Cracks

Twenty-four hours from now I’ll be lying awake in a hotel room, with alarms set on my travel clock, my phone, Ben’s phone, and a wake-up call scheduled as back-up.  Tomorrow we’ll find out exactly what time we’re supposed to be at the hospital, but it will likely be between 6 and 6:30 a.m., and I’m already stressed that we’ll oversleep.

I know we’re doing the right thing by having Norah’s thyroid removed.  It’s the only option for her – there isn’t anything else to try at this point.  But cracks are starting to form in my cool, confident, well-informed veneer.  Last week my friend Lana offered me a bribe of coffee and a hug if I would help her at school and I told her that hugs make me cry.  I don’t know why sympathy has that effect on me – I’m sure it’s rooted in my childhood somewhere. 

This morning the preschool nurse asked if she could hug me and – you guessed it – I cried.  I went from discussing the details of the surgery with a teacher (Norah had told her that she was going to have her neck cut open) to hugging to crying in less than 60 seconds.  The school social worker happened to be standing there and she used all of her anti-crying techniques to get me to the front door in one piece.

Then there was yesterday’s crack.  I was getting yelled at by a facility manager for something that wasn’t my fault, which NEVER happens, by the way.  When he asked why I had emailed him a response instead of calling him, I said, “I’m sorry…I called you twice but you didn’t answer, and I wasn’t in a position where you could call me back.  I have a really sick kid and I emailed my response from the doctor’s office.”  A tiny crack opened up, but talking about hardware for a while got me back in control. 

As the call was ending, he said, “So, what’s wrong with your kid anyway?”  Oy vey…couldn’t he just hang up and let me fall apart in peace?  NO!  I said in a teary Mini-Mouse voice, “I really don’t want to talk about it right now…”  I felt like such an unprofessional idiot but I just couldn’t discuss it with him at that moment.  I sent him an email immediately and he felt bad and I still felt like an unprofessional idiot but whatever.  We’re fine now.  And I bet he won’t yell at me again.

I’m not having cold feet or second thoughts or a premonition.  I’m REALLY looking forward to getting this over with and moving ahead.  I’ve read and read and read some more about the procedure, the surgeons, etc., etc., etc.  There’s just some underlying instinctual *thing* that makes it painful to think of putting my baby’s life in someone else’s hands, no matter how capable those hands are. 

It reminds me of the first time I brought each of my kids to day care.  Even though I wanted/needed to go back to work, and had spent 12+ weeks at home with each baby, I cried when I visited the day care provider and I cried for the first few mornings.  It feels just like that – knowing that she’ll be fine, but feeling that gut-level pain just the same.

Ben has been grumpy as hell, which means that he’s worried too.  He doesn’t want to hear about it, talk about it, or think about it.  He said tonight that he wished he could go to sleep now and wake up on Friday.  I do too.  I wish that I could at least take an anti-emotion pill so I could make it through the anesthesia without crying and freaking Norah out.  I’m supposed to be the strong one, and here I am falling apart while she’s not concerned at all.  She told the acupuncturist tonight, “I’m going to Yale!  And Bugaboo!” 

I don’t really blame Ben for shutting down.  In Morocco, surgery is nowhere near as safe as it is here.  The treatment for Norah’s condition in Morocco is to get some special dirt from a sacred location, and rub it on the goiter.  I’m sure they have big-city hospitals that would use modern treatments, but many Moroccans don’t have access to them.  Just one more reason to hope and pray that everything turns out great.  If it doesn’t, Ben will be saying, “This is all your fault!  I told you we should have used the special Moroccan dirt!!”

In 36 hours Norah will be out of the OR and awake, and I will crack.

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