11.22.2002

the son in surgery. on tuesday the twelfth, my son went into surgery to have his lip repaired. they took him away as i fussed to keep him happy, and he at the last moment, crying anyway. my husband was hurting there, in anticipation, afraid, but i kept calm and kept everything going as it should, too obsessed with the task of making my son happy for a few seconds to bother to consider fear. but they took him away and we waited for hours, even as i was exhausted from very little sleep, i sat and talked to my mother about liz hurley's birth and she read to me from hope's edge and i drank coffee and looked anxiously at the waiting room door each time movement was made across the room. the surgery took an hour-and-a-half longer than anticipated, though we were assured that nothing was wrong. but i waited and with darting eyes, watched. finally the anesthesiologist came out and gestured for us to follow him back to the recovery room where my son was screaming as the nurses moved hands over him and the surgeon gave me his first tooth in a jar, extracted from his palate where it served no purpose severed from bone. and i started crying as they handed him to me and i didn't recognize his face and he acted so terribly terribly upset. i said to him, "i'm so sorry, i'm so sorry..." over and over, and cried, dropping tears onto his body. his eyes and cheeks were unfamiliar from the swelling and his lip and nose were for once connected properly to his face, so i didn't know who it was that they had handed me. his cries were unfamiliar from a sore throat acquired from being intubated. two shots of morphine didn't do the trick, but eventually he calmed down anyway. upstairs in the peds ward, he didn't wake up but to be bothered by nurses checking his vitals for a day and-a-half. he had trouble breathing from the swelling and the coedine and they had to affix a nipple with the tip cut off as an airway. the doctor estimated a one to two day stay. we were there four days and three nights.