Pirate's Surgery

Everyone,

Today is St. Patrick's day. And my mom's birthday! Happy Birthday Mom! And my aunt's birthday! Happy Birthday Aunt! (March is a big birthday month for us.)

Everyone is wearing green today except for Pirate. He may be feeling a little green, but he's dashing in his little blue gown.

Today is the day of his surgery. He has a hydrocele, which is basically fluid moving from his body to his testicle area. That's no good. So off we went to fix it.

Since it is a surgery, he wasn't able to eat or drink anything starting the night before. His surgery was scheduled at 9:30am so at 8:30am, we show up as requested.

Then we spent an HOUR in the waiting room. He was a jem. They had a few toys to play with. Those little wooden roller coaster things are a lot of fun if you have nothing else to do! He also got a hospital bracelet that he kept trying to pull off. Finally, close to the 50 minute mark, I pulled out my ipod and played some kid movie for him. Of course, I forgot my headphones in the car so it was a silent movie.

Around 9:30 am, they took us back into the triage area and asked me a ton of questions. They gave him that adorable gown and then we waited for the doctor. And waited. And waited. He was a doll again. I put Cars on the ipod for him and he carried it around or sat in my lap and snuggled. He wasn't interested in any books. His thumb was in his mouth constantly. Poor hungry kid hasn't eaten in over 12 hours at this point.

The nurse came back in and chatted with us for awhile. Apparently the surgery before us was more complicated than expected. They put the next surgery in the triage room next to us.

Around 10:45 am, we finally started seeing people. The anaesthesiologist talked to me about what they were going to do. He showed me the mask. He said they would put in some kind of block in his tail bone. It's like an epidural. He won't be able to feel his legs really well.

The doctor's associate came in to check him. Huh, no sign of that hydrocele or a bulging sack. He went back to confer with the doctor. They had me gown up and he walked right into the OR. As I put him on the table, he just hung onto my hand so tight. He was not scared. I was! The doctor talked to me about how often I notice the bulging (every day) and when it's the biggest. I was able to hand him my tracker sheet about when I noticed it and how often. Boy am I glad I wrote that down! He nodded, gave it to the nurses and said, "Prep him."

Pirate did not cry as they held the mask over his face. He just stared into my eyes and then drifted off. So peaceful. What a mellow boy we have. We walked into the OR around 11 am.

I'll admit, it was hard to leave the OR and his little limp body on the table. He looked SO tiny as they all started to work around him and they took me out of the room.

Now it's 11:45 and I am sitting in the waiting room listening to other kids run up and down the hall.

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I wrote the above at the hospital center. Now we are home. The surgery went well. There was a small hydrocele and they closed that off. There was also a small start of a hernia and they fixed that right up. They also cleaned out excess fluid and sewed him back up. Seriously, took maybe half an hour. They brought him out to recovery and he was already awake when I got there.

He was not happy with me though and didn't want to be touched or looked at. I went and made our follow up appointment and left him with his nurse. Everyone was super nice at the hospital and really helped out.

Once I got back to the recovery room, he was ready to see me and be picked up. They gave him some kind of spinal block similar to an epidural so he couldn't move his legs. He just lay limp in my arms and sucked his thumb and held onto his blanket. (They even made note of which thumb he sucks and didn't put any IVs on it.) About 10 minutes later, the nurse offered him some juice. He downed it. Then she gave him a Popsicle. That was gone in a matter of minutes. She gave me all of our discharge instructions and had me look at his incision. It's only about as long as my pinkie. They put stitches on the inside (?!) that will dissolve so no worries about him picking at them. They also put some sort of glue on the outside that will dissolve in about 2 days.

He got another Popsicle and a bunch of stickers and off we went. He was very content to have his Popsicle and get the other kids who were at Lolli's house for the morning. When they got into the car with him, Butterfly said, "I haven't seen you in a long time! I missed you!" and gave him a big hug. Aww! Professor also pointed, babbled a lot, patted his leg, and smiled. It could be because he still had a Popsicle but I'm choosing to believe that it was because he missed him too.

He took a great nap at home, and has been bouncing off the walls ever since. The doctor told me to restrict his activity for the next 2 days. In the 2 hours he was up, I was ready to tear my hair out and he was pretty frustrated too. Tomorrow and Friday are going to be fun, I can tell.

Safire