Retroactive ugh

It's Sunday morning. The coffee is strong. Mo's at church, getting religion. And enough days have passed to put the ordeal of Tuesday's endoscopy in perspective.

I wrote a scathing, gut-wrenching, "Avast ye! Accursed world!" entry on Wednesday morning, after Hope was up all night vomiting and wailing. Like shopping hungry, blogging angry probably is not the best idea.

The endoscopy, as we feared, was no fun. We highly recommend other pursuits of leisure.

The procedure involved sedating her and worming a small camera down her throat to peek at her stomach and provide clues for her occasional bleeding. That took about 20 minutes, but we were in the hospital for about six hours dealing with one indignity after another.

Two veins were blown in her head trying to get an IV for sedation. Finally, one was put through her groin, which is every bit as nasty as it sounds. She briefly stopped breathing while under. Nurses "bagged" her, or pumped air into her lungs. A gung-ho physician even tried to intubate her, working another tube down her throat in a fruitless attempt to supply a steady stream of oxygen into her lungs.

The results from Dr. Spitenup: Pretty much what we thought. One fold of her stomach is irritated from a hiatal hernia, the rubbing of the stomach and the esophagus. That's likely the source of the old blood that Hope was vomiting about once a week earlier this summer. Spitenup says the irritation shouldn't hurt her. We're not so sure.

There's little recourse beyond surgery to fix the hernia. The problem isn't bad enough yet, though, so we're forced to grin and bear it.

Initially, we were annoyed and anguished. Hope was put through the ringer to confirm what was suspected, but fix nothing. We kicked ourselves as bad advocates for her care, second-guessing the decision to go through with the endoscopy.

After a few days, we're more even-keeled. Hope has rebounded well from the procedure, which we acknowledge is necessary to confirm the problem before intervention.

And as always, we're still conflicted about Spitenup. We're sore he surprised us with his decision to go ahead with the endoscopy over a holiday weekend after indicating it may not be necessary. His bedside manner alternates between non-existent and strange (After the procedure, he approached us in the waiting area, motioned us inside and offered a barely audible grunt.)

No doubt, Spitenup is a stinker. But he's also been right about everything so far.

And we know our angst at him is window-dressing. The real source of frustration, such as it is, is seeing something hurt your baby and not being able to fix it.