I called off the surgery...for now....

Arley did NOT have her surgery the other day. I called it off, at least for now. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first being when we arrived at 12:15 for her pre-op appointment we were told that they were running an hour behind schedule. Okay, no big deal these kinds of things happen all of the time.

So it was quite a while before she was taken down to the OR to talk to the anesthesiologist. While there, we were now pushed back another hour behind. Then it turned into another hour and then another, by then it was looking like her 1:40 surgery time was going to be pushed back to 4pm.

I am NOT okay with that. Why? Because my child was NPOd (no food) past midnight, then no drink past 9:40am. Since Arley went to bed at 8 she missed her midnight cut off for food. (Shes a late night eater ever since being diagnosed with Cancer) and didn't wake up until 10:30am so she slept through and missed both her cut off for food/drink periods and it was coming up on 24 hours since she had anything in her system.

You can't do something like that to a two year old child, especially when they are now over tired (because she hasn't napped) and crying begging for something to eat and drink. At some point medical professionals should make a judgement call and realize enough is enough lets try to reschedule this before the parent themselves call it off.

It sucks when you're an adult and can't eat/drink for a procedure can you imagine what its like for a toddler? Seriously. A one hour behind schedule time I'm fine with, but when it turns into a three hour ordeal because of complications from the previous surgery a line needs to be drawn to prevent hunger and tiredness meltdowns.

Now don't get me wrong, I DO realize that complications can and do happen in the medical field and probably more often than anyone will admit to so I completely understand and am tolerable to that, however my two year old child is not and doesn't understand why she's being prepped for something and nothing is happening, so needless to say I called it off because I wasn't going to listen to them keep telling me "anytime now" and have my daughter upset and crying because she doesn't understand what's going on.

Anyway, yesterday we had to go to clinic for blood counts and I spoke to her doctor and we have decided to try to reschedule for an early morning surgery in between her first visit to Boston next week and our move towards the end of the month. That gives them a nine day time frame to work Arley into their schedule. 

I would be a lot more comfortable with this as opposed to an afternoon schedule because unless an emergency comes into the OR prior to her needing surgery, it should go off without a hitch. So for now we prepare for our trip to Boston and will focus all our energy on that and push our anxiety of a pending surgery off for another couple weeks. So until then friends, thank you for all of the love and support you have shown us, but most importantly to Arley.