De-nial is a river in Egypt

Hey, so did I mention that Thane is scheduled for surgery tomorrow?

Yeah, not so much. I was in complete denial until about, oh, yesterday at 7:30 pm. (No particular reason why then, but I finally admitted that why yes! My little baby boy was headed under the knife on Thursday.) You know the reason why, a hydrocele. It’s a pretty standardish operation, but has the usual nerves associated with general anesthesia. Also, that’s the area of the body that has a lot of blood vessels, as well as some things he may find important when he grows up.

I have no idea what to expect for a recovery. Dr. Internet varies in his estimate between 2 – 3 weeks for light activity to almost immediate. I suspect Mr. Roughhousing Is My Hobby Thane will probably be hard to keep quiet past a day or two. Tomorrow morning, at some time to be determined, I will pack Thane into the car without offering him breakfast. (He will be confused. I am adamant about breakfast.) We will take him to the hospital (how lucky we are to live close to a pediatric surgical powerhouse of excellence! In this case, Children’s Hospital). We will dress him in scrubs. I have done this before, but I’m not sure it gets easier with practice. This time, he’ll understand more.

Grey is already worried. Combined with a refresher on mortality thanks to Magic, he’s worried about his brother. He would like you to know that he is a caring person, who takes care of people who need it: even strangers. He moped through class yesterday because of this, and I got a note home from the teacher. (I WAS going to tell her the day of the surgery, since I figured he’d need support then, but I didn’t plan on sending a note today.)

I know the odds, and therefore try not to worry. But I can’t help thinking about surgical mishaps, general anesthesia, infection rates and hospital-reared super-bugs. And when I lay those aside, I worry about “preschooler without breakfast waiting in a hospital waiting room for heaven-knows-how-long” and how one takes care of said preschooler after surgery, and what exactly this is going to do to our already-rather-unsuccessful potty training progress.

Ah well. There it all is. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.