BILL: We start fighting about a month and a half before the surgery.

DIANE: It's really sad but very true. We fight. We really do, [yeah, there's a lot of stress] which is awful. It's the worst way you can cope, but it's the way we seem to do it.

BILL:And we do it well.

DIANE: We drink a lot of coffee, and we're sick to our stomach a lot, chronically pretty much. Wouldn't you say?

BILL: We've actually talked about it. I stuff everything and just fight. Diane wants to talk about it.

DIANE:Bill sleeps and I pace. We have wonderful coping strategies.

. . .

DIANE: You pack the bags and you try to set up arrangements for your other children as best you can. This time this third surgery made a real conscious decision that Bill would be at the hospital less and with Matthew as much as possible, and the heck with work, which was the first time we had the guts to say that.

The heck with work. You just don't need to be there. That was hard, so you try to make arrangements for the other kids and try to prepare them, which is hard. Matthew is old enough to ask a lot of questions and to sense Mom and Dad are really on edge, and asking us questions about whether Jake would live or die. That was very hard to answer. So in the midst of you coping with this enormous stress yourself, you deal with that.

You just try to keep yourself busy, the days before. The night before I think Bill falls asleep at about seven, and I stay awake until at least four or five. I don't think I slept that whole night before his third surgery. Plus, you really need to be up and out of the house by four-thirty in the morning to get there on time.