Update on Evan

Megan asked me, Beth, her sister-in-law, to post an update on Evan's surgery. It has been cancelled for today due to a baby needing an emergency surgery, and they needed Evan's bed. They are on their way back home, and everything has been rescheduled for this Friday. Thankfully, he will not need any pre-op stuff done. Keep them in your prayers this week. For all of you who see them give them all hugs from us NC Bowman's!

laundry days are the worst.

well, that is unless your laundry is as cute as mine is.

Laundry in our house, not so bad.

ready, set...

Just a heads up that all is set for next week's surgery. The insurance is approved, surgery scheduled, Evan's healthy, it all looks like we're a go.

A reminder of the nitty gritty...

Surgery is being done at Mott's Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, Tuesday, August 11. Derek and I will be heading to Ann Arbor Monday morning for a day of pre-op testing (again...), then a night at a local hotel with Evan, and back Tuesday for an 11(ish)am surgery.

Surgery will be done by his same surgeon from last year. They will be repairing or replacing his mitral valve - no decision until he gets in there to see it all. I'm hoping for a repair, but we know even with that he will more than likely still need it replaced at some point in his lifetime. Life changes a bit if/when they replace the valve - Evan will be on blood thinners and there's a whole world of changes that's involved with that. I don't know all of them yet, as I'm waiting to learn details when we need to know them. I do know he'll have restricted activities and have a lot of blood work done (I think, weekly).

Evan's stay is probably 7-10 days. Last surgery he was given the same timeline, did remarkable well and was still there for 10 days. So, I'm planning on up to a 2 week stay in case there are any setbacks. While Evan's in PICU, we'll both be staying at the Ronald McDonald house (once a room is available). When he's moved to the floor, I'll stay in room with him and Derek will hole up at Ronald McDonald.

This week, I'm trying to not let my nerves get the best of me, getting prepped for our trip and spending some extra quality time with Evan. I'm taking the end of the week off work for a little "down" time. Life's been pretty normal the last few weeks. Evan's getting to be such a big boy, my baby is all but gone...

I'll update again a bit closer with specific prayer requests for while we're in Ann Arbor. For now, please pray that Evan stays healthy (no bugs allowed going in for this) and for Derek and I's nerves. We're ready to get this over with and try to get back to our (semi-normal) life.

Full of mornings attempting to get ready with extra baggage...Sudden mood changes,

After a subpar review to the chef.

(Yes, he is spitting out his banana)

but all in all, fun times...

Happy Birthday Derek!

You're a wonderful husband to me, and daddy to Evan.


We Love You!

the longer the hair...

The
Better

The

Bedhead.

another waiting game...

Well, the insurance is working itself out. I shouldn't actually say that, the insurance is being worked out due to Derek and I spending a lot of time making phonecalls, getting all sorts of different answers as to what next steps should be, doing all of the suggested next steps and making more phone calls. But at this point, UofM called and said they have authorization for the first 4 days, which at least gets us through the surgery. We'll deal with money when we need to but for the time being I'm happy just to get the surgery done.

That said, we were able to reschedule the surgery, however Evan's surgeon is on vacation for much of July and would like to be there for all of his post op. So, his surgery now is not until August 11.

So, we wait, again. And I continue to wait for my computer to get fixed, hopefully in the next couple of days so I can actually be productive with work. And put up posts that include pics of our (not so little) Evan. I mean, really, we need to set some priorities here.

surgery update

Hi all. I wanted to give you the update on surgery. All went well with the pre-op appointments on Thursday. However, we received a phone call from the hospital on our way home. Our insurance told them that the hospital is out of network, and we don't have out of network coverage, s0 they would not cover the surgery. We had to cancel the surgery for the time being. Very frustrating.

Good news though moving forward, Derek's HR rep was on the phone with Cigna Thursday evening, and we have received word that they will call the hospital on Monday and that they will cover the surgery. Hopefully we can reschedule for later in the week. The other half of the problems stem from equipment availability at UofM. There's a machine called ECMO, basically if things didn't go well in surgery, this comes into play to work as a patients heart and lungs outside of the operating room. Due to high pneumonia occurrences stemming from the Swine Flu, a lot of these machines are being used. If one is not available, surgery doesn't happen. Not likely that we would need it, but still a safety net. At U0fM we learned that all of the surgeries on Monday were cancelled already due to this, except for Evans. If someone went on the last one Sunday, they would have still cancelled.

So, Monday we should have the insurance cleared up, then we hope the ECMO usage is down so that Evan will be able to get scheduled.

I'll keep updated as I can. However, I currently am without computer so may be slow with updates. This weekend we're enjoying family and friends, while celebrating the 4th of July and hope you're doing the same!