Mia Admitted to the Hospital

On April 13, I got an e-mail from Mia's doctor at the university hospital in Matsuyama. We had been waiting to hear about her heart surgery, and began to worry that we might have to get it done after the move back to America. I had sent an extremely polite Japanese e-mail to the doctor about five weeks earlier, but didn't hear back. Tired of waiting, I contacted Mia's doctor at the local hospital and asked him for his opinion. He promised to contact the other doctor and have him contact me. A couple days later, I got this response: "How does next week sound?"

Just five days later, on April 18th, we admitted Mia to the hospital for heart surgery.

The few days leading up to her hospital stay were jam-packed with stress. First, I had to notify the board of education and each of my schools that I wouldn't be coming in to work for the next few weeks. Having previously verified that I had a month's worth of paid time off saved up, I was surprised when my request was met with a bit of resistance. One person even asked me why I didn't just have my wife stay with Mia. My wife. My 34 weeks' pregnant, non-Japanese speaking wife. Not likely.

We figured we'd know about the surgery at least a month in advance, since we would need multiple visits in order to store enough of Mia's own blood in case she needed it during or after surgery. The doctors, however, felt that having blood drawn in and of itself was taxing for a toddler, so they opted to just bypass that step and use someone else's blood in the event of a transfusion.

(Edit: May 24) Bear with me as I jump around over the next few entries. I'll try to keep everything in chronological order, but I'm going off of sparse notes that I kept while in the hospital.

Case Study

In Japan, elementary school kids often have to the same backpack as all their classmates, but they get to bring their own pencil case. I've never owned a pencil case in my life, and actually had never even considered that such a thing existed. But exist they do, and some are pretty neat. Up above is a collage of the various pencil cases in one of my class. Click on the picture for a larger version.