What Are The Odds?
Long, long ago in a universe far, far away that involved me, Steve, and only one child, I wrote a weekly journal for Babycenter.com. I was talking with a friend this weekend about odds and risks and it made me think of this journal entry. So, I’m posting it here. I wrote this when Gracie had her ear tube surgery in 2005, when she was seventeen months old. I’ve been wanting to transfer those weekly entries over here and I thought now was as good a time as any to start!
What Are The Odds?
Was Gracie ever really this little?
Are you comforted when you’re getting ready to do something (or send your baby into something) that is fraught with danger and the person responsible for you or your child says, “Really, you have more of a risk from getting killed in your car on the way to the _____” (insert here wherever the dangerous thing is happening: hospital, dentist’s office, airport) “than you do during _________” (insert here the dangerous thing: the surgery, the root canal, your flight over the Bermuda triangle during a typhoon)? If you are one of those people that is comforted by that statement, can you come to my house and teach me how? I am not in the least little bit relieved when someone tells me this. In fact, it just adds to my worry – not only do I spend time biting my nails and tossing in my sleep worrying about the actual thing that is dangerous, now I have to worry about getting killed on the way there!
Ditto about hearing about odds of things happening. I’m not really a big odds person. You know those contests on plastic soda bottles that say: 1 in 12 wins free Coke. After drinking at least 150 of them, I’m still waiting for my free Coke. What are those odds? Gracie seems to have inherited my luck with odds. The chances of a baby being transverse breech are like 1 in 2,500. Guess who was transverse? Yep, my sweet little stubborn girl never would turn. I had a friend once that believed that all odds were 50/50 – either something was going to happen or it wasn’t going to happen. Your odds of winning the lottery – 50/50. Your odds of getting run over by a pig driving a corvette – 50/50. Those odds make sense to me, but when someone tells me, “The odds of something bad happening are like 1 in 10,000”, I’m confused. Okay, great but what if I’m the one? I don’t like to even think about things where the odds are astronomical – like saying even to myself, “nothing could happen – I mean what are the odds?” That’s like painting a big bullseye on your head and just tempting Lady Luck to rain down on you. I remember two months ago thinking to myself, “I’m not going to worry about hurricane season this year. What are the odds of two major hurricanes coming through our town in back to back seasons?” And we know how that turned out…..
So I spent last week listening to surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, surgical nurses, and doctor’s office receptionists all explaining to me that the odds of something happening to Gracie while she was under anesthesia were astronomically low and that there was a far greater risk of having a car accident on the way to the hospital than of her having a reaction to either the gas or the sedative they give her to calm down. (Are they taught the car accident spiel in medical school?) They say this with a smile on their face while they hand me consent forms to sign that say I won’t hold any of them responsible and that I fully understand that anesthesia carries with it inherent risk, including heart attacks, brain damage, and death. Okay, if the risk is greater driving to the hospital, where’s my consent form for driving? Somehow, I managed to sign all the forms and nodded my head almost calmly through all the paper work on the morning of her surgery. Ideally, Steve would have been listening and nodding his head and signing the papers and I could have lived in the comfortable world of ignorance, but when Gracie is in an unfamiliar location, no one but Daddy will do. So, he was sitting on the other side of the pre-op room, snuggling our precious little girl while I was having the scary talks with all of the professional people.
Once we got all the paperwork out of the way, a nurse brought Gracie a sedative to keep her calm before they took her back to the operating room. I guess they forgot to bring mine. They loaded her up in a big plastic wagon with her pacifier, her blankie, her Roo, and some stickers. She was as calm as I have ever seen her, laid up in the wagon like a show dog. My child who has a very healthy dose of separation anxiety didn’t even whimper when she was wheeled away from us. As they pulled her slowly away, through the double doors to the operating room, I fought the urge deep in my gut to chase after them, grab the wagon and wheel her right on out of the hospital. But I didn’t – I let her go. And you know what? It was okay – for once Gracie went with the odds and she was fine. After a short period of extreme fussiness (where, after what felt like two hours I asked Steve, “How long is THIS going to last?” and he replied, “Well, longer than two minutes.” ), a slightly longer period of toddler drunkenness when we got home, and an even longer nap, she was back to being the child I adore. The tiny little blue tubes in her ears really don’t seem to have changed much of anything. Is she hearing better? I don’t know. Is she going to be healthier? I don’t know that either. All I know is that the odds worked in our favor and she’s fine and happy and safe and home in my arms….