The Daddy Diary

Much like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football, surgery has been called off at the last minute twice. We’ve run up to the ball only to have it pulled away as we fell flat on our backs. Maybe that’s how I threw my back out.

But game day is finally here. Michelle and I thought that the stopping and starting would prepare us and make this day easier. Nope. Not. Even. Close.

Anytime you buy a lottery ticket, you can see your chances. When you look at the odds, there is always a “one in” listed before a number that contains the same number of digits as my current Body Mass Index after eating nothing but Snickers bars and crappy pizza slices from the hospital cafeteria for three weeks. And you think that “one” can be you even after you run the numbers and realize that your odds of winning are roughly the same as being struck by lightning twice during a shark attack while watching the SMU football team win the National Championship.

If you find that you are routinely getting too much sleep, having a child in the cardiac ICU will take care of that. You get the joyous experience of waking up 13 times a night mentally playing out every possible scenario even though you have no control over any of them. It’s healthy from a psychological, physical, and emotional standpoint.

I recently read “Father Elijah” by Michael O’Brien. It’s a novel about a group of Catholic Priests and Cardinals at the time of Apocalypse. Despite the fascinating plotline, characters, and backstory, my main take away was: these guys prayed all the time. I mean about everything. Any decision, action, or meeting, they would pray in advance.

I had to face the bane of my existence last night – reassembling and reinstalling the child car seat. This is a common exercise when you have a toddler that gets carsick on any voyage over 30 minutes. (Thank you Amy Evans and Scott Hunt for both living over half an hour away from me.)

You take it on faith
You take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Hearing that your baby girl has a severe heart defect is an emotional punch to the gut. Hearing that she has four heart defects is like taking a line drive to the groin on “I forgot to wear my cup” day. But telling me that we have to wait 3-5 more days for the surgery? Well, that’s just mean.

A positive correlation exists between the number of medical staff in your daughter’s hospital room and your resting heart rate. When I walked in the first thing in the morning and saw six people in scrubs hovering around my daughter, my resting heart rate hit 3312. So, roughly 552 bps (beats per scrub). That’s a rough estimate because the heart rate monitor on the Apple Watch Series IV only has three digits. It wasn’t designed for parents with children in the cardiac ICU. Maybe the Series V will have four digits. Can someone connected to Tim Cook please forward this post to him?

Don’t you love how some things just belong together? Chocolate and Peanut butter. Hamburgers and French fries. A glass of red wine and another glass of red wine. One Direction concerts and boredom. Jerry Jones and unconventional grammar.