Now on with the story...

Elliot came back from his local grandparents' today and is doing really super well with his brother. They seem to like each other quite a bit. Simon cranes his neck to see what his brother is up to.





Anywho...





Where did I leave my audience? We parked, there was a gigantic tree... oh right.





Around 8:30 am Andrea and I were escorted down to the operation prep room.





At this stage in the story I will need to bring you up to speed on a couple of things. First off, some of you might be unaware that Andrea has type 1 diabetes which means she was born with the genetic markers and was diagnosed as a wee child. She was five when her parents discovered she had diabetes.



**funny story**



I am good friends with a brilliant young man who soared through nursing school while I was at the University of Saskatchewan. Not long after discovering my girlfriend at the time, who would later become my Sweet marie, had juvenile diabetes he informed me that she would likely not live much past thirty years of age. Ummm, I thought to myself at the time, I don't think that's right. His girlfriend, who is now his Sweet marie, also attended nursing at the same time and diplomatically disagreed with him on the spot. It still warranted a followup phone call from me to my diabetic cookie.



**end of funny story**



Having diabetes means Andrea is in line for a number of cool studies as doctors, scientists and scientologists with shiny white teeth try to pin point what exactly causes individuals to become diabetic and how to avoid it and perhaps cure it.

Case in point, Andrea and I are part of a study right now which looks at the effects of cow's milk on a child who is identified as having the genetic markers for juvenile diabetes.

So they took a blood sample of our son after he popped out (see further into the story to come up with your own term for how Simon emerged). They will determine whether or not Simon is preconditioned for diabetes and then that will tell us whether or not we need to use their choice of formula (which will be unidentified by us, like Brand X) for supplementing our baby.

Anyhow, we had to hand over a pile of information and supplies to the nurse for this TRIGR study and our son wore the official TRIGR hat after popping out in case they whisked him away to the special care nursery and started to force feed him formula until he puked.



Also, with Andrea's diabetes, the baby will most likely pop out with a low blood sugar. Elliot and Simon were affected by the insulin injections Andrea would give herself. Suddenly in the real world, with out their mother's biology attached to their own, their systems get confused.

With Elliot, he was in the special care nursery from the hour he popped out to five days later as they force fed him formula, even feeding him through a tube in his nose at one point. This was to get his blood sugar up and keep it up while his mom waited for her milk to appear.

So we expected the same for Simon.



This story has gotten off track. Sorry.



Doctor Waterman enters the scene at 8:40ish. Always walking fast, cracking jokes like Alan Alda on MASH. He has black rimmed glasses and, when not in scrubs, wear's expensive suits while visiting patients. Youngish, boyish, brilliant. He was there for Elliot as well.

"Let's go." Was pretty much all he said and then he ran off. Andrea was wheeled away. I was shown to a stool, in the hallway, where I waited for about twenty minutes while they prepped Andrea.

I don't do well sitting in one place for a long time, quietly. I think of all the things I could be doing. The Globe and Mail crossword, reading a book, writing. Nevertheless there I was, sitting quietly on a stool as nurses and doctors passed by.

After what must have been a week and a half I was called up and followed a nurse into the OR. Oh wait, first I put on the mask. Then I walked into the OR. Doctor Waterman was there. Our favourite doctor, Jeff Dresselhuis was there. Many other people were there. It seemed like there were two people there whose entire purpose was to make sure I was okay.

"Is this wire in your way?" "Can I move this machine for you?" "Are you comfortable on this stool or can I bring in a winged armchair for you?" "Tortilla chip with artichoke dip?"

Tortilla Chip in hand, I talked to Andrea while, on the other side of the curtain we were fully aware that Doctors Hawkeye and Trapper were doing things that I'm not sure some of you would be comfortable reading about.

One of the coolest things about being in the room is listening to the conversations during the operation. It really is a lot more like MASH than ER. ER, Gray's Anatomy, House... these are all majorly serious dramas where all professionals are stoic. From where I was sitting, I could hear conversations on the challenges of the maternity ward at Royal Columbian hospital, Christmas plans and house renovations.

At about twenty minutes to ten, Doctor Waterman exclaimed (and I am entirely serious about this) "Holy Cow, look at the size of that baby's head!"

Then there was much pulling. I was invited to peek over the curtain and there I saw a baby's head popping (my term, feel free to come up with your own) out of my Sweet marie's tummy.



Later on I explained this to my brilliant, handsome and dashing brother Clayton who is currently experiencing life in China. There was this cool video game that we used to have for the Atari 2600 called Sneak and Peek. It was a hide and seek video game and the graphics were entirely two dimensional. To hide, you would move the character behind or under a couch, behind a door, under a rug, under the walkway leading to the front door. It looked funny because it was basically this two dimensional character, flat as a sheet of paper, sliding under a seemingly three dimensional item like a couch. It didn't look real.

Neither did seeing a large baby's head coming out of my Sweet marie's little tummy.



More later...