Surgery Success!

Some of you have probably already heard most of this, but for those who haven’t, I’ll give you the complete play-by-play. :-)

Ian was not allowed to have any solid food after midnight, no formula after 6, no breast milk after 8, and nothing but pedialyte and clear juice between 8 and 10am. He went to bed “as usual” last night and was up at 1:30 to eat. I was debating all day whether I was going to take the children’s hospital nurse’s advice and give Ian a bottle of formula at 5:50 to get some extra staying power in his liquid diet. I decided I would, and when I got up at 5:40, he was SOUND ASLEEP and I had to wake him. When I offered him the bottle, he got very angry with me and completely refused the bottle, so I gave it up and nursed him for 20 min. He hardly nursed at 7:50, and then only had ¼ of a pedialyte popsicle and a few sips of pedialyte and juice before 10.

At 9:30, mom’s defribulator machine started beeping at her, so we had some extra excitement calling her device clinic, hooking her up to the phone line and downloading her, and then waiting to hear back from the nurse about why the thing was beeping. Turns out there seems to be a problem with one of the wires and she has to go in to see the doctor tomorrow and get it figured out.

Anyway, we packed up and left the house at about 10:15. Even though it was only a 40 minute drive and we didn’t have to be there until 12, Ian was getting very tired and fussy, and when we’re home and he’s tired, he thinks he MUST nurse in order to fall asleep, so we had to get out of here. He went right to sleep and we drove around until 11:40, letting him nap the late-morning away. We arrived and checked in, they whisked us away into the pre-op area where Ian was changed into a hospital gown, weighed, height measured, temperature taken, lungs listened to, and plain old got used to the surroundings. Roger had Ian in the hip hammock because I did not want to hold Ian much today. When I’m holding him and he’s hungry, he gets VERY frustrated that he can’t rip my shirt off and get to the goodies… He was calm and content hugged up against daddy’s chest, so we went with that!

They ushered us into the “playroom” which was really just a holding area for all the kids in line for surgery. Ian THOROUGHLY enjoyed the exersaucer they had in the room, and got to know another little boy who was waiting for his tubes, too. The anesthesiologist came in (hey, I just spelled anesthesiologist right on the first try!) and SHE explained that Ian would receive a mask with “magic gas” and after he was asleep he would get a shot in his hand of ibuprofen. The surgery would last about 10 minutes and then he would be taken off the mask and would wake up in recovery. Then Ian’s surgeon came out and met with us. SHE repeated all the same things. The nurse came to get Ian, he went RIGHT to her, he didn’t even look back at me after we kissed him and told him we loved him! Eight minutes later, the doctor came and found us in the waiting room and explained that Ian was all done and in recovery already!! He had no fluid in his right ear, but his left ear was full of fluid, and just waiting for the antibiotics to wear of to start up another infection. Dr. Casselbrant confirmed that doing tubes was the best treatment for Ian, after seeing that his left ear had not cleared of the fluid after 3 ½ weeks of antibiotics. Another 15 min. passed and they (finally) came to get us to come back to the recovery area. (All along they had been saying that they would bring me back BEFORE he woke up, so that he didn’t freak out when he woke and mommy wasn’t there…) He was doing his hysterical “where’s my mommy” crying when we got back to him, and he was REALLY glad to see us. He nursed immediately and seemed to be happy as could be as soon as he got some food in his belly.

He was discharged and we were on our way by 2:00. He was SO happy and pleasant this evening, I don’t know if it was his ear finally feeling better or him just being happy to be home, but it was nice.

We are so thankful for the love and support from all of our family and friends. We really felt uplifted. Thank you so much!

Love,

Susan, Roger & Ian