No saint am I

At this point I get a number of emails every day from people. Some of those emails are from people I know. Some of them are from people I know and that I am related to. Some are from people who I have no idea who they are.

Regardless of who they are from, most emails I get follow the same pattern. They thank me for writing the site, they mention how cute Woody is, and then they say that I'm really patient and/or strong or a great dad or whatever for holding it together. Allow me to respond for a moment to these three points.

1. No problem, I do it for posterity, for therapy, and so I don't have to call everyone. If you like it, awesome! Thanks for the feedback.
2. He is cute! Thanks.
3. HA!

I will elaborate on point number three. I am not strong, I am not patient, and I sure am not a great dad from the perspective of being in the health care system. I get really frustrated with having a kid in the hospital, I get frustrated at what I perceive to be the lip service to the goal of leaving him alone as much as possible (and as I noted at length yesterday), and I sure get really frustrated at what I have begun to refer to uncharitably as The Ungratefuls, that class of people who pop out healthy full term kids seemingly with the ease of sneezing. On the tough days here I can be a real pill to deal with, and am pretty crabby in general when Woody's not doing well. So please accept my sincere apologies if I have been cross with you.

The Woody update is basically that he is back from SURGERY NUMBER ONE. It went swimmingly, apparently, and he now has the Broviac stent, which they will use to draw blood from until it clots up or otherwise has to be taken out. I sure hope that isn't tomorrow, because this has been a particularly long and frustrating day to get it in there. He was supposed to go into the OR at 11, but because of another emergency and general hospital delays he didn't get in until nearly 4. And now, an hour and a half after he came out, the nurses and other staff types are still messing around with him. Oh well, at least he's still out like a light, so it's not like he notices too much that people are prodding, pushing, and folding him.

There is a new picture with notes up on the flickr photo album. This will undoubtedly embarass him to no end for years to come. I hope.