Great news, good news, and bad news

We’re back home in Luang Prabang after our week in Krabi and our whirlwind day in the hospital during the return trip. It’s been bittersweet unpacking and settling back in. “Sweet” because it’s always nice to come home and unpack and settle into a familiar space. “Bitter” because this won’t be home for very much longer … not even as long as we’d thought it would be, because times and plans are a-changing.

 There are several posts I’d like to write at the moment, but time is tight so philosophical musings about conflicting wants in life and that sort of stuff will just have to wait for a while. An update on what’s going on, however, I can manage. So let’s start with the good stuff first.

The great news is that everything checked out perfectly normal and healthy for the new baby … including his little penis.

Yes, we’re having another boy!!

I am much less shell-shocked by this news than I was last time. It’s funny how even repeat experiences can be so different. With Dominic’s twenty-week ultrasound I remember being mostly focused on finding out the gender of the baby. This time I was mostly focused on whether everything would check out OK. I didn’t have a strong preference either way regarding gender.

We’re thrilled and relieved about the “all clear” on the scan. Also, the baby waved at us while simultaneously doing a headstand on my bladder. We could count all five fingers curling and uncurling on that tiny hand. It was a trip.

Good news next. The surgeon who set Dominic’s leg last year examined him and seemed pleased. He said both legs looked to be of equal length and alignment looked normal. He did note that the area above the right knee was slightly larger than the area above the left knee, but they didn’t even take an X-ray this year. They will next year, but because Dominic is still growing and changing so rapidly they wouldn’t actively intervene at the moment even if slight differences in bone length and formation were starting to show up.

Now, the bad news. A disc in Mike’s spine has slipped badly in the same site that he was operated on six months ago, and is now protruding and pressing against nerves. The surgeon said that the slippage and the compression is even worse than it was last time, which makes sense given the level of nerve pain Mike’s been experiencing down the back of his legs during the last couple of weeks.

 We’re seeking a couple of additional professional opinions on the topic, but it seems pretty clear that a “let’s do physiotherapy and wait and see” approach won’t be of any use and that this is a situation that requires more surgery.

And on that front, there’s more bad news. This surgery won’t be a repeat microdisectomy, it will be a hemilaminectomy, which is a step up on the involvement scale. It means a bigger incision, a longer surgery, and the removal of some spine bone to get at the disc material that needs to be excised.

And … even more bad news. This surgery has long-term implications. Mike will have to be careful with lifting for the rest of his life (the doctor recommended no more than 15kg if he can help it, even after he’s recovered from surgery). This means no more helping friends move. It also means no more backpacking with heavy packs, riding mountain bikes on bumpy roads, running as a sport or spending long hours in badly-sprung vehicles bumping over dirt roads. In short, this will mean some painful lifestyle changes and annoying limitations.

What to do? Well, we have some complicating factors at play.

 For starters there is our super-mobile toddler who is demonstrating great determination when it comes to getting exactly what he wants, a great capacity for creativity when it comes to devising new and interesting ways to get into trouble, and a great disinclination to eat when there is anything more interesting to do. This is particularly problematic when we travel, since in the last week he has demonstrated that pushing elevator buttons, perusing every single item on a breakfast buffet, riding escalators, turning on taps, throwing glasses onto the floor to watch them shatter, banging on plate glass windows, running away from us as fast as he can manage, and just sitting in his chair screaming all count as more interesting activities than eating anything except ice cream. He will usually deign to sit still and open his mouth for ice cream. Usually.   

 Other complicating factors? Well, there is my rapidly increasing girth and my body’s inability to tolerate hot weather gracefully at the best of times. My mother’s recent surgery to replace a damaged thumb joint (which means that she can’t lift Dominic). The fact that we are supposed to move to a new city in two months, and that Mike is starting a new job in ten days …

 I think that about covers it.   

 I was planning on heading to Australia with Dominic and bub-in-utero mid-May anyway, but given that Mike will be completely out of commission for lifting Dominic for ten or more weeks following surgery, we’ve decided to move my departure date up to coincide with Mike’s surgery.

Because Mike’s surgery needs to happen as soon as reasonably possible this means that everything’s been fast-tracked.

 As of now, Mike is scheduled for surgery for Friday April 12^th. It’s likely that my Dad will meet us in Bangkok to help out, and sometime in the week following the surgery, we’ll leave for Australia. Mike will stay in Bangkok until about the 26th of April, and then return here to Laos alone to continue recovering and to oversee our house pack-up and move down to Vientiane.

 So we’ve got some busy times ahead during the next two and a half weeks pre-packing and organizing this house, saying goodbye to people here and this little town that’s been home for three years now, and preparing to go to Australia.

 Then we’ll have some quality bedside time in our favorite hospital – you know, when I’m not scampering around making sure Dominic doesn’t yank on any weights and pulleys that are attached to broken bones.

 And then Mike and I will have a looooooong time apart, but I don’t want to think about that just yet.

 One step at a time.