Sorry for the stretch in between updates.  Where to start?  First, Trey is at about 75% healthy and he’s sleeping in the other room right now!  I brought him back to the hotel from the hospital today, with lots of meds and orders but he’s here.  He’s exhausted – hospitals are no place to rest or recouperate. 

 

He had a rough few days.  He narrowly avoided a blood transfusion, had partial collapses in both lungs and spent the entire weekend zonked out on morphine.  On Monday, when he was awake for more than 10 minutes, I was doing my silliest everything to get a little smile.  He stared at me like I escaped from “One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest”and then finally rolled over gave me his back!  Whatever, Trey…seriously, I was really sad that he was so miserable but that was pretty funny….a definitive “get the hell away from me statement” from a 3-year-old…gotta love it.

 

Despite all of that, they were prepared to discharge him on Monday because “surgically he’s fine”.  Even the nurses agreed that he wasn’t ready to go and told me to fight for him to stay. So after a very loud exchange with the attending physician, during which I used a few well-placed phrases like “is this how you treat all of the black families here?”, “My Dad’s a lawyer and his best friend’s a judge”, “I know the Pastor at Obama’s church”, “go get your boss’ boss”, “I might be tired but I’m not stupid.  I can see what’s going on here”…Somehow all of that caused the nonsense to stop and Trey stayed.  By the way, feel free to use those phrases in any situation that’s not going your way – at work, at any retail establishment, restaurants with poor service, in hospitals – it doesn’t even matter what race you are! 

 

Tuesday, when I came in, Trey had a HUGE smile on his face and was clearly on the mend. He let me hold him for the first time since the surgery so we watched about 6 hours of Discovery Channel, both equally riveted by “America’s Deadliest Catch” and did you know that baboons eat small animals like rabbits???  What the hell?  Anyway, when I came in this morning, he was good to go and so we went…

 

I will not bore you with the insurance craziness that has gone on over the last few days but I’ll share one thing that a doctor said to me when Trey was recommended discharged on Monday, “it’s so much cheaper for you if he goes home.  Do you know how much this hospital bill’s going to cost you? You can’t afford this.”  I just said “Do you know how expensive it’s going to be for you, your colleagues, Children’s Hospital, Blue Cross Blue Shield and everybody related to all of you if I sue because you prematurely discharged a baby on a vent that just had major surgery…so you could save me some money?”.  Cricket cricket.

 

I want you all to be the first to know that my next book will be called “Wow.  You Have To Work Really Hard to Be This Stupid:  The People In America’s Healthcare System”. 

 

So Trey’s back in the hospital on Monday for the second part of this procedure.  I expect him to come out on Tuesday.  In the meantime, I’m going to take him for a walk to meet some of the people here…it will remind him to brush his teeth at least 2x a day or he’ll lose them; always eat healthy so you don’t have to walk sideways through doors; he’ll learn that McDonald’s is not considered a nice, sit-down restaurant; learning how to read is not optional; and neither is learning how to speak.

 

Will check in!

 

Love,

Tami

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