Tuesday, January 31, 2012

This Too Shall Pass

It seems that as of late, I am continuously whispering this ancient proverb numerous times just to make it through the day. My common stressors range from everyday work struggles to trying to juggle too many things at one time to fighting with Ella every day to complete the most basic tasks.

Each day as issues arise I try to remain calm and tell myself, "This too shall pass." As a matter of fact the image to the right monopolizes the 27" of space on one of my work monitors.

Hopefully tomorrow is no different. Ella is scheduled for surgery to replace her tubes in her ears at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. In the grand scheme of things, the surgery is minor. It's definitely not like the 3 hour surgery at 4 months old where we anxiously awaited as our surgeon reconstructed our precious little girls face, or like the 4 hour palate repair at 10 months old-which resulted in a very long and painful recovery.

As a matter of fact, we have been through this surgery before and it was a breeze. It seemed we had barely sat down in the waiting room to drink our coffee and the ENT had called us back in to see our little lady.

So why am I so nervous? Probably because "we" really haven't been through this before. Ella has. Yes we wait and stress and pray, but we aren't really experiencing anything. She is.

I would give anything in the world to trade places with her. I just want to go through it first so I can honestly tell her what to expect. I hate blindly saying, "Honey - everything is going to be okay. It's not going to hurt." What the hell do I know? I have never even had stitches in my 29 years of life (childbirth doesn't count), let alone gone through 4 surgeries by the age of 3. I have never been under anesthesia and with the exception of childbirth, I have never been in the hospital. Nothing.

The one thing to ease my mind? Ella is the strongest person I know. Tomorrow she will go through surgery and she will bounce back quicker than we could have ever imagined. We will bring her home and she will go back to playing with her dolls, singing her songs and entertaining us as usual. Wishful thinking? Maybe. Even so, this too shall pass.

<----November 2010 - Ella playing right before we went into surgery the last time.