4 Days to Surgery

Happy Fathers Day to all. Hope everyone had a great day. We spent the afternoon at the Fresh Water Bay Yacht Club at a Mont Blanc fundraiser. A group of 20 people are going to climb Mont Blanc and are raising money for Ward 3B, which is the ward that harry is on. www.themontblancproject2010.com They are going to raise a million dollars which is awesome. We had a lovely day, and we also got to see Maddy - who is a little girl Harry has met on the ward - and all her family.
Nanny Shirley won first prize in the raffle and got an outdoor speaker set, which is just want we needed!! Then when we got home we had a long chat with Katie and Laura on skype and they are both having a great time in Thailand.
On Friday last week we had a pre-operation meeting at Charlie Gardners and met some of the people who are going to be involved in Harrys surgery on Thursday. We also saw a microbiologist who checked Harrys knees out as they were concerned about them with the upcoming operation. For those of you who don't know - he fell over and there was talk of us having to do the part of the surgery to remove the tumour and then finish it off after the next round of chemo as the knees might prevent them taking the bone from the calf. So not only were they talking about doing this surgery once, but then again in a few months time. It just doesn't bear thinking about.
Having said that on a positive note they seemed happy with things, and we have been bathing and cleaning the knees every day in the hope that everything goes ahead as planned. Also shouting 'don't run' every 5 minutes in the hope he doesn't fall over again.
It was quite an informative meeting as we found out that there will be approximately 32 people in the operating theatre during the procedure. Starting with the anaethatist, the orthopaedic team and then the plastics team, and they will all be wearing space suits. They are removing the entire shoulder bone and about 6cm's of his humerus. A bone from the bone bank will be placed in his arm to fill the gap, and then the bone out of this leg (the small one you don't need) will be placed in his arm. Harry is going to have two huge scars, and at this stage will have up to 30% movement in his arm afterwards. They went through all that can go wrong including the fact that he could still lose his arm, but this is only if things go wrong - WHICH THEY WON'T!
The surgery will take 8 hours or more and they will possibly keep him asleep for 24 hours depending on how things go. Once the surgery is over he will be put in ICU for between 24 and 72 hours and then we will be moved back to PMH. Harry will be pleased about this as originally they were going to go take him straight up to PMH, and he was excited about going in an ambulance. At least this way he will be able to remember it.
Harry is allowed one of us to go into the room when they put him to sleep and he has asked if I can go in, but at this point I don't know how I am going to do it. I think maybe I need to cry constantly for the next few days and then I will have no more tears on Thursday as I have to be brave for Harry. Will have to find some strength from somewhere so please send some my way.
If I could have one wish right now.... it would be a cure for cancer so that no-one else ever has to go through this again. I should be past the stage of 'why harry?', but right now it just doesn't seem fair and this all seems completely unfair!
Save some positive vibes and send them Harrys way on Thursday.