Hopkins

I have to take my Dad up to Johns Hopkins today, to the main hospital, for a scan. It’s going to pretty much take up the whole day and I’ve arranged to take off work. It’s a bit of a drag because, well, waiting around a hospital is never a whole lot of fun and this is where Sarah had a lot of surgeries and procedures. She had her first surgery in the old hospital when she was five, and then they opened the new hospital and she had the rest of her procedures there. It’s a very nice hospital as hospitals go. (I’m leaving aside the whole Henrietta Lacks saga and controversy.)

Sarah’s last orthopedic surgery was on her feet to remove some hardware that was bothering her ankle. At least I think that was the last orthopedic one. At the same time, a feeding tube was installed by the Gastro Team. No wait, there was her surgery to install a Baclofen pump. That came later. But that was by the Neuro Team. But it seems to me that the Neuro Team reserved some OR time for the Ortho Team to get in there and do something? Maybe that was the ankle hardware removal and the feeding tube was combined with something else? I can’t remember what or if anymore. She had spine surgery, hip surgery, leg surgery. Spine surgery because she had an over 90 degree curve in her spine (scoliosis), caused by muscle contractures. Hip surgery to put her hip back in the socket, also pulled out by muscle contractures. Leg surgery for tendon releases, to help with movement, and to try to keep the hip from being pulled out in the first place, and to try to keep her feet from facing out.

The spine surgery was a big success, and she became very straight. The feeding tube surgery was also a big success, and the baclofen pump helped a lot. But it was all so hard on her, and so much pain. We spent so many school vacations in Baltimore and she missed school too.

So that’s where I’ll be today, hanging around the Sheik Zayed Tower and the Bloomberg Pavillion and so forth. There’s a couple of little cafes there, or at least there were before the Pandemic, and I can get a latte and a sandwich while my Dad is having his scan, which is going to take several hours. I really just don’t want to think too much about Sarah. But I think about her all the time, so I guess that’s impossible.