Thursday, March 20, 2008

Surgery is in the future: Needing comfort and advice


We visited the doctor today and got our fears confirmed. She did tear her ACL. "In two pieces" was the way Doctor Thornburg put it. Her growth plates are just about closed, so they need to confer and decide if they are closed enough to go ahead with the surgery. If not, then she'll have to wait a while to let them close up more. I don't know which will be better, to have the surgery right away and deal with missing school or to wait until school is out and do it. Her basketball season starts the first week of school, at least practice does, so she'd miss less basketball if we did it sooner than later, but is that a good reason to rush the surgery?


Recovery will take 4 to 6 months. I sure hope Emily can handle this. She is a wonderful girl, but being the baby in a family with two older brothers has, I admit, spoiled her. She's used to being coddled and she doesn't handle pain very well. She won't even take a pill to make herself feel better.


Last night, she was crying uncontrollably, so I stayed up with her and helped talk her through everything. I was finally able to go to bed after midnight. Poor thing, she says her entire life is falling apart. To a seventh grader, I am sure it is. She is only 12 years old, . . . I know. I really do know that this is nothing compared to what others have to deal with. I am humbled every time I think about what my fellow teacher, Sheila Wigger, has had to endure with her youngest daughter, only two, having kidney cancer last year. All the surgeries they endured were life-threatening. Emily will be okay. She will walk and run and jump and play. We don't have to fear whether she'll survive this ordeal. We have so much to be thankful for. Yet . . . It's funny how knowing this and being completely convinced of it doesn't do much to take the edge off my emotions.


If you have any suggestions as to when we should do the surgery, now or once school is out (if we have that option), please post a comment. I'll be checking. :)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I believe everything happens for a reason, that there is a plan for our lives that is at times perhaps not the plan we thought we wanted, but that someone else knows better than we do.