Oh Goody.

We met with the stomach surgeon today. His prognosis was what we expected-surgery again. *Big Sigh* We believe that after the initial surgery which was "text-book", she inadvertently stretched the stitches and loosened the Nissen. In her defense she didn't do anything wrong, it's just that roughly 5 days after the surgery she came down with a stomach bug. She just hadn't had enough time to recover before the bug was causing her to dry heave violently and have massive amounts of painful gas which put undue stress on the Nissen causing it to loosen. So rather than waste time with another upper GI scope and Barium swallow which won't show if the Nissen has just loosened, he indicated that going straight to surgery was his preference. We agreed that more procedures leading to the same outcome is counter productive and just scheduled surgery for September 14th. The good news is that we met our insurance deductible for the year with the first surgery so this one should be free! Oh Goody. In related-ish news, Caitie is all set to start kindergarten on Sept. 8th. She'll be there on the 8'th, 10'th, and 11'th and then out for two weeks for surgery and recovery. We met her teacher today also, Mrs. Lewis, and we're very pleased with her classroom placement. Mrs. Lewis appears to have a lot of experience and is big on parent teacher communication. She's on the technology committee and stated that she would consider a Facebook /Twitter Page as another means of broadcasting information about upcoming events for the school. Caitlin's class is in the "Squirrel Porch" and she will have exactly 19 other classmates in her room, although there are around 100-120 kindergartners this year. I should explain that the porches are really like a large foyer or a small 'living room' with doors leading into the individual classrooms. The porch is divided with child size furniture into various areas of activity as well. One area is the "kitchen/home living" another is for "Art/Writing/fine motor skills" and another for "science/discovery". I'm really impressed by both the school's use of resources and by the opportunity these porches offer for students in the same grade level to develop relationships with each other. If you consider that each class has a maximum of 20 kids and there are 5-6 K's rooms, that's a lot of kids to go to school with but not know very well. So I really like the idea that the kids will be able to meet on the porch and also at lunch. That way next year they're not totally overwhelmed when none of the kids who were in their K's class are in their 1'st grade class. It's also helpful for the students to find their classrooms because when you enter the area in front of the rooms there is a big picture of a squirrel directly above the door that leads into the "porch". Caitie is excited about starting school (and even had an opportunity to meet some of the other students from her class today) but, as is expected, she's not excited about a do-over on the surgery. On the upside she and we know what to expect this time and she even told us tonight that she wanted to start eating 'mushy' food a few days before the surgery so that she was used to it by the time she doesn't have a choice any more and also so that she can decide which mushy foods she likes and which one's aren't going to make the cut. I am always so proud of her and how brave she is. I don't think that at 5 years old I would have been as philosophical or as pragmatic as she is regarding some of the issues she's been dealing with lately. Ryan and I are very lucky parents to have such a beautiful, caring, and "enlightened" child. I would add compassionate but she doesn't agree with that one. My mom has always asked Caitlin if she's the 'enlightened one' and the "compassionate one" to which Caitie responds yes to the first but no to the second. I think she doesn't like the way the word compassionate sounds because she doesn't even know what either one means. So here we are still truckin' along in this beautiful crazy place we call life, starting kindergarten and getting ready for surgery number 3. Oh goody.