J has kept you all very well up to date with what has been going on whilst I have been at SGH with Massimo. This morning he went down for an echo of his heart to double check something that they thought was smaller than it should have been at his last scan but which it was assumed he would grow out of. We thought they were checking on whether his heart had anything to do with his bronchomalacia (ie whether it presses on the lungs in some way). The result is that his heart is perfectly normal.
We thought that we were off to GOS this afternoon, so we hurried to and from the cardiology department which is at the other end of the hospital and came back to be told that we had been bumped off the list in favour of a newborn who is leaking spinal fluid. We were disappointed but the doctors and nurses at SGH really tried to compensate by trying to organise the lasering of his granuloma. This was about 11 am. At 2.00 pm they came to tell me that GOS had called saying that there was a bed and that we could go over any time after 3.00 pm. Transport was organised and due to arrive at 4.00 pm. 
At 3.00 the ambulance men appeared on the ward. I had asked one of the nurses to call J to tell him that our move to GOS was on again, but when I called in a panic to tell him to get on the tube double quick he had no idea what I was talking about. By the time we were packed up and ready to go with portable suction, oxygen and the little man on a huge big stretcher and got downstairs in the lift, J was waiting for the lift to come up, so fabulous timing. We were taken to GOS in the ambulance, neenars and everything (to quote Zoë), but it wasn’t quite as exciting as the first time as we weren’t really in a rush.
GOS is very smart and Massimo is in a big cot on a ward, with a nurse all to himself. The shunt is scheduled for early afternoon tomorrow, Massimo is third on the list. The surgery will take about an hour and there will be a horse shoe shaped scar on his head and a cut in his abdomen. We have been warned that it will be quite painful for him and that they will be giving him serious pain relief (well, as much as you can give a tiny person!). I have to admit that I had done very little reading about the shunt and I learnt a lot about it this evening. Much of which I find quite difficult to accept, the hardest of which is the fact that the shunt will be there for life.
Tomorrow will be a tough day.