GET YOUR MOTOR RUNNING!

at 4pm today, we finally secured surgery for parker.


parker's PICC replacement surgery is set for this wednesday morning at 11am in seattle - for the blow out price of $740. this is by far the cheapest price - the alternative was at seattle children's hospital and the "best" price we could secure from there was $3000. so we feel like we've gotten a slamming deal.... as odd as that sounds.


thank you everyone for your prayers and support. please pray for the surgery to be straight forward and go smoothly...and for our van not to break down on the drive down. can you imagine? uh, yeah, actually i can...in fact, that has happened to us before. one of our doctors, dr d, has an office in seattle. the one time we tried to do a "all in one day travel plus doc appointments round trip" - our van broke down about 30 minutes into our drive and we ended up having to rent a vehicle in order to get to our appointments...and we ended up being 90 minutes late. the stress. the scrambling. the being stuck by the side of the road thing. the last minute car rental. well, it was all very costly.


so, for this reason, parker and graham will be leaving for seattle tomorrow. they will spend the night in a hotel very close to the surgery clinic (if we had a camper, i'd push for them to camp out in the parking lot).


we're very relieved we've got the surgery set...we are very pleased with the clinic and the staff. i spoke with the IV nurse who will be assisting the surgeon and she was awesome and so super accommodating. i had a lot of questions. i expressed my concerns about the use of general anesthetic for parker. that we felt it really wasn't necessary etc. she talked with the surgeon and he was totally on board with doing it without general anesthetic.  


i also wanted a very specific type of PICC. no, i'm not a PICC snob (ha ha) nor am i "picky" but there is a difference between the type of PICC used in the states versus canada. one is not better than the other. there are pros and cons to both. i prefer that parker's new PICC be a 3 french lumen "groshong" as opposed to a "solo". they generally use the solo in the USA. after discussing this all with the nurse, she spoke with the surgeon, and he agreed to use a groshong PICC as parker's replacement. i believe this is the right choice for parker...i'm so relieved about that all...albeit, i don't think i'll actually breathe easy or heave a sigh of relief until all is said and done. hopefully, i can start fully breathing again by wednesday afternoon.


get your motor running
and
head out on the highway
NOT looking for adventure
just a new PICC for our little sparky