Hayden's Surgery

June 26, 2012....Hayden's first Hospital Stay.  Tonsils & Adnoids removed. 

Check in was at 9:30.

New markers & coloring book from Mama GG to keep us busy pre-op.

 My post-preemie who had RSV this winter bought himself some Albuterol pre-anesthesia.

 Notice above his eyes look pretty dazed.  He is about 10 minutes into some Versed.  They give the kiddos Versed prior to relax them.  Make taking them back easier.  Make things not scary.  Livi had some with eye surgery too & its one thing I specifically made sure they were going to do.  He got pretty goofy.  Wanted to run & play but we had to hold onto him while he walked, he was stumbling around like a drunk.  It made him pretty silly.  I think the Versed is 1/2 to relax the kids & 1/2 to relax the parents... well maybe not, but its kinda nice sending your kid off after 10 minutes of laughing at & with him.

They took him back for surgery at 10:50.  We were told 30 mins for surgery, 30 mins for recovery.  They give them breaths of gas to put them to sleep & then put their IV in afterwards.  So we figured adding all of that in, we'd see him in 1.5 hours.  But Dr. Allen was in our room already at 11:15 to tell us she was done.  Surgery went great.  Those tonsils were SO ready to come out {her words} & his adnoids were very enlarged too.  He had almost no bleeding.  Yay!!  Recovery seemed to be a little longer than 30 mins & we changed rooms from our outpatient room to an inpatient room.  But we had him in our arms within an hour of when he left.  Another awesome thing was that 2 of my old friends from working at Creighton work in the PACU at Boys Town now.  So on my walk down to our new room I saw an old friend AND the gal who handed him off to me I know & love too.  Thanks for taking great care of my baby!! 

He wanted his daddy.  He fell asleep half sitting up & laying on Jeff's legs. 

They don't mess around post-op.  They woke him up for Tylenol.  And stuck a Sprite in his mouth almost instantly.  Awesome that they let us pick Sprite for a fluid choice.  Pop in & of itself for him is like bribery.  He drank that first bit so fast.  I think the cold carbinated bubbles felt good.  We were actually pacing him because we didn't want him to drink too much too soon & puke.  We brought extra clothes & things along remembering Livi puking post-op & knowing he is usually such a puker.  But he never did!!

He was eating popsicles by 1:00.

Applesauce by 3.  And we were chasing him down the halls by 4.

 Chasing!  As in trying to keep up with him with his IV pole {AKA his robot} while he ran round & round this table in the toy room "shopping."

 He had a great time playing.

 Trying to get him to say "cheese!"

To distract him from thinking he needed to eat & eat & eat, he opened his present from mom & dad.

Sad that it had to be surgery-induced, but we had a really great time having some one-on-one time with Hayden.  He is just such a fun little guy.  We had to laugh out loud when we were trying to ask him about his pain level.  He called his tonsils & issues in his throat his "owie puke." So we were talking about the Dr. taking his owie puke out to make him all better & he looked at us as if we were dumb & said "No... they're still in there."  Poor buddy.

By the end of the day he had drank 3 pops & a juice box.  Eaten 2 popsicles.  4 cups of applesauce.  5 or 6 tubes of Go-gurt yogurt.  And was begging for more.  So I snuck him some raisins.  Seriously he probably would have eaten a hamburger if I had had one.  Keep in mind she told me she didn't care if he didn't eat for 3 days as long as he was drinking.  Ha!

He slept kind of restless & they woke him up every 4 hours to stay on top of pain medicine.  Which ment not much sleep for mommy (who is not complaining because daddy went home to bed so he could get up & roof our house in the 109 degree heat starting at 6am)  But he was up & drinking at 0730 & ready to play.  Infact I had to drag him out of there, out of the toy room.  "I don't want to go home, I'm still playing!" 

We were on the road about 10:30 on Wednesday.  Stopped at the store for some Omnicef (antibiotic for 5 days post-op), some Tylenol, some Sprite, Mac & Cheese & popsicles. 

He had a good day today.  Ate lots of yogurt, some Mac & Cheese, string cheese, fruit snacks & cinnamon rice.  Drank like a rockstar.  Took a great nap & went to bed easy.  He had a few down moments where he was fatigued or irritable.  But 90% of the time you would never know anything ever happened.  I was warned of a day 2 or 3 regression, so to be prepared.  But hopefully tomorrow will keep trending up & he will be back to 100% soon!

I can't say enough good things about our experience with Dr. Allen at Boys Town West. 

Nor can I say enough good things about how much Hayden amazed us.  He was such a big boy, so brave & did such an amazing job!!