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The Prices' 1998 Newsletter

Late again. Well, we were hoping to send this out as a Thanksgiving letter with Jaedin’s birth announcement, but he missed his Thanksgiving due date by a week or two—and then had a little surprise for us that has dominated our lives ever since. Now it looks like you’ll be getting this after New Year’s. Obviously the biggest news of the year for us is Jaedin’s arrival on December 8! Check out his birth announcement on our website. So we’ll start with a report on Jaedin before getting into some random thoughts on the year. Many of you know of the complications we’ve had since his arrival—the miracle of it all is that we now have him home with us!

Nine long months. All in all, the pregnancy went pretty well—Lindy did a great job putting up with some brutal morning sickness. As we got closer to the due date we had five false alarms with ferry rides into Seattle. The last few weeks of the pregnancy I came home to find the furniture rearranged each day. The doctor gave Lindy the free-for-all to eat whatever she wanted, so she must have had some extra energy to let out. So about two impatient weeks after Thanksgiving and one hour after the ferries had stopped running for the night, I heard the fateful words, "it’s time!" The delivery itself went smoothly—and my initial premonition that we were having a girl, though stifled by an ultrasound a few months ago, was put to a final rest when the doctor showed us our "uniquely cute" baby boy Jaedin! (The first few minutes are deceiving—he has since graduated to "unquestionably cute.")

What the HLS HLHS? It wasn’t until a few hours after Jaedin’s birth that the doctors (thanks to an overly-cautious nurse to whom we probably owe Jaedin’s life) recognized that there was a serious problem with his heart. Jaedin stopped breathing at 3 hours old—luckily he was under close supervision at the time, and he was immediately transferred to Children’s Hospital of Seattle. Lindy was on her feet and running on adrenaline within a few hours. After a nerve-racking wait that night, we found out that Jaedin had a complex congenital heart defect, including Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a condition that was virtually 100% fatal until the mid 1980’s. We were very lucky to have it diagnosed so early, since the general symptoms of the condition often aren’t recognized until after the babies have gone home—when it’s sometimes too late. You’ve probably heard of the most prominent case of HLHS—Baby Fae, the little girl who received a baboon’s heart some years ago. Thanks to some incredible recent medical advances, the condition is now treatable through a series of three open-heart bypass surgeries.

Scary stuff. By far the hardest day of our lives was Monday, December 14. On that day we put our brand new son’s life into God’s hands and into the hands of some of the best surgeons around while Jaedin underwent the first and most critical of the operations he needs. We had been told that his chances of recovering from the first surgery were essentially a coin toss. We felt lucky to have a chance at all, but you can imagine the prayers that went out that day. We were so relieved to hear that he had come off the heart-lung machine and that the surgery had been successful. We did have a few scares during that first night, but his recovery since that time has been nothing short of miraculous.

Our miracle baby. We had anticipated several weeks or even months of recovery time, but we got to bring him home on Christmas Eve, just ten days after his surgery. We couldn’t imagine a better Christmas gift. We feel so incredibly lucky to have him—something like this makes you really appreciate every little detail of his life. Children’s Hospital in Seattle is the regional hospital for children with serious medical problems from a four-state area. We spent the last couple of weeks living there—what an eye-opening and life-changing experience. Every child and every set of parents there have their own tragedy that landed them there and their own way of dealing with it. But interestingly enough, you would be hard-pressed to find a more friendly, humble, open, and in some ways ironically also a happier group of people anywhere. Some people would call us unlucky for having to go through all of this with Jaedin. But you can’t bring your child home from a hospital like that and feel unlucky. So many of the people we met or saw there may not be able to bring their kids home at all, and we see that we really are the lucky ones. It’s humbling to know that things could very well have gone much differently for us, too. Jaedin has turned out to be quite a fighter through all of this. He’s got a lot going for him right now, including some loving grandparents and the best mother around.

On a lighter note. So anyway, here’s the report on the rest of this eventful year: The beginning of the year found us in Arizona, enjoying the so-called Winter. We mistakenly thought our lives were incomplete without a dog and began the year with a search for a timid little puppy. And we came home with ‘Santos’, our neurotic yellow lab. A couple of examples: One time when he saw me driving away from the apartment, he jumped out of our second floor window and chased after the car unscathed. Another time while riding in the car he saw a cat and knocked himself out cold by lunging into the car window. He’s been a much more pleasant roommate lately, ever since we started giving him Bean-O with every meal (no comment necessary.) And finally, his latest brush with fame came while escaping his dogsitter in Seattle a few weeks ago—he attacked (in his hyper-lovable way) a guy who turned out to be Pearl Jam’s drummer and who is reported to have said, "dude, your dog slimed my coat." Right now he’s on vacation at Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Eugene. We’ve discovered that we actually do miss him now, and we look forward to having him back with us soon.

Back to our year. We didn’t get much of a chance to relax in Arizona, since a work shortage there convinced us to take a job transfer to Simons & Li’s newly-created Seattle office last February. We were a little sad to leave Arizona, since we had just begun getting out and exploring again after recovering from what we’ll call my "big blunder" the previous year. It was especially hard for Lindy, since she really enjoyed her job as a nanny for the Giancola family in Scottsdale and was just returning to work. So we said goodbye to our friends with a big barbecue on our last weekend there—my sisters were even able to visit us from Utah that weekend. We ended up moving into an apartment on Bainbridge Island, right across from Seattle. I’ve been taking the ferry into work each day, and luckily the commute on either side is within a short biking distance. The office is above a hotdog stand on Pike Place Market—I look out the window of my office and see (given some visibility) the Market, the Puget Sound, Mt. Rainier, the Olympic Range, and the ferries to our island (makes it easier to time the mad dash.) That’s meant as incentive to come and visit us, by the way. With the job transfer came new assignments with GIS systems and web design, though I am still working on some flood control projects. Work‘s been going great, but I’ve had to take some time off as a result of having a child with our administrative assistant a short time ago. Better said, Lindy has been moonlighting as an administrative assistant in our office. It’s been an interesting new experience for us, and we especially enjoy the times when we’ve been able to commute together on the ferry.

Pass or flunk. . Last April was my big engineering exam in California. I had hoped that it would be the last test I would have to take for a long time, and I was totally relieved to get my engineering certificate in the mail a few months later. But right after that I got a letter from the State Engineering Board telling me to "please destroy the certificate you were sent—it is no longer valid." I was afraid my answer sheets had accidentally been switched with a real engineer’s, and that they were recalling my license as a result. Luckily, as I read on I found out that there had just been a misprint in the seal on the original certificate, and fortunately I will never have to take that test again. Another big event last April was when I went against my better judgment and got married a second time—only this time it’s to the bank, and the deal’s off after five years. So the old Dodge Colt (still running in Utah, by the way) has become a distant memory after being replaced by a younger Japanese model. Apparently the rebound didn’t take very long for the old Colt, though, since I got word of a speeding (!) ticket from my sister the very next day…

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