Every year at the beginning of December the kids have their annual testing at Children’s Hospital. Tomorrow we’ll spend about 6 hours their getting labs done, echocardiograms (heart) because of the high blood pressure, and renal ultrasounds to check the liver for cysts, (there are too many in the kidneys to count) and see how large the kidneys have become in the last year.

They’ll spend their morning at school and then the afternoon at the hospital. We’ll sign in for out patient services and be on our way to three departments, a snack in between, a visit to Nemo, a visit to the Chapel, then we’ll be done. Most likely, just in time for dinner.

The appointments are okay. And hey! There’s free entertainment – movies, story tellers, clowns and video games! The kids are used to the hospital and the tests now, and really, as they get older, the appointments are less stressful. On them. As their parents, we’ve not had the luxury of getting used to the testing because we know it’s just a stepping stone to more.

I’m usually freaked out a few days before and a couple of days after until we know the results. The results will come from Dr. Matter of Fact, and good or bad, it will be a relief to know where we are in terms of heart health, kidney size, and kidney function.

It’s hard to articulate just how it feels to wait for those results. To sound cliché it’s like “a time bomb” or like we’re “waiting for the other shoe to drop” but in a not so cliché way it’s like we are playing an instrument and we can’t hear the music at the time we are playing. When we do hear the music, it is either like listening to Mozart or a bad heavy metal band.

Other clichés we’ve heard and we’ve said at a time like this:

Time will tell.

No news is good news.

The waiting is the hardest part.

And our cliché to describe our parental experience of waiting for test results:

We’ll hear the music when the doctor calls.