Emerson's 7th Birthday

 On May 9th, 2025, Emerson turned 7 years old. How is it possible that we have a 7 year old! Unbelievable. The morning of his birthday, we started off with a yummy chocolate chip pancake breakfast, which is family tradition.

To celebrate at school, Emerson was allowed to wear "street clothes," aka not his uniform. So, after breakfast, he opened up a present from Auntie Courtney in Australia, which was an All Blacks Rugby jersey from New Zealand, where Courtney is from and where we've visited several times. The All Blacks are the best rugby team in the world. They are like the Yankees in baseball, except they come from a super small island with far less resources and budget, and yet they still dominate. Since the boys are learning rugby at their school, I thought it would be cool if they had All Blacks jerseys, so I asked Courtney for them awhile back. She graciously bought them on a trip home and shipped them to us. The shipping from Australia cost $56, probably close to the cost of the jerseys. Yikes. Thanks Auntie Courtney!!

In addition to street clothes, Emerson is also allowed to bring in a treat to share with his classmates. Traditionally, people bring in a cake made of barquillos, also known colloquially as cuchuflí. They are similar to praline sticks Nana used to bring out for Christmas, except they are normally lined in chocolate and then filled with dulce de leche, manejar, or Nutella. We got to try some from a local barquilleria down the street, and they were amazing, so I was very excited to order them for Emerson's class and possibly have a couple left over for us. I order the "cake" on Sunday, and his birthday was on Friday. So, I set the delivery for Thursday night, between 6-8pm. Well, Thursday we had a giant rain storm; it basically rained all day. So when there was no sign of the cake at 7:30pm, I called the shop and asked what was the deal, as I knew the shop closed at 8pm, and after that I wouldn't be able to talk to anyone. The lady told me, I think, that the delivery guy was leaving in 20 minutes, and everything was fine. Well, the cake never showed up. At 9:30pm, we went to bed hoping for a miracle midnight delivery, these are just guys who zoom around on scooters, and they operate at all hours. But, it was not meant to be. In the morning, no cuchuflís. I took the boys to school, then rode my bike straight over to Líder, our Walmart equivalent that is 5 min away where we do most of our shopping, and bought the saddest little muffins to take back and drop off at school. There was nothing else available: no cupcakes, no cookies, nothing. So he got sad little muffins. At this point I was pissed and sad. For one, I didn't understand what had went wrong; did I make a mistake in the ordering process? Turns out the rain just made it impossible for the store to find a delivery person. But true to Chilean form, they did not notify me of this, I was just ghosted. I also worried Emerson's classmates would make fun of him for his sad muffins. I haven't talked about this a ton, but parents here let their kids eat like garbage; it's definitely a major difference from the Colorado schooling scene. Kids are bringing candy in their lunches every day, cookies, chips, every kind of junk food you can imagine. So sad muffins were probably not going to register on most of the kids' radars as celebratory birthday treats, but simply everyday food. But, whatever, I tried. Emerson said the muffins were yummy, and he had fun giving the extras away to teachers and such, so he didn't seem scarred for life by it.  So hopefully there won't be a therapy session in his future labeled "My mom doesn't love me because she sent me to school with sad birthday muffins." Whew.

 

That evening we had Emerson's birthday dinner. We have a tradition where the birthday person gets to pick out the dinner menu from top to bottom. Emerson ordered spaghetti and meatballs, cucumbers, blueberries, and chocolate cake (a flourless dense torte I've made in the past) covered with strawberry cream cheese frosting. Drew spent several hours on Friday making homemade meatballs and red sauce, which turned out great, and I made the cake. Since I don't have electric beaters, I knew the torte was a losing proposition, as you have to beat cream into stiff peaks, and I wasn't doing that with a hand beater. I've never seen a hand beater before, but one showed up in one of our bulk purchases of used kitchen stuff. It works decently well for simple things, sauces and such, but beating cream to stiff peaks was beyond me. Overall, dinner was a success, and between that and presents, Emerson proclaimed it was the "Best Day Ever!!" which always feels good. 

Also, the rain the day before cleared out all the smog, so that Friday was the clearest day we've had. Allowed us to see the mountains and the new snow fall really well. Very lovely. This is the view from our guest bedroom for whomever comes to visit!

