How to make it through open-heart surgery*

* a journey in 5 parts

Stage I: Panic

When it arrives: Diagnosis

General behavior: Erratic, confused, typically on the verge of weepy

Duration: One week

How it unfolds:

1. Sit in a dark room, with your child lying on a table in front of you as they do a sonogram of her heart.

2. Notice that there’s a big black hole. Right there. In the middle of the screen. Notice, too, that her blood seems to be flowing every which way right around where that spot is.

3. Feel your own blood run cold.

4. Do your best not to scream or cry or run from the room because, well, your child, whose heart clearly isn’t normal, is lying on a table in front of you having a sonogram of her clearly-not-normal heart.

5. Hold it together as long as you can, finally losing it when a nurse steps behind you and sets her hand on your shoulder. Excuse yourself and duck into a bathroom, where you fall apart, call your husband, listen as he falls apart, pull yourself together, fall apart again, then finally get a grip.

6. Return to your child, who’s happily playing with two nurses and the EKG machine, having no idea that the world as we know it has just been thrown from its axis.

7. Do your best to listen as her doc explains the particulars.

8. Hear nothing he says except “YOUR CHILD HAS A HOLE IN HER HEART AND NEEDS OPEN-HEART SURGERY.”

9. Vow to kill fire your child’s worthless pediatrician. Resist the urge to hug her cardiologist when he offers to do it for you.

10. Do your best to keep from crying as Husband arrives and your eyes meet.

11. Nod when the doctor makes you promise to come back in a month to make a plan. Wonder WHO THE HELL could wait a whole month to come back and make a plan??

12. Let Husband take your child back to preschool. Drive to bagel shop to wait for Husband so the two of you can freak out talk. Call mom on the way. Cry into phone for 90 seconds before you’re able to tell her what's wrong. Be thankful she’s a patient woman.

13. Watch Husband drive into bagel shop parking lot. Fall apart.

14. Sit at an outside table sipping ice coffee and Diet Coke, not knowing what to say to one another. Be thankful you’re in this together. Pray for guidance on how to proceed.

15. Call friends and family and anyone else you think can help you figure out what to do. Be thankful that everyone seems to drop everything and come running.

16. Do your best to focus on the task at hand. Banish from your mind the what-ifs. Succeed sometimes. Mostly fail.

17. Stay off the Internet. Be proud of yourself for doing at least that.

18. Decide, with Husband, that the surgery must be done and done now.

19. Gather a bunch of information, some of it worthwhile, some of it not. Make a bunch of rash decisions in the heat of the moment or at someone else’s suggestion. Rethink that strategy. Work to undo the rash decisions you’ve made. Talk yourself off the ledge yet again.

20. Return to the cardiologist, thank him for finding the problem and fire him so you can move to another, “better” pediatric cardiology practice. Realize, as he sits with you for 20 minutes after he’s been fired, answering your questions and acknowledging your fears, that you really, really like him. More importantly, you trust him. Unfire him two hours later and ask him to help you prepare for the fight of your life.

Next up, Stage II: Ferocity