Monday, July 20

Well, today I was standing in the family room and noticed that a spider had built a web from the handlebars of our stationary bike to the curtains and back to the seat of said bike. Clearly we are not getting enough exercise. And this during Le Tour de France when we could have the TV on and pedal away like part of the peloton.

Jacob had his pre-surgery visits with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist. Nothing too exciting there, just the preview of what to expect, signing the consent forms and stuff of that nature.

The surgery is scheduled for Thursday. Don't know the specific time yet. They make up the surgery schedule on Wednesday, so we have to call in tomorrow afternoon and find out our time slot. I hope it's relatively early for Jake's sake; he's supposed to start fasting, no food or drink, at midnight.

The plan is that the surgeons will be repairing the shelf under the orbit of his left eye, going in under his eyelid, so there shouldn't be any visible scarring. They are also going to be cleaning up the scar on his forehead, so that it will be less noticeable. I think it'll still be adequate to excite all those women who are ostensibly turned on by that sort of thing.

Surgery is expected to take a couple hours, then a couple more hours in recovery and then he'll be admitted for the night. Barring any complications I expect he'll be discharged sometime on Friday. Of course, he'll be dealing with the post op pain and swelling and all, but hopefully the recovery will be a little bit easier on him this time.

We did take the opportunity while visiting the OMS to ask about getting copies of Jake's medical imaging. We were informed that all the really cool imaging (CT scan, MRI, etc.) is property of the medical center, not the surgeon's department. Consequently, we have to hit up the hospital staff for copies while we are in there.

We're really interested to get a look at all the hardware in that boy's head. I asked the surgeon about it and he said there's quite a bit of screws and plates and what not, but everything is relatively tiny, titanium, and supposedly not likely to set off the metal detectors at the TSA.

That is good news, because we may have to fly Jake home from college for some future follow-up visits, depending on how everything works itself out.