The Swayhawk Kid

We're in the home stretch now - only 3 more days until Bobby's surgery. Valerie says it feels surreal; I feel numb; Bobby is unconcerned. We take him in Monday for a long series of tests - blood work, echocardiogrm, etc. Tuesday morning we're back for early morning surgery.

We had another emergency room visit/hospital stay last week. Bobby's chest was congested so we went in for an xray and found that, sure enough, he had extra fluid on his lungs. One day and a couple of Lasix IVs later, he came home feeling much better.

Bobby is so much fun to be with. He's started baby talking a mile a minute (like his Mama V. :) and kicking up a storm during bath time. We've even taken him in to the big person bathtub a couple of times- something he loves. His spark is getting brighter every day.

Through these first months, the outward sign of this outgoing, funloving boy has been his mohawk. It started out as some hair sprouts on the top of his head and then extended front to back into a full hawk even a professional wrestler would be proud to call his own. Now its starting to bend to one side of his head. No longer a straight line, its organizing into a semi circle, still waving proudly in the wind. His mohawk has become a swayhawk.

That hair has grown over the course of 4 hospitalizations. When he stopped growing, stopped gaining weight, his hair got longer and stood up even straighter. That hair has helped defined his persona during these early months - to the nurses at the hospital he is Bobby with the mohawk. It draws people to him. It's the hawk that can't be stopped. And when I start to get scared about this Tuesday I think about that hair. It just seems to me that open heart surgery is nothing to the Swayhawk Kid.