Sudden changes.

One emergency appointment per week. That’s about as much as the pediatric heart surgeons can cope with at Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital. And today they received no less than three little babies with life supporting Prostivas-drip at the 323 unit. It was a case of fitting them into the scheme as soon as possible and then Abbe fell out of the planning as soon as he’d been falling into it. Instead, he got a new appointment, on 23 October.

We bent over backwards to make this operation happen, given the short notice we had. Notify work, cancel various appointments with speech therapists etc, cancel a dinner we had invited people to and sort out baby-sitters for the big brother. Everything was ready to go.

The nurse who called from the 323 unit this morning felt ashamed. She apologized like mad for having messed things up so much for us and tried in every way to explain the situation. But, what the heck, of course I understand. Just two and a half years ago Abbe came in with Prostivas attached to a needle in his scalp, to keep him alive. I know exactly what the parents of those babies are going through right now. Abbe can wait.