Handing Him Over

DIANE: It was very anxiety-producing for me to try to figure out how was I going to calm him? How was I going to reason with him because two year olds don't reason very well, and keep him still and get him through what he needed to get through. He rose to the occasion but I was very anxious about that part of it. Would you agree with that, that it was harder this last operation compared to the first operation?

BILL: Yes. Having gone through two surgeries to get to the third surgery, and walking into the pre-op. I remember going through the pre-op everyone saying, "This is the big one," and realizing that this was probably the most risky of the three procedures. That was hard, at least for me.

BILL: Probably the hardest part of the surgery is handing Jake over, particularly this third time. The first time we had so little expectations for Jake, because we had been prepared for the worst, we just felt like that any moment we had with him was a bonus. I don't want to say we were detached. To hand him over was difficult, but this time he was a person. He had grown up.