Catheterization on Thursday

We're headed to UCSF bright and early tomorrow morning for Riley's pre-op heart catheterization. We need to be at the hospital by 6:45am and Riley should be in the room by 8am. The procedure will take from 2 to 3 hours and then Riley will need to stay in bed for 6 hours. He'll be asleep for a part of that, but we're not exactly sure how they plan to keep an almost 3 year old lying down once he wakes up. I guess we'll find out. We should be out of the hospital and back home sometime after dinner.

We've been gradually preparing Riley for hospitalization. About a week ago we started reading books about being in the hospital (Franklin Goes to the Hospital and a book by Mr. Rogers). He also has a doctor kit and we've been checking each other's temperature, listening to our hearts and measuring our blood pressure. Yesterday we told him for the first time that he'll be going to the hospital himself and we spent some more time talking about it today. Apparently the rule of thumb is to tell a child as many days ahead of hospitalization as they are years old.

We'll post updates tomorrow as we get them.