Lymphatic Malformation Surgery Chronicles - Tongue Reduction pt. 2

My dad asked me if there was one thing I could do the day before my surgery, what would it be? He said it could be anything… Almost. I told him that I wanted to go to an Astros game. By the way, this was before they got good! So, as with both of my parents, they are so good to me, my dad took me to the Astros game on July 2nd, 2014. I have been a fan of their catcher at the time, Jason Castro, and my dad surprised me with his jersey before the game so I wore that! As with any game that we had gone to in the past, I really like to get there early and see if I can get a ball during batting practice or get a signature from a player. So we were there early and I was standing on the Astros side, And remember they were really bad at the time so it wasn’t very crowded like it is these days. I wasn’t having any success getting a player to come over and it was getting close to game time. My dad hadn’t noticed that Castro wasn’t in the starting lineup, So he had this crazy idea… He sent a tweet to Castro with a picture of me looking out onto the field and wearing his jersey. He said in the tweet that I was having surgery tomorrow and if there’s anyway for him to come down the baseline and find me and give me a signature. This was the photo he sent:

My dad admits that it was a crazy long shot but worth a try since he wasn’t going to be playing in the game. As the national anthem was getting ready to start all of the players lined up as they usually do and took their hats off. I turned to my dad, who was standing behind me a couple of rows and asked him if we should go to our seats. He said let’s just wait until after the anthem. So the national anthem ended and the player started to disburse and my dad says that he was watching Jason Castro and he high-fived a couple of players and after that he started to walk down the first baseline. My dad said he watched him and my dad‘s eyes got bigger and bigger as it look like he was looking for someone specifically as he walked down the line. He came up to me and asked me if I was Zachary and I said yes sir and he said, what would you like me to sign? Me and my dad could not believe it! I handed him my sharpie and asked him to sign my jersey! My dad took a picture and told him that he was a very cool guy for doing this.

Also, a co-worker of my Mom, Dr. Sterchy, had a connection at Minute Maid Park and was able to get a message up on the scrolling screen under the scoreboard for me!

Part 3 willl be about surgery day.