A New Month

So Sunday brings to us a new month, and in it, could be many big things.

First, Mia. After much waiting, it is likely we will find out sometime late next week or early the following week what kind of surgery Mia can have and when. We had initially been told it would be today, but alas, we found out last week it would be more than 3 weeks from the previous procedure. Oh well. I can't say I'm terribly surprised. Don't get me wrong, I want her home in our arms in our rocking chair as much as everyone else, but I think I have seen how the system works a thousand times over more than everyone else. Especially in academic medicine. Initially, one plan gets spit out - then, after whatever specialty team has a moment to get together and discuss a complicated case, like Mia's, they decide as a group when a better time would be. I imagine this is what happened; that and coordinating OR schedules between the surgery folks and the ENT folks. Either way, it's still aggravating, but there's no one to blame. At any rate, no one has been able to give us any indication as to whether her esophageal gap is too long for repair or not. There just hasn't been sufficient visualization of the lower part of the esophagus. We know the ends have "grown," but how far is not so obvious.

Otherwise, Mia is doing quite well. She hit the 6 pound mark the other night, and is probably a few ounces more than that today. By her due date, she will most certainly be of average birth weight. She's still on oxygen, and we're not sure why. Whoever is responsible for weaning babies off vents, be it docs, respiratory therapists, APNs, etc., didn't do a good job weaning the vent this last time after her procedure. And she has had trouble being without it since. There seems to be a possibility she will need home oxygen. It is hard to know for sure if the two are related. And while it's like it would be the end of the world, we're tired of dealing with things attached to her other than us. Her eye exams have also been fairly reassuring. One worries about retinal damage in premature babies, especially when they're on oxygen too long (but this is more related to being on the vent at high O2 levels and high pressure, which she hasn't had). While her retinas are premature as expected, there is no irreversible disease to be seen.

In other news, my "rank" list for my intern year was certified. Not that any of this matters, because it's a guaranteed spot for me anyway. It's tough to see all my classmates at their current level of stress. Now that their rank lists were due yesterday, they have to wait three weeks before the result of the match is known. Three weeks! There is no known reason why it should take that long. Everything is computerized, and Lord knows it couldn't more than a minute or two to run the list. And to top it off, it's not like they accept late rank lists. So where the hold up is, no one knows. And it's not like the NRMP will ever speak a peep of why they take three weeks to do it. My match was less than 1 week after the list was due. Of course, I had other things to worry about at the time, so I didn't really get too nervous about the whole thing.

I am also on the hunt - for houses and for day cares. With Rachel working, and I on a couple easy few-hour months at school, it is reasonably up to me to do all the leg work on these fronts. As a freshly starting doctor, I can qualify for pretty much whatever home loan amount I want. Granted, we don't need a $250K house, but we could be approved for that. I think $150K or less is fair. And with today's market, one can get a house listed at $175K for that amount. I have some good neighborhoods in mind - ones I need to drive Rachel around in. Better yet, these are hoods that are nice, big, clean, close to work, and supply potential buyers with tons of options. I'm overly excited about the process, but I know it will be cumbersome. I have done much reading about buying a first home. I plan to talk to a broker within the next week or two, get pre-approved doing whatever I need to, find a buyer's agent, and find a home. While a lot of this depends on Mia's condition on discharge, we should know some of these answers soon. And if things go optimally, the ground work will be done and we can hit it running, getting most everything taken care of before the baby comes home, except of course actually moving. As far as daycare - what a depressing search. I have only found about four out of several that I would put my baby in. Two of these are actually quite good. I would also like to take Rachel to see these places. At least their waiting lists are reasonable, not the six months or more I was warned they would be. I guess that long of a list typically applies more to church-associated day cares. Anyway, as I said before, at least the difficult parts of the searching will be done before Mia is home.

If you've made it this far, I thank you for paying attention. I don't blog just very often, and so when I do, I go quite long. Hold your remarks, honey : ). And Dr. G, if you ever read this, which you won't. Stay tuned as the next month brings much news.