Friday at the PCMC

The following is what I wrote about Friday's experience with Ammon at the PCMC. It tells the story that some of you might not know as of yet, This is from my journal:

Chris did not go to work today since she went with a Ammon and I to the PCMC for the surgery that Ammon had planned.
The day did not go well from the start. First, we left for Salt Lake City just before the hospital called to tell us that the surgery had been put off for three hours. So instead of being at noon, it was at three p.m. We had a long wait at the hospital. The really bad thing about it was that it meant that we did not get home until about fifteen to nine. That meant that I missed the pigeon race I was supposed to enter tonight. There was not one thing I could do about it.
When we left, Dr. Valdez had not called. I called his home, but only got a machine. So we wasted all of our conversation with him on Monday. We got no response. This ended up being especially bad since Dr. Smith called him and got a recommendation from him that we did not like and for which we were totally unprepared.
We eventually got to talk with Dr. Smith just before the surgery. He told me he had been sick and had not called me because of that. Well, he must have been really sick. We told him that we wanted the trach taken out and that we thought the ideas of Dr. Kang were wrong. We explained why. So when he went into the surgery we thought it might go well.
As it turned out it was a total waste of time. He did not take the trach out, preferring to follow Dr. Kang. He did not remove the tissue that he said was to be removed. He had some story as to why he did not, but I was not really satisfied that what he was saying was anything more than something meant to explain away what he did, or did not do. We talked for a long time after the surgery, and we gave him pointed questions. Chris was really upset about the whole thing, even more that I was. She certainly made him know that we were not pleased. But that was all we could do. The only thing he did in the surgery was to remove some tissue that had grown on the inside of the trach area. It is not clear how important that was compared to the whole days effort by Ammon and us.
Ammon was really upset when he woke up after the surgery and realized the trach was still in. He said things like “my future is ruined,” and that now he “would not get to do the Make a Wish” thing he wanted to do, which was to go to Disney studios. He actually cried about it in his disappointment.
So our day was long and very unsuccessful. We feel very wronged tonight and even harbor the thought that we have been hooked into more expensive care that will do the doctors good, but accomplish little for Ammon that could not have been accomplished much more simply.

Dad Clark