Bailey's Surgery - Part I - Almost time...

I wrote several posts for Bailey's website about surgery day. But since not everyone follows along there, and I print these blogs in book format at the end of each year...I thought I should post something here as well. If you are rotationplasty-ied out, please just disregard.

The period of time leading up to Bailey's surgery was extremely difficult emotionally. For a number of weeks, we could put it out of our minds and focus purely on chemo, the end of school and "normal" life. But since the national Osteosarcoma protocol indicates that surgery happens at ten weeks, there really isn't a tremendous about of time allotted to just ignore it. I wrote at length about the options and how we had made our decision and had peace about the decision. But then the calendar sneaks quickly by and suddenly you go from two months until surgery to two weeks...and panic and anxiety reared their ugly heads in full force once again. Even though we had clarity in our choice, the reality was that we were taking out our daughter's knee and part of her femur and replacing it with the bottom portion her leg facing backwards! It was permanent and life-changing, and as the days crept closer, the fear was crippling. We had trouble enjoying anything because we knew the loss was coming and underneath any little smidgen of happiness...we were trembling.

Finally, we were down to one week. I found myself wandering around the house thinking, "Well, this will be the last time we'll do this with two normal legs or this is the end of Bailey doing that, etc." Not healthy and quite morbid. Since Bailey was feeling well, we made the decision to go to the Amelia Island for a few days on the way to her surgery. As we walked out of the house to head to our trip, Bailey and I were both struggling. We knew that this was it...the next time she crossed the threshold, life would look very different...forever. The house was dark and quite as we locked up for a few weeks away...and both of us had much needed meltdowns. My heart was so heavy and she was so afraid. But we managed to pull it together and the trip was one of the best ideas we've had. It forced us to say our good-byes to home and get that over with and the change of scenery was a wonderful distraction. Of course it wasn't a typical relaxing vacation...but we still thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the family time was much needed. Plus, Bailey was able to play and swim on her two "healthy" legs for one last time, which made all of us so very happy. 

On Sunday afternoon, after three wonderful days, we left beautiful Amelia Island to head to Gainesville, FL...for the surgery that would change everything...