An eve

It is always a last-minute call. I don't envy the job of the surgery schedulers, they have a lot they are juggling. Operating rooms, doctors, surgeons, nurses... that's just one side. Then there's figuring out who takes the priority, which family has the greater need, how old are all of the kids going under... It is a lot. So I totally get why we don't get the official schedule until the last second. I have done this enough now that I am used to the call at the end of the day.

But this time is different. The last several times I've taken a child to the OR I have packed bags with blankets, several days of clothes, a bathroom bag (make sure there's lotion and chapstick in that bathroom bag, hospitals are very dry places), a book for the waiting (if you forget one I bet that the activity room/child life room has random teen romances you can pick up, I've done that a couple of times), pocket change for vending machines, and socks. Lots of socks. (You could always pack slippers, if that's your thing, but I've found them to be cumbersome because jumping in and out of slippers is much harder at 2:00a.m. when an alarm is going off somewhere in the Devil's Snare of wires entangling your thrashing, cranky, semi-conscious child.)

Our typical surgical mornings usually start at 4:00 a.m. to accommodate travel, traffic, and check-in time. We juggle the one car, so we get the other kids to sitters (bless them!) in these wee hours, after getting backpacks and lunches and clothes and shoes and teeth brushed and etc., ... And we do it all when we are barely functioning and the sun is still asleep.

This time, I'm taking David. We don't leave until after I've dropped the kids off at school and left Elizabeth with a sitter. It is an easier morning. And there's no bags. I'm taking my laptop so I can watch a few training videos, but there's no suitcase to haul in with us. It is nice. The challenge in this surgery will be that he can't eat breakfast (have you ever denied a pre-teen boy his breakfast? That's rough 😜).

David was nervous. He asked for a blessing, so I called our ministering brothers to come and give him a priesthood blessing. I'm grateful for good men, men that can provide extra peace and comfort to my kids and I when we need it. These are men that David has admired for a long time. And they are a blessing.

At the end of the day all will be well, and hopefully David's hearing is restored.