"Which new pajamas will I wear for surgery Mommy?"

So as most of you know, Rowan is back in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the hospital once again. Last week's brain mri and flow study showed the continued presence of a large Chiari malformation with blocked cerebral spinal fluid. He had a scheduled shunt revision/exporation surgery yesterday to try to rule out the shunt as the cause of his extreme headaches, neck pain, and other neuro symptoms. That did not end up being the apparent cause however, so Rowan is scheduled to go back into the operating room Monday for a more aggressive Chiari surgery which will include the surgeons cutting into the covering of his brain and sewing a dura patch into the lining in an effort to relieve pressure from the Chiari and open up the flow of csf once again.

This all sounds pretty heavy, right? Especially for a little boy who just turned 6 years old. And even more so for a little boy for whom this makes surgery number 52 and number 53. Well not for Rowan. For Rowan it's as simple as "Which new pajamas will I wear for surgery Mommy?"

This is a picture of Rowan the morning of this week's shunt surgery. He woke up happy as could be because he was wearing hand-me-down pajama pants from his big brother that he had never worn before. He said "These pajamas will give me all the love I need for surgery!"

Look at that face. No fear, no sadness, just joy that he was about to try to get his head fixed and that he could wear new pajama pants (that weren't even new:-)

Today when Rowan heard the surgeons discussing the surgery for next week, he simply said "Well, at least Cindy just bought me some new pajamas, so I can wear those this time and that will give me love for this brain surgery too."

It's the little things that matter, which Rowan constantly reminds us of...little things like new, and even hand-me-down, pajama pants:-)