Strangers with Knives

A week and a half ago we took Baby B up to Primary Children's Medical Center for his first surgery. He was the Perfect Patient! We were in and out in under 4 hours (closer to 3, If I am remembering right) and all in all it was a pretty good experience, even though I did have to hand my precious baby over to strangers with knives.

So, here's the rundown. We arrived at the hospital and checked in at Same Day Surgery at 7:30 AM. This is because Baby B is little and they didn't want to make him fast for too long. It was interesting to me to see who was there at 7:30, B was the first Baby on the schedule, but there were 4 or 5 other children there prior to him, all of whom seemed to be physically or mentally impaired in some way, it made me happy to know that the hospital considered not only age, but other factors as well, when they schedule surgeries. After waiting for a little while B was Weighed and Measured- would it surprise you to know that we have a healthy, big and tall boy? We were given some hospital jammies to put on him, which he enjoyed.

I call this "Preparing to be Superman", he looks like he can fly, doesn't he?

"Mom, I need to do my crunches!" He kept doing crunches during his pre-surgical physical, the Nurse Practitioner was quite impressed.

I got to dress J in his hospital jammies before his surgery 2 years ago, so Ken got to dress B. He did a good job, don't you think?

So, B was declared healthy enough for surgery, and after a little more waiting he was taken away from us and we went to sit in the parents waiting room. Dr. Hill, the ENT, told us that he would put the tubes in first, then he would take a look at B's adenoids and if they were abnormally large- as he suspected they would be- he would take them out. He believed the whole process would take 30 minutes. He was right. Within 30 minutes he was consulting with us in the waiting room, and we were told that Yes, the adenoids had been taken out. Not much more than 15 minutes later I was ushered into the Post Anesthesia Care Unit where I sat for 5 or 10 minutes with B while he came out from under the anesthesia. He did very well. Compared to my experience with J at this point, B did 1Million times better. He was able to keep his Oxygen levels stable and was sent to Post Op quite Quickly.

We had to stay in Post Op for about an hour, because B had been given Lortab and they wanted to make sure he didn't react badly to it. He was given some clear liquids to drink and he kept them down. In comparison- J threw up 2 or 3 times and we had to keep waiting and trying again. Ken and I came prepared to be vomited on- we had extra clothes for us packed out in the car just in case. B was kind, what a good boy he is. And so after the appropriate amount of time B was released from the hospital and we headed home (via Aunt Deb's house and a party which we attended there while B napped)

Does this look like a boy who has just had surgery? Well, he did!

Thanks to Aunt Deb and Grandma Turner for taking care of J while we were at the hospital. And a special thanks to everyone for all your prayers and support. As I said a little earlier, it is very hard to hand your baby over to strangers with knives, but I feel like I was blessed with comfort and a feeling that everything would work out. And it has.