Surgery & Questura Update

Coming to with a smile!

Just wanted to let everyone know that Jonathan's surgery went really well yesterday. Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers! He said he was less nervous about the surgery than when we have to go the Questura. It is so nice to have the surgery behind him, except for the recovery now. He was admitted at 7:30am for pretesting and then surgery began at 3:30pm. It was a long wait but we had some good talk time. I think not having to raise my voice to get the kids' attention helped perserve what voice I had left. The surgeon came in with his jar of gall stones...I tried to count and there were over 20 pea-sized stones. Yikes!!

The hospital is very nice and much what we would find normally in the States. He has a private room and is getting excellent care. It really helped to ease our minds especially when doing this kind of thing in a foreign culture. Brad and Lori were such a help and support to us yesterday. It's nice to now be closer to our coworkers and for all of us to team up as a "family" especially during times like this.

I returned home last evening because Samuel had a super hard day. A very emotional and off day for him...poor Catherine. He would not stop asking where I was and no form of reason was penetrating his mind about it. We hope that the doctor will release Jonathan this afternoon but he told us yesterday that the procedure is to keep him until Friday morning. We'll see what he says this afternoon.

The Questura visit went fine. It was just a couple of blocks from the hospital so that was nice. Brad went with me and it is his neighbor, Sergio, who works at the main Questura office and has been trying to help our permesso situation. I still have no idea why I needed to be re-fingerprinted. Sergio's friend went through all of my information and the kids' once again, thankfully. Samuel's birthdate was still wrong in the computer and we made sure that the photos corresponded with the names as well. The guy said that now we just need to wait 1 to 1.5 months for the cards to be reprinted. Pray they get it right or else I'll be banging on the doors in Rome for them to get their act together!! :0) We were told that from the point of application to the time of completion is now taking 10 months. What an incredible new and improved system (not)!