Surgery II

A few weeks ago Zac had surgery to remove the extra finger and toe on his left hand and foot. He had a previous SURGERY for the same thing on his right side when he was 18 months old so we kind knew what to expect this time around. Below are some pictures of the bone structure on his left hand and foot.

I was a little worried about Zac's recovery this time around since he would be a older and therefore more "independently minded." Not to mention that the process would be much more invasive than last time. He was going to have to stay in the hospital overnight for monitoring and/or pain control if needed. Also, he'd have to keep casts on his hand and foot for 6 weeks instead of 1 in order to protect the incision while it healed. Yeah, not fun.

Here are some more pictures pre-surgery. Our camera is MIA so they are taken by my cheap but trusty Nokia.

It's early.

Watching "PB" (Translation: TV)

Happy Boy (With no clue what's coming.)

Thank goodness for Bear!

I really couldn't get enough of his bum hanging out of his gown.

Or this surgery cap. (Here he is showing the surgeon his hand.)

Since he had this procedure done at Children's Hospital [holla!] one of the parents gets to get dressed up to walk back to the operating room. And no, we don't get to stay. But I did get to hold Zac when they put him under so I was the last person he sees. Then when he is in triage after the surgery, I was the first person he saw when he woke up. {Except Zac woke up while getting wheeled to his room.}

The only time Zac seemed nervous at all was after I walked him into the O.R. I tried to show him all the cool monitors and the TV with our faces on it but he was not amused. Instead I lifted that big boy up and sat him on the operating table. As I hugged him, the anesthesiologist put the mask up to his face. Zac whined a little but I rubbed his back and told him he was okay. Alright, I also told him to take a deep breath a few times.

Let me tell you, it is kind of an eerie thing to hold your child as he pretty much goes lifeless. It took maybe a minute for him to relax and then his body went limp. And so soon after my post about death. We laid him down on the table and that was my cue to leave. I can remember several times in my life where I know in my head that I have something to be nervous or anxious about but those emotions never come to fruition. This was one of those times. I only felt at peace and maybe a little fortitude; manifestations to me that a prayer had been answered, that the Big Man upstairs was watching and was aware of my situation.

Zac laid around in his hospital bed the rest of the day but tried getting up to go pee a few times {despite having a pull-up on, yay!} He didn't complain of an pain at all until about 8:30pm that night. He had a little attitude with the nurses because he basically wouldn't acknowledge them whenever they walked in the room. He got yummy food {Mc Donalds as promised pre-surgery}. He was a little grumpy the next day when we brought him home. But after that he was fine as long as he had his meds. Man, I so wish I could give him that stuff all the time. That kid would be high on life.

So grateful to everyone at Children's Hopsital and for all the love, good thoughts and prayers sent our way. A big thank you to my in-laws who do so much for us. And a special thanks to my momma who came down for the weekend to be with us. She's a true angel.

Laughing with...

Funny because I think of this song at various times throughout the day and each time I do, I tell myself that I need to make a blog post about it. When I finally sit down to start, I see that I already had the title and the song pasted within the text. So I will take that as a sign from my subconscious to free the idea already.

I've been thinking a lot about why I think about God so much and religion for that matter. It seems obvious that if you grow up in a religion that permeates nearly every facet of your life, that it is bound to happen. I can't escape it. Even if I wanted to, it is my heritage, my tradition, my culture. But oftentimes I find that it proves difficult to reconcile the way you are taught to feel things at church and to think things at school. In my opinion, to discount either method, would in many ways be ignorant as both methods for experiencing life and the world around us have value.

So I work to find that happy medium. Personally, I do this not by trying to fit the world, and everything in it, into a religious context. In other words, when we learn something new or observe something in life, I try not to immediately squeeze it into my religious beliefs. If we did so, we would end up with an exclusionary process because not everything is going to fit. It leads to turning a blind eye to those things that are "cast out". It leads us to see things in terms of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. The problem with this is that the world, the place in which we live here and now, is not that way.

Instead, I do the opposite. As I've been trying to see how religion fits into the world, naturally I have a lot more questions. But I have also found that it allows me to see things as they are. For example, I've been trying not to look at the decision making process in terms of good choices and bad choices or right choices and wrong choices. Decisions are decisions. They produce reactions, effects, repercussions that we should be ready, able and willing to own, bear and deal with. {My apologies, I just read Boris ate a Thesaurus with Jadon the other day.}

OKay, now to this song. I heart Regina Spektor. Just listen to it...



There is another way of looking at this song aside from pointing out times when people either draw closer to God or curse God. To me, whether she knows it or not, Ms. Spektor could be taking a very Hegelian approach toward God in providing us with a synthesis of two opposing positions about God. The thesis (statement A) would be something like: God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. This would be based on things like a personal feeling about it or the miracle of life or the Grand Canyon, the creation of earth or some other majestic natural or heavenly body. The anti-thesis to that (statement B) would look something like: God is dead and non-existent because based on statement A, how could it be possible for God to exist "in a hospital or a war or when someone is starving or freezing or so very poor," basically in horrible conditions full of pain and suffering.

As for the synthesis? Perhaps it can be found at the end of the song: "No one's laughing at God, we're all laughing with God." Maybe she is trying to say that God exists within us or among us so that is why we would be "laughing with God." Or maybe she is trying to say that God is there if you believe in God and God is not there if you don't, as if it is something that exists for us in our minds.

Now to tie it to my previous paragraphs of rambling. What if she is just trying to say that God is simply God [whatever that means] which is different to each individual. What if we tried to think about God not in terms of what God is or isn't but to see God for what God is. Then we could probably all come to the conclusion that God is...

God.