irritation de jour

lately i have several irritations. cole is a lovely baby. but we're almost to week 4 of this nasty nasal congestion, and it's getting worse. this means that he cannot eat, nor sleep for a lot of the time. i feel horrible because even if there were meds available for his age, i couldn't give them to him because just about everything under the sun interacts poorly with propanolol, the beta blocker that is basically keeping him out of a cardiac crisis at any given time.

my other irritation of the day: cole has to have a cardiac cath done next week. i fought it, and told the team that he has to have at least 2 surgeries before he is one year old. our surgeon told us in february that he didn't care if we had another cardiac cath done, because the results wouldn't change his treatment/surgical plan. cole has X defect, which requires Y surgery. simple. so my argument was that he will have no less than 3 rounds of anesthesia this first year of life, and a cardiac cath is an elective procedure and if it didn't change the treatment plan, i don't want it. well, my opinion didn't mean shit, clearly. they overruled me. that i was able to get over, because sometimes during that cath there's something they can tweek that will help him to NOT have to go on the bypass machine during the upcoming open heart surgery. well, fine. that'd be best case, so we'll do it.

our custody agreement right now is that we have temporary custody of him. it's all very confusing, and frankly i don't know that i even know what the official paperwork says, as i didn't read it very closely. but my understanding is that the kiddo is ours, but should he ever require anesthesia, the agency has to sign the anesthesia consent. we sign all other consents. our moron of an adoption counselor/case worker couldn't even give me the justification for this. today they called to get consents lined up for next week's cath. long story short, the adoption case work signed ALL consents saying that the legal dept at PCH is requiring it since our adoption isn't final yet. well, that's bullshit. i'm HIGHLY pissed about this. it's not fair. i feel as though the agency is telling us "here, here's the baby. you pay for everything for him, you put him on your insurance, you raise the damn kid. but when it comes to something important, he's not really your kid. he belongs to the agency."

needless to say i have a TON on my plate right now, and i could be overreacting. but i don't think so. we signed paperwork, notarized it. it says that he's mine, that we have custody of him, and that we're legally allowed to sign every consent except anesthesia.

my plan: i'm going to PCH on monday with said paperwork in hand, and i'm raising hell, dammit.

wish me luck