Faith and a Second Opinion

As a parent you always hope that decisions you make are the best for your children.  That said, the daily decisions we have to make are innumerable and there's no way to guarantee that, even with the best of intentions.  A little over a year ago, we embarked on a journey that we hoped would help one of our twins, 4 at the time, get some reprieve from sickness and sleeplessness. 

While it has certainly helped with her sleep, the process and recovery from a routine tonsillectomy has been anything but, leaving us at times wondering if we made the right decision.  From the stress filled aftercare and overnight stint in the hospital for dehydration to the extensive scarring resulting in her airway being less than 1/4" in diameter, it's been a bumpy and challenging road leaving us with many questions along the way.  In these situations it's tough not to go down the path of what ifs and we certainly have at times, but the reality is that we are where we are and as a friend said "God's grace covers us in our good decisions as well as our bad ones."

The picture above is from a sleep study our new entourage of doctors conducted last night, our now 5 year old handling having stuff glued all over her like a trooper.  The new entourage includes a Pediatric ENT and a Pediatric Craniofacial surgeon at Dell Children's that we've been blessed to have been referred to by the ENT we decided to get a 2nd opinion from after the original ENT repeatedly said things like "this is weird" and "I've never seen this before" at her followup appointment when he noticed the scarring. 

Medical care, it turns out, is a delicate balance of trust and persistence, things that build character and resolve as aptly captured in this quote from Red Bull's As the Crow Flies, a snowboarding film, which not so coincidentally a friend sent me a link to yesterday:

Character is defined by perseverance 
Unrelenting determination 
A fierce resolve to hold fast when every instinct is screaming at you to give up 

While it's hard and unproductive to deduce, maybe we erred to much on the side of trust the first go-round or maybe this just falls under the umbrella of stuff happens and life is unpredictable.  Regardless, while it was a tough decision, stepping outside of where we were has put us in a place of better confidence with better resources to move towards a resolution.  From a doctor that confidently stated that not only had she seen this type of scarring before but had corrected it on several occasions to a response of "we've got better tools" to the question "we've done an endoscopy before and they couldn't see much, how will this be different?" we've had multiple reassurances that we're now on the right path. 

I'll close with another quote from the film linked above:

There is no way to determine which path leads to a life well lived 
No right or wrong answers yet a rich fulfilling existence is possible
Certain attributes lend themselves to finding substance on this mortal coil 
Qualities found in those who seem to have found the key to a balanced life
It is up to each of us to find our own way along the way
So go forth with an open heart and live