A day in our life

I wish there was a way for me to express in words the gamut of emotions that I felt today.  Here's a run down of my day.

I woke up early and double checked that I had packed everything that I would need for the overnight stay at the hospital we were expecting tomorrow night for Mia's cath.  Once Mia woke up, I found the last few remaining items of hers that we would need.  I got her medicine ready for the day and prepared it to bring along with to the hospital as well.  Just in case anyone was ever wondering, Mia gets 9 doses of medicine throughout the day.  Totally random, but many people have asked me!              

The rest of the morning was pretty routine.  Only thing that was different was that Art and I were trying to get ahead with our business in preparation for not working tomorrow.  We ate lunch and were playing outside when my phone rang.  "Children's Hospital" is what the caller id said and I was thinking it was just a reminder call for the cath tomorrow (as if I was going to forget).  Nope.  It was a scheduler telling me that due to unforeseen circumstances, Mia's cath was cancelled.  And that was it.  She didn't offer me a new date and time.  I asked her if our cardiologist was aware of this cancellation, she said that she probably was, but she'd have our card call me to explain further.

About 30 minutes later our cardiologist calls.  Yep, there's nothing she can do, she didn't know this was going to happen, it's been cancelled.  Why you might ask?  Now I feel for this family, I really do, but we were seriously almost 12 hours away from leaving our house to drive to the hospital.  A new baby is being born tomorrow morning that needs a cath right after delivery and consequently, we got bumped.  To when?  We still didn't know.

Now please realize, we have been in our house, not leaving other than for walks and to drive around the city to maintain our sanity, for almost 2 weeks.  We are all healthy, but we have cabin fever like you wouldn't believe.  Both of our parents had taken off of work to help watch Izzy tomorrow.  Not to mention we had mentally prepared ourselves for this cath.

3:00, 4:00, 5:00 pm rolls around and we still didn't know.  They had told us that there was a possibility of it still being tomorrow, if a different cath doctor was available.  Turns out, he's not.

Finally a little after 5, same scheduler as the first call, calls me.  She says that they cannot accommodate us tomorrow and it will have to be rescheduled.  Yep, I got that.  Again, I ask her when.  Not until mid-June.  You've got to be kidding me.  We told her that was unacceptable.  She told us that she'd have her manager call us to explain the situation to us again.  We didn't need it explained again, we needed a cath date sooner than mid-June.

I call our cardiologist again.  She can't do anything about it.  While I'm talking on the phone with her about how medically necessary it is for Mia's cath to be this month, more like this week, the scheduling manager calls back.  And thank goodness, with a new cath date and time.  Next Wednesday, May 22nd, still first thing of the morning.  She offered us a few gift cards to the hospital gift shop as a thanks for our accommodation.  Uh-huh, gift cards, that will make months of stress and now this huge added stress all better.   

So now we will endure another week of limited contact with the outside world, lack of sleep due to anxiety, and prepare all over for Mia's cath.  This is a day in our lives.