ace’s blog

Lost in the busyness of Aaron’s surgery, I resigned from my current employer, effective next Friday (July 25th). I will start my career as an independent consultant with a new client.

I’m excited to start a new chapter in my career, although I’m a bit nervous about having to find new contracts when current ones end. This is a very big deal for my family.

I will be doing 100% development, instead of the 5-10% I’m doing at my current employer. I’m always looking forward to learning new things and helping with the knowledge that I possess.

Aaron had eye surgery on Thursday, July 10th. Meri and I were a total wreck that day. Aaron was brave, as he always is. I posted the key events of the day on plurk.com and on twitter (via ping.fm on my VZW BlackBerry). All of my updates, via plurk.com, several hours before the surgery, leaving the house, out of surgery and sleeping in the recovery room, finally getting to see him, bringing him home, and finally, later that night, Aaron’s running a mild fever. Also, on twitter, a person (mgrossfl – Marc Grossman) that I only knew via twitter, expressed his concern throughout the next few days (via summize.com).

We arrived at the the Arnold Palmer hospital around 8am and registered and finally went to the surgery center. We spoke to Aaron’s ophthalmologist, then met the anesthesiologist and finally all of the nurses that would be helping during the surgery. They were all extremely nice.

The surgery itself lasted about an hour and went well, by the book according to the surgeon. Aaron was in the recovery room, sleeping for about 90 minutes after the surgery, in which time Meri and I patiently waited in the waiting room until we could finally go back and see him. When we got to see him, he was eating an orange popsicle that the nurses gave him.

We now have to give him eye drops three times every day, for three to five days post surgery. His first drops didn’t go so smoothly and it took 45 minutes to apply them! We are doing much better with the drops now; we stop them tomorrow.

Aaron’s eyes are red on the outer left portion. Over the next 3 weeks, they will become more red, possibly enveloping the entire eye, then turn yellowish and finally back to a normal white.

Now that the surgery is over, I’m finding the most difficult thing to do is wait for 4 – 6 weeks to know of the surgery was successful. According to the paperwork we were given, 70% of those who had the surgery only required it to be performed once. 30% needed multiple surgeries. Of those 30%, 20% needed one to two more surgeries and the final 10% needed 3 or more surgeries.

Needless to say, Meri, Aaron and I are hopeful that Aaron will be in the 70% range.

Not to be lost in all of this is Eli! He’s our now 4month old chunky baby (17lbs as of this writing!) who had to be cared for during the procedure. Thankfully, Meri’s aunt Paline was able to come down and help us out! We were very fortunate that she was able to come down on such short notice (she flew in EARLY Thursday morning, around 1am.

I’m ready to stop talking about this now, it has been difficult for all of us. Ready for some cuteness in this post, here it is. Aren’t my boys just so handsome?!

So I’ve had this blog post idea in my head since about noon today so I figured I’d go ahead and write it, read it and most likely delete it, so here it goes.  Keep in mind though, I’m a programmer by trade and I don’t have much creativity.  The only creativity I have only came to light within the past four years (WehadababyItsaboy).

Is there a more perfect sandwich than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  The only thing better than a PB&J sandwich is two of them and the only thing better than two PB&J sandwiches is three of them.  You get the general idea, right?  I don’t need to keep going.  Here is a Google image search of PB&J.  Yummy.

Someone emailed me the other day* asking me how you could spice up your PB&J sandwich.  What the hell?  Isn’t that obvious?  Four words – peanut butter, jelly and cheese!  Seriously (well, as serious as this post can/should be) though, why would a PB&J sandwich need to be spiced up?  It is the perfect sandwich dammit, leave it alone.  I guess you could switch between jelly and jam or change what flavor of jelly you use or you could not use jelly at all, but that would just be weird, amirite?

While I’m making my PB&J sandwich, I pull out three pieces of bread, peanut butter and some jelly.  Instantaneously, I grab one piece of bread, spread peanut butter over 1/2 of it and then jelly over the other half, fold it in half and then eat that mini-PB&J while I continue to make the normal-sized PB&J.  It’s as if the whole PB&J sandwich is much too time consuming to make and I need a smaller PB&J sandwich to tide over my need/desire for, I’m going to type it again, a PB&J sandwich.

I’ve got that Google image search of PB&J up in the another window on my screen and I think I’m going to have to make myself another one when I’m finished.

Finally, I leave you with the following video.

* That’s a damn lie, nobody emailed me – about this or anything else.

Tomorrow is the day that Meri and I have been dreading since Aaron’s diagnosis back in December 2007. He’s having his eye surgery. I’m not going to list all of the potential negative effects of the surgery because he is going to come out great and the surgery is going to go strictly by the book. There aren’t any negative effects to worry about. My son is a champion, he will get through this, even with his mom and dad sitting idly by with teary eyes. My son is the best son a father could ask for, he makes me feel like I’ve never felt before. I love him more than I ever thought I could love another person.