ready for surgery

Shawn came back into town yesterday afternoon, landing just after the worst of the thunderstorm passed by. (His plane actually arrived early but was then had to back up and wait while Midway's runways were closed for about a half hour. Our drive to Midway to pick him up was interesting - very heavy rain and lots of flooding on the sides of the road. At one point we were splashed with enough water that we couldn't see at all for a few seconds. But he landed, we picked him up, and he's now here in Chicago.

Today we were at U of C at 8:00 am for a chest x-ray; slight confusion over where to go and when we got to the right place another confusion over the order. All was straightened out quickly though, and everyone was very helpful and nice. Shawn liked the x-ray itself, over in a second rather than the hour and a half scans he's had recently!

After the x-ray, up to see the surgeon who talked more about what to expect. The surgery will take place sometime around 10am, we need to be at the hospital at 7:30. Surgery itself should take about 2 hours. We'll have the results from the biopsy of the thymus about a week later.

There are some private rooms and some 2-patient rooms, we won't know which he gets till he's ready for a room. (We can request a private room for $139 more a night, minimum fee of two nights. But even then it's not certain whether we'd get one. I think we'll take the luck of the draw and hope for the best.)

After the surgeon, we went to see the anesthesiologist. Shawn will most likely have an epidural to help manage pain post-surgery. They also talked about having an arterial line in during the surgery to continuously monitor blood pressure. Spent a lot of time going through his medical history, drugs he's on, etc. Then they took blood (Shawn gave a high rating to the nurse taking blood; didn't hurt and didn't leave a bruise!). Finally we were on our way. All in all, we were at U of C from 8-12.

We had lunch at Medici (Shawn and I both had calzone, very garlicky and very good! Dave had a burger). Shawn fell asleep in the car on the way home. We stopped to pick up a prescription at CVS and then Shawn went to meet a friend for coffee at Starbuck, which is where he is right now.

He goes back to school tomorrow. On Monday he's going to drop all but one of his classes and we'll go on COBRA since he'll no longer be a full-time student. But it may possibly only be for a few months. At the end of this year, a law called Michele's Law will go into effect. This law was first passed in New Hampshire in 2006; in October of 2008 it became a national law. The law prohibits insurance companies from dropping students from their parent's insurance policies for lack of full-time student status due to medical issues. My company is actually considering instituting the law in June. If that goes through, we'll only be on COBRA for two months - April and May. That will be awesome if it happens, but even without it he may be able to qualify for full-time student status again in June anyway; if all goes well he's hoping to take classes this summer.

He flies back into Midway on Wednesday afternoon; hopefully not in the middle of a rainstorm or a snowstorm. At the moment the weather forecast is for temperatures in the 40s and no precipitation, so all is looking good.

Less than a week before the surgery. One huge step in Shawn's journey...