The First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for pre-school in Fairfax, and Lesley is going back as happy as can be. Oh how she loves going to school and seeing her teachers and her friends. This was also supposed to be Cassandra's first day of school, too. We would have had her evaluated this past summer to determine what services she needed and likely would have been going to school today with Lesley. Of course, as well as Cassie was doing before her surgery, she may very well have tested well enough to not require pre-school, but we think she would should have been riding the bus today with her big sister and best friend.

5 Months - Accountability

Cassandra passed away 5 months ago today and we still don't have any answers. The doctors haven't finished their reports, the autopsy isn't complete, and our beautiful little girl is still gone. I don't know at all if finally understanding how Cassie died is going to be of any relief. The concept of "closure" is, of course, ridiculous. I think the worst part of the medical aspect is the proposition that no one will be held accountable. I want someone held accountable. That's very different from saying I want someone to pay for what they did - and I want someone to pay big time - but someone needs to be held accountable.

When Cassandra had her spinal surgery, the nurses at Childrens National Medical Center in Washington DC didn't do their jobs and didn't monitor Cassie's urine output and she went over 36 hours without being able to empty her bladder. I'll tell the whole sotry another time, but to summarize Cassie lost the use of her bladder and from that day forward we had to catheder Cassie every few hours to empty her bladder. We rose a big stink with CNMC and they were pretty responsive. The details of her case were reveiwed and they decided to amend their procedures to make sure all infants were to have special catheder procedures going forward to insure that they were producing urine post surgery. That's accountability - make sure it doens't happen to another kid.

I hope, at the very least, whatever went wrong in the hospital 5 months ago is identified, the right people are educated, and whatever happened to Cassandra doesn't happen again to someone else's beautiful little kid.

A Reality Check

I just wanted to post a quick note to let everyone who reads know that Daria, Lesley and I are hanging in there. I've received a lot of feedback, which I truely appreciate, but some of it concerns me and I wanted to address that.

Please don't think that - because most of my posts are sad and downright depressing - our family is constanly crying or are totally consumed with sadness and grief. Some days we do quite well. However the reason I started this blog was to help me work through my grief and express it in a fashion that is going to help me deal with it in a more and more positive manner. Therefore, I'm not going to post stuff like "Today was okay, work was fun, and we took Lesley to the train which was nice" or "OMG, the Cubs really stink!". This blog is about dealing with the grief, so the posts are going to reflect that. I hope that you've noticed that I'm posting less frequently now. Please take that as a sign that I'm starting to heal and the bad days - while they still come often - aren't as frequent as they used to be.

I really do thank all of you who have read my blog and have taken the time to drop me a note or give me a call to check in. I ask that you please continue to do so - we always love to hear from our friends.

And Oh My God! The Cubs really do stink.