Faith's jaw surgery is scheduled for Thursday, June 7th, starting early in the morning. We are flying out on June 4th into Indiannapolis and then driving to Cincinnati that evening. We have a room reserved at the Homestead Suites and have submitted our application to the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) next door to the hospital, now we just need to reserve a rental car. We wont know if we can stay at the Ronad McDonald House until 24 hours before Faith's first appointment, when they will put us on their wait list and then it's just a matter of how many other families are there, for how long and how many other families are on the waiting list ahead of us. The Homestead Suites is a nice alternative for a bit more money, but it is 20 minutes away from the hospital and it would just be easier to go back and forth more frequently if we were next door. I will try to post pretty frequently during the whole trip including some fun things we will try to get in ahead of time, like the zoo, aquarium and maybe a Cincinnati Reds game, as well as some before, during and after pictures.
Friday the hospital called to tell us Faith needs to come in for a blood draw before the surgery so that they can type her blood and have it on hand during the surgery. I didn't like hearing that she could lose enough blood during the surgery that she would need a transfusion. Ugh. Faith wasn't happy to hear about it either. In fact, she hasn't ever had to give blood for tests since she was a baby or under anesthesia, so I'm afraid this will be really hard for her.
We also found out a couple days ago that another little girl from Colorado (Chloe) will be having the same exact surgery the day after Faith with Dr. Gordon as well. We have met them a couple of times, but haven't spent much time together as they live about 1.5 hours north of us in Fort Collins. I'm guessing we will end up seeing them a lot more in the hospital!
I'm starting my new job this week - heading to Philadelphia in the morning and coming home on Thursday night. Anthony finishes 2nd grade on Wednesday this week and then Faith graduates from Kindergarten next Thursday, May 31st. Hopefully Fred will get a couple good pictures of Anthony's end of the year party while I'm gone. It's a bummer to have to be out of town for his last week of school, but at least it's not a year when he's having a graduattion and thankfully I will be home for Faith's.
New pictures to come soon!
Robin
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
Moving Ahead with the Jaw Surgery
Well, here we go. We have decided to go ahead with Faith's jaw surgery scheduled for June 7th. I told my new boss about it to see whether it would be okay or if it might be better if I postponed it, and his response was to keep it as planned, everything else could wait. Nice response; I think I found yet another great person to work for! Really, over all my years of working, I have had some really great bosses who were good at both inspring hard work and being very human. I'm very grateful.
We went ahead today and bought our airline tickets, on Southwest of course! We will be arriving on Monday, June 4th, into Indianapolis at 6:45pm and will then drive to our hotel in Cincinnati, about a 2-2.5 hour drive, so it will be pretty late by the time we get settled in. Fred and I thought it would be good to be there a couple days early so that we could do a few fun things with Faith before her big surgery on Thursday.
We have started preparing Faith for the surgery, talking about the details a little bit, that they will be taking bone from her back to put into her jaw. So far her questions have been, will they give her the sleepy gas and will the bone in her shoulder grow back. Those are some pretty good questions! I also told her they may need to wire her mouth shut to which she responded by feeling how her teeth have a big gap in front and saying she would still be able to get a straw in there, which may or may not be true, since her lower jaw will probably be moved forward a lot.
I was having such a hard time dealing with this surgery being much more involved than a regular jaw distraction, but after talking with lots of people and especially just spending a lot of time talking with Fred about it, we just feel like this is the best thing to do right now. We realize it's going to be pretty hectic around here with me starting a new job just 2 weeks before this surgery, but in a way that is good, because the job wont have become crazy yet.
Just wanted to let everyone know we are going ahead. I plan to be posting regularly on the blog while we are there, and we really enjoy everyone's support and comments.
