Surgery Day

So it started out to the blaring alarm before the sun was even up this morning. Boy, I did not want to get up. I made it though! LOL! I went to get Sam up and he immediately sat up, and when I said it was time to go he said, "Yea!" He is not a morning person either so this was very surprising. We got in the car and headed to the hospital. The sun was just starting to come out so we got to see the sunrise. He thought it was cool, but then reminded me he had already seen the sun rise before when he stayed up all night at a sleepover at Justin's house. :)

We got to the hospital and no one was there to check us in! We waited for like 20 minutes and someone finally came. They then took us back to our "room". The nurse was really nice and we found out it was his principal's mom! Cool! She promised him that nothing she did to him before or after the surgery would hurt him at all, so he was happy about that. After a little bit they took us upstairs to the pre-op room. Several people came over and talked to him and made him laugh, etc. They asked if I thought he would be fine getting his IV before the sedation (last time they wanted to wait until he was asleep). I told them I was sure he would be fine, he has had lots of needles in that little body and is pretty much as used to it as you can get. They, of course, had a hard time finding his vein, (they never are easy to find in him)but they numbed it and got it in the first try. He was perfectly fine. All of them were gushing over how brave and cute he was. People would just come over and tell us that they never have kids that do that well for an IV and he was a great little kid. We know that already, of course. :) They let me stay back there this time for quite a while. Last time they ushered me out really quickly and I didn't get to see any part of it. So they gave him his IV meds while I was there and the nurse (who was a little bit loony) told him he was about to get silly. Of course I had to go into the fact that he already WAS silly.... A few minutes later he started looking at his hands all funny and doing some strange things. Then he just started laughing and laughing. It was pretty funny, but I was a little weirded out at the same time. I've not seen him like that before! We all couldn't help but laugh at him. I also have no clue if he even realized that I was trying to say bye to him, etc. It was pretty silly all right!

I then went to the waiting room and they took him back. They called me around 7:50 and told me they had started the surgery. Last time it went pretty quick and he was done in like 20 minutes so I figured I wouldn't have long to wait. An hour passed and they still hadn't called. I was getting a little nervous at this point. I guess I should have asked how long it would take. I brought a book to read, but I couldn't concentrate too much. I probably read the same page several times. I don't really like the book that much, even though it is by one of my favorite authors, but it is probably because I was mostly tense and not able to concentrate, especially when it was going longer and longer and longer. Finally about 9:20 they called and said they had just finished and the doctor would be out to talk to me soon. He came out and said it went great, he was doing fine and he had minimal bleeding. He said that the sinuses were much worse than they looked on the CT and that his top ones were very swollen and infected. He cleaned them all out and is basically letting them drain. He said in an adult he would have done much more work, but since he was a child then less is better. I just hope doing less fixes him so we don't have to do this again to fix more stuff. He ended up putting some sort of postage stamp size brace in there to hold everything in place and we go back Wednesday to get that taken out, etc.

It took quite a while (I guess he slept for a long time) and they finally called me back to meet him. It's really hard to see him the first time after he comes out. He doesn't look like himself at all and he looks so small and sick. He whimpered most of the way down, but couldn't seem to talk so we could find out what was wrong. When we finally got down to his "room" he managed to croak out that his nose hurt so bad. They hurried and brought him some pain medicine, which he had a hard time swallowing. I don't think his face was working too well. After the medicine he went back to sleep for quite a while. He kept whimpering throughout his sleep. Finally, he woke up and said I want to go home now. At that point we still had to do all the getting ready to go home stuff, so we didn't leave until after 12:30. Last time we were home before 10:00 so we were a little surprised that we were there so long. Before he left he told his nurse, "Thank you for taking care of me". Did I mention that he is so sweet??? She told him that she was going to call his principal and tell him how good he was and that if all her patients were like Sam then she would have an easy job. Everyone commented on how well-mannered and sweet he was. I have a good kid! :) We finally got to leave. I went out to bring the car around and the nurse wheeled him out in a wheelchair. She had given him a popsicle and he was trying to eat it, but his nose had started oozing and bleeding everywhere. He was having a hard time trying to eat his popsicle and hold a kleenex to his nose, so I rolled up a kleenex, stuffed it under his nose and "taped" it there with a band-aid! It looked pretty funny! We had to go t a special pharmacy to get one of his medications so we drove there and did that. It took forever! We then drove through Wendy's and I got some food and he got a frosty. He didn't even eat half of it and then fell back asleep. We got home and he seemed to be doing ok.

After a little bit the phone rang and it was a kid asking for Sam. I thought it might be a friend from church to see how he was doing. It was actually our neighbor asking if Sam could come play. They haven't seen each other this summer and Sam said, "Yeah!" Then he suddenly realized that he couldn't. He looked so sad and I could tell he was going to be upset. I told him they could play as soon as he was feeling better. He started getting teary, but i told him it was probably a bad idea to cry. His friend came over and dropped off a Birthday Gift and that helped ease his sadness. Thanks, Riley!

A little while ago, he started complaining that he needed to blow his nose, which of course, he can't do. We irrigated his nose and did some spray to get all of that stuff oozing out again. I made another one of my nose plugs and he felt better for a few minutes, but then it went right back to feeling yucky. Poor kid. I gave him some pain medicine and hopefully that will help ease the discomfort and he will go to sleep. He was just starting to doze when I checked on him a few minutes ago. Hopefully this week will go fairly easy and he can be back to himself, nooo, better than he normally is, soon!

Thanks for thinking of us today!!!

Here is a pic of his homemade nose plug. He wanted me to take the pic, so don't think I am terribly mean!