We also got to talk with lots of family members virtually: Grandma, Grandpa, GG, and Uncle Adam, then Nana and Papa, Auntie Leah and Uncle Osman, and finally Auntie Stephie and the cousins. Thanks all for making Emerson's day feel super special. 

The following week, we had a birthday party for some neighborhood kids. We decided to skip the entire class birthday party tradition, and kept it smallish. We invited 5 other families, so 11 kids and 12 adults in all. We had pizza and an ice cream sundae bar, and we rented out the communal party room in our building since the group had gotten too large for our apartment. The event room has an adjoining garden, which is great for the kids to be able to run around. We didn't rent anything extra, no trampolines, no jumpy castles, etc, we just brought down some of the boys toys from upstairs and borrowed a soccer goal from a neighbor.  Emerson's favorite part was when he and his friends were making "stew" in the garden, aka mixing water with garden bits and bobs. Score for the simple things in life. It's not what you do, it's who you're with.

Drew's Hernia Surgery

 

Last Wednesday, April 30th, Drew had surgery for two hernias. One was around his belly button that he got while lifting incorrectly. The other was one that he might have had from birth, an inguinal hernia. Emerson had an inguinal hernia at birth as well, which was much larger and obvious, that was surgically fixed when he was 6 weeks old. And Drew's Dad has had hernia surgery too, so this clearly runs in the family. Since they were already in there, Drew decided to have both fixed at the same time. One of the hernias was able to be fixed laparoscopically, but the second was not, due to the location. So, in the end, Drew had four openings in his abdomen, all of them about a cm in size. 

We had the surgery performed at Clínica Alemana, which is undoubtably the best private hospital in Santiago. Drew was able to schedule the surgery very easily. The only real wait time we had was about 5 business days to get the surgery pre-approved by our insurance. Without insurance, the surgery cost $7K. With private international insurance, our deductible is $700. 

Drew was due to the hospital at 6am, so he was gone before the boys woke up. I took the boys to school, and then walked to the hospital. Drew's surgery was scheduled for 8am, so by the time I got there at 8:30am, he was already in surgery. I knew this would likely be the case, but I was wondering if they would be late and wanted to wait with Drew in his pre-op room if I could. I also wanted to figure out where everything was. This turned out to be pretty complicated, but that was mostly due to the communication barrier as well as a lack of prep between Drew and I. The hospital has three main buildings. First there is a tower with 18 or something floors that is for consultations, evaluations, and normal doctor visits in varying specialties. There is a hospital building where the ER is and where all major surgeries are performed. This was where Drew got his finger stitched up awhile back. Finally there is a OB/baby delivery building across the street. Drew told me he was meeting the surgeon on the 3rd floor of the tower, so I started there. Went to the 3rd floor, which was Urology and Gastroenterology. Didn't seem like the right place, and when I asked a check-in person in Spanish where I could find my husband who was in surgery, she gave me the blankest look ever. Luckily there was another doctor there who heard me and understood what I was saying, or trying to say, who told me, in Spanish, that all surgeries are performed in the hospital part of the building. Makes sense. 

So I needed to go back to the main floor and walk over to the other section. I did this, found the Info desk at that area, and asked them where my husband was so I could wait. They told me, in Spanish, that they couldn't see which room Drew was assigned to (because he was in surgery already, and they don't make room assignments until after, but I didn't know that) and to go to the 3rd floor waiting room, as there is a big TV screen there with updates on patients in surgery. I went there, and this where the lack of prep came in. The board was listed by surgeon name and patient id only, not by patient name. When Drew had his rhinoplasty at Denver Health, it was not this way; they listed the patient update board by patient name, which is what I was expecting. So, I assumed this one was the same way, and when I didn't see Drew's name on the board, I began to get worried. Really, I should have asked Drew who his surgeon was ahead of time, but I didn't think to do that. I asked a nurse for help in Spanish, who walked me back to the nurses' station to do a deep dive on their computers. Thank God for nurses, they are always the heroes. The nurses confirmed Drew was in surgery right now, and they told me to wait at a different waiting room on the 4th floor. 

