Slow to Learn

Patience.

I don't have it.  

Well, I've prayed for it for years, and I guess Heavenly Father keeps giving more chances to practice.  This has been one of those growth opportunities that I'm not sure I'm learning anything from (or at least I can't see it yet-- maybe down the road when I'm looking back it will be obvious).

J's surgeon was honest from the beginning.  When we ended up in the hospital for the second time, he said that recovering from a ruptured appendix can takes weeks.  (Drastically different than the hopefully stories the ER nurse told us the first night about her own 15 year old, who was back home and anxious to get back to softball after only two days.)  Still, he said that maybe within three to four days J would be well enough to come home.  Granted, he said that was wildly optimistic, but you know, when your life is topsy-turvy and you just want to see your child well, part of you hopes for extremely good results.  So I told myself to plan for Saturday.  Saturday was five days-- not wildly optimistic but still something I could hope for.  On Friday, the surgeon said things were looking up and a Saturday release was a real possibility. Then Saturday came, and the surgeon said they wanted him to show he could eat and digest it well a full day before releasing him.  So I swallowed my disappointment and we regrouped, planning for Sunday.

This time I honestly thought we would get our release.  He's been eating (more or less, but as well as the doctors wanted) and he had an ultrasound that said everything looked fine.  But this morning I met with both the pediatrician and the surgeon, and J's white counts are slightly elevated.  The surgeon said it's probably nothing-- if it was another abscess there would likely be other signs.  But based on the past (J getting released and coming back to the hospital the very next day) he said that it's better to be conservative. And they don't want to do another CT scan because he's already had two.  Better to just wait and see.

So hopefully he'll get released tomorrow.  J about growled at the surgeon.  I almost cried.  But the surgeon reminded us that none of this is unusual; recovering from a ruptured appendix is S-L-O-W.

Patience.

Yes, yes, I know.  But can't I hurry up and learn patience already and be done with this?