More soon,
Robin
We went ahead today and bought our airline tickets, on Southwest of course! We will be arriving on Monday, June 4th, into Indianapolis at 6:45pm and will then drive to our hotel in Cincinnati, about a 2-2.5 hour drive, so it will be pretty late by the time we get settled in. Fred and I thought it would be good to be there a couple days early so that we could do a few fun things with Faith before her big surgery on Thursday.
We have started preparing Faith for the surgery, talking about the details a little bit, that they will be taking bone from her back to put into her jaw. So far her questions have been, will they give her the sleepy gas and will the bone in her shoulder grow back. Those are some pretty good questions! I also told her they may need to wire her mouth shut to which she responded by feeling how her teeth have a big gap in front and saying she would still be able to get a straw in there, which may or may not be true, since her lower jaw will probably be moved forward a lot.
I was having such a hard time dealing with this surgery being much more involved than a regular jaw distraction, but after talking with lots of people and especially just spending a lot of time talking with Fred about it, we just feel like this is the best thing to do right now. We realize it's going to be pretty hectic around here with me starting a new job just 2 weeks before this surgery, but in a way that is good, because the job wont have become crazy yet.
Just wanted to let everyone know we are going ahead. I plan to be posting regularly on the blog while we are there, and we really enjoy everyone's support and comments.
More soon,
Robin
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Quick Update on the Job Front (I HAVE ONE!!)
Just wanted to send out a quick update to let you all know that I was offered a really great contract job today with Comcast as an Operations Manager/Technical PM for their latest IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) product which they are hoping to start deploying this year.
This is a great job for me as it combines my technical skills in the cable industry as well as my software development management skills (as a ScrumMaster in case you've heard me talk about that before!), plus the job is 2 miles from our house, plus it's a great hourly rate, plus there's a good chance it could transition into an employee position in the future. I'm thinking it will be a contract position up to a year, but I'll just have to wait and see how that plays out.
So, thank you all for the prayers and good thoughts!! This week has been a crazy week with so much job activity that I felt pretty sure something would happen soon, but I was very surprised by how fast this happened! I also ended up getting a verbal offer from the company in Boulder that I had been through 3 rounds of interviewing, but their offer was significantly lower than what I was making in my last job and what this new contract opportunity will pay. So, that in combination with the fact that we would really have to look into moving to Boulder (its almost 100 miles round trip from our house to that office), it wasn't a tough decision.
I'm supposed to start a week from Monday, May 14th, so now I get to take a week to just relax, destress and maybe get some of my house projects done! I've also mentioned Faith's surgery to the hiring manager in an email to see whether it will be okay for me to take two weeks off so soon, or if it would be best to try to reschedule the surgery. I need to be flexible and I think we can manage to postpone Faith's surgery to either later this summer or even longer if we need to.
Best to everyone,
Robin
This is a great job for me as it combines my technical skills in the cable industry as well as my software development management skills (as a ScrumMaster in case you've heard me talk about that before!), plus the job is 2 miles from our house, plus it's a great hourly rate, plus there's a good chance it could transition into an employee position in the future. I'm thinking it will be a contract position up to a year, but I'll just have to wait and see how that plays out.
So, thank you all for the prayers and good thoughts!! This week has been a crazy week with so much job activity that I felt pretty sure something would happen soon, but I was very surprised by how fast this happened! I also ended up getting a verbal offer from the company in Boulder that I had been through 3 rounds of interviewing, but their offer was significantly lower than what I was making in my last job and what this new contract opportunity will pay. So, that in combination with the fact that we would really have to look into moving to Boulder (its almost 100 miles round trip from our house to that office), it wasn't a tough decision.
I'm supposed to start a week from Monday, May 14th, so now I get to take a week to just relax, destress and maybe get some of my house projects done! I've also mentioned Faith's surgery to the hiring manager in an email to see whether it will be okay for me to take two weeks off so soon, or if it would be best to try to reschedule the surgery. I need to be flexible and I think we can manage to postpone Faith's surgery to either later this summer or even longer if we need to.
Best to everyone,
Robin
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