. If I went with him, it would become a heated argument and it wouldn't get anyone anywhere.
I'm just don't want this to turn into a grudge. My mom and her brother no longer speak to each other because when he needed her to be there for him, she was too busy with something else (this was 7 years ago!). It's stupid, but that's all it takes, and I'm worried that this whole surgery thing is going to cut me off from my mom and poison the it's-now-finally-a-good relationship I have with my sister (which is very bad, since we'll be staying with my sister and her boyfriend while in Toronto).
Now my tummy is urpy. :P That's enough or I
will get an ulcer.