I don't know where to start so I'll start with John Frederick Kalbach is here! He arrived Sunday morning, August 11, happy, sweet, healthy, beautiful and so itty bitty compared to the last baby who is all kinds of a giant to me now! (Talking about Rudy) Delivery was fast and furious, as was Jon's driving to the hospital. After mild back pain all day and then some contractions that were getting painful we decided we should just head on to the hospital planning to do some walking when we got there but didn't want to chance the traffic considering the weather and tunnel being closed. No sooner did we turn the corner heading off base and my contractions REALLY picked up. I told Jon to put his 4-ways on and just get there. We caught every red light and Jon "cautiously" ran all but one of them. When I got in the car my contractions were about 5 min apart, when I got to the hospital they seemed about 2 min lasting about a min each. It was as horrible as labor is. I did get an epidural and that's a story for another day..... a resident or intern did it. It was a bad experience. In the end it worked. I got to the hospital around 9PM, JFK was born about four hours later the following morning at 12:51 AM. The threat of forceps was mentioned after two contractions of pushing, so I panicked and pushed him out immediately.
He is beautiful. He looks exactly like Ella and Rudy did.
So there's Freddie, new and helpless. Ella and her major surgery tomorrow, and happy Rudy. Oblivious to most of what's going on. Feeling a little left out. Sweet Rudy.
We were released from the hospital Monday afternoon but had to meet with Ella's doctor first and were able to leave Freddie in the nursery with my dear friend Jessica (who is a NICU nurse at NMCP) while we went to Ella's pre-op appointment. I may have mentioned before that the Pediatric Urology Clinic at NMCP is so new that it is not yet set up. The corpsman, and ambiance of the clinic are not child friendly. We were told when we showed up for the appointment that everyone had mostly gone home early that day. All the rooms were empty and the corpsman put us in this room (check out the poster on the wall) ...... Dr. Fox came in and turned about 10 shades of red. Poor Ella had no idea what the picture was of. Something in it resembled a squid..... Jon and I got a good laugh. Poor sweet girl.
For pre-op Dr. Fox explained the surgery to us. Essentially they are taking the "tumor", which is surrounded by calcium, out of the kidney. In doing so, the margins are very close to the kidney's collection system and she is hoping to not cut into that. Doing so will make everything a little more complex.
The tumor which is 4 cm in size, grows both inside and outside of her kidney. It seems in the imaging that it has not become involved in the adrenal gland at all. However, I have learned it's all impossible to see or believe anything until they get in there. Dr. Fox has referred to this surgery a few times as "very complex." This makes me nervous. I was about to request that no interns or residents be involved in the surgery (after my recent experience with the epidural and Freddie's circumcision) but Dr. Fox had already made that call because of the "complexity." Ugh.
On Tuesday we went back to the hospital for more. Ella had to get blood drawn, and a PPD. That was fun! (not)
Then Freddie had an appointment. Jon promised Ella he would donate blood to use "just in case" and also so he could get stuck with a needle too so that took some time too. Next we met up with Dr. Fox who escorted us upstairs to meet with the child life specialist. He played air hockey with Ella while Jon and I got to sit down with 2 pediatric oncologists. It took all I had not to cry. They were nice. I hope I never see them again. After them, we sat down with the child life guy and he spoke with Ella about the events of the surgery day. What the rooms will be like, what she will see, and etc. She told us that she felt better about it all after he explained so much to her.
By 3 PM we were exhausted. Finally ate lunch and left. All the time we spent in the clinic Freddie was with us and was good and easy as most 2 day old babies are. I was the biggest mess of everyone, and continue to be.
Sweet Ella is being so brave. I can't even imagine what it will be like for her tomorrow. I know how scared I would be if I were in her shoes.
All that said, I mentioned hoping God would be totally down with the rest of my plan which I'll share and ask you to pray for with me.
My plan for Ella: Tomorrow morning at 5:15 am we arrive for Ella's scheduled 7:30 surgery. Ella goes in being brave. Surgery lasts 4 hours or less. The biopsy of the tumor/mass/abscess (whatever it is, they like calling it a tumor now- I do not) comes back with a definite diagnosis of something benign that once removed we can put behind us. There will be no cutting into the filtration system of her kidney and when she leaves surgery she leaves with most of her kidney minus the tumor, and the adrenal gland is not involved at all. The oncology team will not be needed. Ella will be ready to come home from the hospital in less than 5 days. Then this will be behind us. Ella will recover as quickly as kids do. Start back to school on Sept 3rd at her new school and love it. Happy, peaceful, boring ending to a scary story.
There will be no iffy details, no cliff hanging events, summer over.
PLEASE pray for all of us tomorrow. Especially for Ella, the three surgeons involved and everyone in the OR, and the folks in the lab doing the biopsy. Thanks again for all of your love, support and being present for us during this time in our lives. We love all of you and could not feel more blessed to have the friends, family, church family, and navy family that we do.
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