We finally told him…

We’ve been debating for a long time just when, and how, to tell Elijah about his surgery. As with many things, Julia and I had some very different ideas to start out with. She was leaning towards telling him earlier, and I was thinking that we should spring it on him the day of. I thought treating it like a broken leg or something unexpected might be the best route. Great surprise, right?

I wish we could say that with all of the time we’ve had to think about this and prepare for this that we had a full plan and strategy figured out and were completely prepared for months beforehand. But, that just wasn’t the case. We actually were piecing this together over the last week or so, and though it wasn’t really rushed, it was somewhat thrown together at the last minute.

There were a couple reasons for this. First off, though we’ve known the surgery was coming up, we’ve kind of tried to put it out of our minds as much as possible. Neither of us wanted to dwell on thinking about it and cause ourselves to become overly worried or anxious. So, it was easier to just let it go for a while without doing a whole lot to prepare. (That’s not to say that we didn’t think about it or prepare, but we tried to focus more on the providing-fun and planning logistics types of things.) The other part of it was that we were really expecting a bit more guidance from PCH for this. I mean, they are a children’s hospital, and they’ve known just as long that he was going to have this surgery. So, in our “assumptions” we just figured that they would eventually provide us some resources to help us approach this topic with Elijah.

But, they didn’t. And only a couple weeks away, we didn’t have a very good plan of how to tell him. So, I started doing some research. I found a coloring book from the Cleveland Clinic that helps explain what’s going to happen on the day of the surgery, some book lists from various hospitals, and some youtube videos that also discuss what will happen, in kid-friendly show and tell style. On a side note, a couple of the resources I found, were actually from PCH, but I just happened to find them on my own. Kind of backwards, right?

Anyway, we looked through/watched the different resources we had found and decided upon a plan and a day.

That day was yesterday.

So, how did it go?

Praise the Lord it went about as good as we could have possibly hoped for! We started with the coloring book (though we took out the page that talked about him being able to walk to the car after leaving the hospital). It was a bit interactive, so it helped us talk through some things with him, and gave him an introduction to the surgery. Then, we watched a video produced by PCH showing what will happen on the day of the surgery. This was good because he’s been to the hospital a lot and things looked familiar to him. We finished with a cute video about the 10 things you should know about having surgery. Of course, it’s meant for kids, so number 1 was getting your treat after surgery. We had a bit of a discussion about what treat he would get. Focus on the positive!

Julia and I tried to make it seem as fun and special as possible, while still trying to give him a *somewhat realistic explanation of what it will entail. We basically told him that we’ve figure out his bones don’t work the way they’re supposed to, and that we’ve decided along with the doctors, that the best thing to do to help his legs is to have surgery. But, we emphasized, he won’t be able to walk for a while afterwards and mommy and daddy will have to either carry him or push him in a wheelchair anytime he needs to go somewhere. We told him we’d try to make this whole adventure as special and fun as possible. He’d get lots of gifts, from lots of people, and we have a lot of surprises for him along the way.

This is where it gets a bit funny.

The one thing Elijah was most excited about was getting his very own wheelchair! Here are some highlights of things he told us:

• He’s a bit worried that when he goes to Kevin’s house (his friend across the street), that he’ll need a bit of help getting up the stairs… so Kevin should be able to help pull him up. We suggested maybe Kevin just come over here instead!
• He wishes his GG (great grandma – on Julia’s side) was still alive so that she could see him in a wheelchair. She had her own, so I told him they could’ve had a race, but he told me probably not because that would be dangerous.
• He told me that wherever he goes, he’ll already have a chair to sit in!
• Going to school in his wheelchair was going to be great! (Though this gave us a chance to talk to him about homeschooling this next year, which he also took quite well.)

These made us smile, and we were happy that he was excited about his wheelchair. He’s going to be spending a lot of time in that thing, so I doubt he’ll love it as much by the time all this is over. Still, he’s excited, and not afraid. And you can tell that he’s actually thinking through how it will all work. He told us that he wouldn’t be able to go swimming for a while, and when we told him he’d need to sit on a chair in the shower, he told us that his sister shouldn’t come in with him because she might hit his ouchies, knock him over, or pull him out of his chair… all things which are actually quite likely to happen!

There was one thing he was a bit worried about, though, and that’s the sleeping gas. At first, he kept telling us that he didn’t want to go to sleep because it makes you forget things… you know, like when you have a great idea right before you fall asleep and then can’t remember it the next morning? We told him we could write down any ideas he had before they put him to sleep, but he still seemed a bit worried about it. He’s had nitrous at the dentist, so breathing in gas through a mask isn’t a new thing for him. Still, those only made him feel a bit funny, they didn’t put him to sleep.

But really, if that’s the only thing he’s worried about, and that’s as bad as it gets, we’ll take that any day!

Now, it’s obvious that he doesn’t full understand the full ramifications of this surgery, but we don’t think he needs to. We’re actually grateful that he doesn’t. He understands enough that there shouldn’t be any huge surprises.

But we’re focused on the positives. We can’t show him that we’re worried or anxious, and we need to talk about all of the good things that will come about because of this. That’s a bit hard, but seeing him be worried would be even harder. So, we’re sucking it up and putting on our smiles, and talking in high pitched exclamations, and making sure that he feels our own excitement for all of the great things that will happen.

We’ll see how that goes over the next week until his surgery, but for now, we really couldn’t be any happier.