I did this for an hour, still checking the board but unaware that it wasn't patient names I was looking at but surgeon names. After an hour, which was supposed to be the duration of the surgery, the board never got updated with Drew's name (of course not), I went back downstairs to ask the info people again if they could see anything. They again said no, but this time they felt bad for me and asked an interpreter to come over and help me.  It is amazing what stress can do to the body. Riding back up in the elevator with her, I began to cry, completely against my will. I didn't want to cry. I didn't feel that overwhelmed, but the stress of not knowing what was going on definitely took over. The interpreter was a saint as well. She took me up to the 4th floor waiting room again, went in herself to talk to the nurses again while I took deep breaths in the waiting room, came back out and lifted my gringa veil of ignorance that, indeed, his information had been on the board the whole time, here is his surgeon, and he was still in surgery, so still no room assignment. Great. I should have known this by now, living in another country, but you should never assume you understand how things work. It's different. Assume it will be different. 

Anyways, about 15 minutes after that, the doctor called me saying Drew was out of surgery, that all went well, and the he was going to be in recovery for about 1.5 hours, after which he would be moved to a post-op room, and I could see him. This was at 10:15am, which I could now see very clearly on the update board. Face palm. So I waited in the waiting room for two more hours. At 12:30, I could see on the board he was out of Recovery and moved, but, again, no idea where to. I went back downstairs to info, and they could see now he was in room 1206. They tried to explain to me where room 1206 was, but I didn't follow it very well. I understood it wasn't in this building, so I assumed it was in the tower on the 12th floor. Where else could it be? So that's where I went, and that was also wrong. The 12th floor was something else diagnostic something or other, and they couldn't see on their computers where Drew was, so they couldn't help me either. At this point, I called the surgeon, as he had actually called me on his direct line earlier which I thought was amazing. So he picked up and told me in English that Drew had been moved to the Maternity building across the street via an underground tunnel. Ack. That's what the info ladies had been trying to describe to me. So I went across the street, went to the 2nd floor (go figure), and found Drew in his room. This was around 1pm. Le sigh. 

Avery gets out of school at 1pm, and I had arranged for our neighbor who has a daughter in Pre-K to pick him up and bring him back to our apartment where our cleaner Karen was waiting to watch him. That all went fine. I stayed with Drew in his room for the next several hours waiting for the doc to come discharge him. Again, don't assume anything in another country. At Denver Health, they discharged him relatively quickly. Once he was out of recovery there, he was discharged within a couple of hours while he was still pretty dang loopy from pain meds. So this, again was what I was expecting here. When I got to Drew this time, he was completely sober already, but uncomfortable for sure. When they served him lunch at 1:30pm, I knew we weren't going anywhere soon. At 3pm I asked the nurses when we would be discharged, and they said we had to wait for the doc. At 3:45pm, I Whatsapped the doc (again, he gave us his direct number, and he would chat with patients on Whatsapp!) and he said he'd be by around 5pm to discharge Drew. So I left to go pick Emerson up from school at 4pm and to drop him off at home. Karen needed to leave, so she was replaced by our regular babysitter Catalina at 5pm. I then went back to Drew, luckily the hospital is literally down the street from our place, so it was easy to get back and forth. The doc came in with a pain med prescription and care instructions. I raced to the pharmacy and got the prescription filled in 15 minutes. Went back. He was finally discharged at 6:30pm. We took an Uber the 3 minutes home, and then everyone went to bed. Whew. 

His recovery plan seems relatively straight forward. No exercise at all for a week. Post-op check-up after a week, that will be today. Then light exercise for a couple of weeks. After a month he can lift light things, then slowly build up to lifting heavy things. Actually, the hardest part in the initial 48 hours was keeping the boys from accidentally bumping/jumping on his stomach. It basically meant the boys needed to stay away from Drew completely while he rested, so I've been solo parenting for awhile. By Day 3, Drew was able to get up more and start walking around. Now, Drew can stand up/sit up for longer periods, and he's even cooked some. But all kid duties and activities have been done by me for the past week, and as you can probably tell, I'm tired. I honestly have no idea how single parents do this day in and day out. It wouldn't be too bad for only a week, but the boys clearly miss their dad, miss playing with him and being silly with him and rough housing with him. I am not the fun parent, we know this. And those feelings come out as frustration. Frustration at having to do homework, frustration at having to clean up messes, frustration at having to tie my own shoes. Anything really. And when they get frustrated, they fight with each other, both physically and verbally, resulting in more tears. So that's been the exhausting part for me is trying to stay patient while the boys have constant melt-downs over seemingly any and everything. But deep breaths, this to shall pass. And wine. Lots of Chilean wine. And every day as Drew is able to do more and interact with them more, they are balancing back out.