It’s a cold and rainy morning again in West Lafayette, IN, but we’re heading out early to drop our precious baby girl off at an unfamiliar place for surgery. To say I was nervous is an understatement. My stomach was in knots … we were running a touch behind that morning and I kept saying over and over, “what if this isn’t the right thing to do? What if I made a mistake?” I was quickly becoming frantic when my husband sat me down on the couch and opened the Bible and started to read. Layla was sitting at our feet while we read together. The exact verse escapes me at this moment, but it put all my fears at ease – it was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. We prayed in the hotel room before we left for the hospital. We arrived a little behind schedule, said another prayer in the car before heading in. Amalia was at the door to meet us and Layla was whisked away – not before I reached out to her and she turned and I knelt on the floor to hug her and tell her everything would be okay.
We left the hospital and headed back to the hotel for coffee and breakfast – ugh … my stomach was in knots. We finished eating and headed back to the room where my husband worked and I basically fretted, cried and zoned out watching “Keeping up with the Kardashians for 4 hours. I kept looking at my phone – why was no one calling! It was now 10:30 am and we had to check out of the hotel at 11 am so we started to pack everything up again. We checked out of the hotel and headed over to the hospital. We sat in the parking lot for a few hours – we just couldn’t bear to sit inside. It had started to clear up outside so we decided to take a walk around the campus. We wondered around for awhile and took some silly pictures. It was 12:30 by that time when my phone rang – It was Dr. Ambrosis and Layla was out of surgery and she did great! She was still woozy so she would be ready to go by 2:30-3:00 pm. Okay … we sat in the car for a while longer and then decided to go driving around town. We stopped at this huge pet store to pick up some more food since we had run out while we were there. We bummed around in there for a bit and then headed back to the hospital. We finally went in and it wasn’t a half hour when I received a call that Layla was ready to go home early – I knew it! That girl had always been a springboard after surgery. We were taken into a waiting room and we could her a little “jingle bunny” come down the hall – you could always tell. The door opened and my sweet girl ran through the door! Oh how happy I was to see her.
We proceeded to go over our discharge papers and then we were given the chance to see one of her ultrasounds … I can still remember that picture. Her entire bladder looked like a tumor. They said there was a lot of disease there so they had no trouble getting a tumor sample. Not the exact news I wanted to hear, but at least they got what they needed. Now all we had to do was wait for 5-7 days to find out if the the tumor had the right number of Folate receptors to be considered for the clinical trial. We headed out, tired, but hopeful. All in all it was a good trip and I am happy we went. Layla was a happy girl too – she ate all her food before we headed for home and we had a smiley road trip puppy all the way home.
