May 14

Dr. Valda and Dr. Harris officially scheduled Sylvie's surgery for May 14th, two days after Sylvie's third birthday and ironically my original due date. I've never been a fan of Mother's Day so I was pretty nonplussed having spent my first Mother's Day in NYU Medical Center as a new mom and my third Mother's Day preparing for my daughter's liver resection. Michael and I plan to sit down with Drs Harris and Valda to review the procedure, the hospitalization, the recovery, the post-op chemo regimen and a host of other things.

Yesterday was Earth Day and I resisted prosthelytizing which I fully admit to doing a lot of, sometimes inappropriately & with reckless disregard (sorry!). Every day is Earth Day but if it isn't for our friends, family & coworkers, well I hope that yesteday everyone made a conscious effort to reduce, reuse and recycle. I had given Michael my Court-TV (thanks Kitzy!) travel cup to Michael in the morning. He had slept over at the hospital and would be walking to the train and thus two coffee options. Option #1 is the Starbucks in the Children's Hospital, 7-deep with sleeply doctors and nurses waiting in line. The second and very unsexy option if you ask me, is the McDonalds next to the train station however it does serve Newman's Own/Green Mountain Coffee Roasters organic coffee. (I would have option #3 which is no coffee at all). Anyway, the last time Michael went to the McDonalds and presented his aluminum coffee travel mug, the kid behind the counter looked shocked and literally did not know what to do with the cup. Michael had to talk him through the process of filling the coffee, however many ounces, into the travel mug. Since Michael deemed it impossible to explain why he didn't want to waste a paper cup and preferred his travel mug, he just said to the cashier, "I don't want anyone on the train to see me drinking your crappy coffee." Or something like that. So yesterday, in honor of Earth Day and my pushing upon him the travel mug, he returned to McDonalds and had an easier go of it. Which left me drinking all hot and cold beverages out of my Eyes of the World Yoga Center oversized ceramic mug. No worries! Fast forward 12 hours when Michael was carrying my mug in Sylvie's hospital room, he tripped on the desk/cart smashed the mug into a million pieces and got a massive bloody nose in the process. I drank water out of Sylvie's Little Mermaid sippy cup minus the top last night.

I just started reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver who wrote one of my favorite books of all time, "The Poisonwood Bible." For the second year, we have a community garden plot and Michael has agreed to do everything I say this year to avoid the great tomato jungle that ensued and disrupted the garden last year. Originally he made fun of my stakes, string and tape measure! It resulted in a very expensive organic garden as it relates to total vegetable yield and let's just say that if the Hughes family was expected to live off our garden last summer, we surely would have had to resort to eating the shingles off our house.

While Michael was nursing his wounds last night and putting on a game face for Sylvie, I went to the city to see one of the bands I'm working with play a packed show at Pianos. I've known Luis from Into the Presence for over 8 years and I feel like I've known Tim that long. I was pleasantly surprised to see over half my company at the show, too, as well as lots of fellow music biz friends. I felt good to be part of something other than Sylvie's cancer and hospital family. It was also a subtle reminder that at some point in the immediate future, I need to figure out returning to work in some capacity. I got a great parking space in front of Max's Fish which I am happy to say that I haven't imbibed in since around 1993 at the latest. I got back to the hospital around 11 pm and settled into a freezing night hoping that Sylvie would not react from either the Doxo or Cisplatin.

I donated blood today for Sylvie and it was the first time that I read the messages written by our friends and family in the little blue book with Sylvie's school photo that Nadia keeps beside her desk. Thank you everyone infinitely!!! It's one thing to feel part of a greater community and another thing for Sylvie's to be physically connected to so many wonderful people. My dad is a local celebrity in the blood bank. Everyone there knows him and speaks very affectionately about him. His notes to Sylvie in the blue book are very heartfelt, too.

Sylvie is being discharged after chemo today (Vincristine). They're holding off all morphine to see if Sylvie is masking any nausea. We're also going to try and get her to stand up or walk today. We're all eager to go home, hopefully without any tubes or intravenous medication which is likely.