Christopher’s surgery

We love ACH!

I wanted to document Christopher’s surgery! It was last Thursday – March 28th. We headed to Little Rock on Wednesday afternoon. My parents met us there; my dad had been to an appointment in Hot Springs earlier that day. We met up with my sister-in-law, Britney, and ate at Cantina Laredo in Little Rock. One word… yum. We love Cantina Laredo.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Presidential in Little Rock… it’s just a few miles from Children’s and they offered us a really good rate since we were there for a procedure at the hospital. We were supposed to be at ACH at 7:45 on Thursday morning. We were called back to a room pretty quickly and Christopher changed into his special new pajamas. Several nurses came in doing pre-op stuff, as well as a doctor (not the attending, but one of his surgical residents) and the anesthesiologist. All of the staff at Children’s are SO nice! It was really a great experience.

Playing in the pre-op waiting room before being called back to a private pre-op room.

We spent almost two hours in the pre-op room waiting on everything to start. Christopher was being so sweet and funny. He did so great waiting on everything. There were only two people allowed in the room at a time so Stephen left and left my parents take turns coming back to visit for a few minutes. Christopher hadn’t had anything to eat or drink all morning long and it was 9:45 before they gave him some of the “goofy juice” to help him relax. He was pretty funny on the juice… like a little drunk three-year-old. Hilarious! About 10 minutes after they took him back to surgery! We were told it would take about an hour, then he would be moved to recovery and when he woke up we would be called to the recovery area.

 
Waiting in the pre-op room. 
  
The one above is blurry, but he was giving me a kiss. The one below is him hiding. “Mooommmy! I hide!”

The pictures below are after he had the goofy juice and was being taken back to surgery. You can tell by the look on his face that he isn’t quite his normal self. Just feelin’ good…. haha!

 

I would say the surgery took between an hour and an hour and a half. It seemed to go by pretty quickly. Stephen and I got ourselves some breakfast and visited with my parents. There was a couple from my church whose son was also in surgery that morning and several members from my church were there to support them, including our pastor and a deacon. {They had no idea that Christopher was in surgery on the same day; neither me nor mom had mentioned it.} They sat with us for awhile and prayed with us during and after the surgery.

The doctor eventually came out and let us know that the surgery was over and successful! There was a possibility that they might need to do an additional surgery to complete the procedure, but it was not necessary in Christopher’s case. We are thankful for that… one surgery will do just fine, thanks!

About 10 or 15 minutes after the surgery was over, they called us back to the recovery area. It is a big room partitioned off by curtains where they take the patients directly after surgery. Christopher was awake and sitting in a nurse’s lap. He cried when he saw me (a very sad, painful, scared cry that broke Mommy’s heart) and I was able to sit in a rocking chair with him while the nurse watched his vitals and gave him pain medicine for about 45 minutes to an hour.

He was able to drink apple juice – the nurse said he had gulped down a bunch of juice right after he woke up and she actually ended up taking it away because she was afraid that much juice all at once would make him sick! Ha. I didn’t bother telling her that we still water down his juice at home – not to mention he loves juice anyway – so when he was given the opportunity to have “full-flavor” juice he drank it all before she could take it away and water it down! He also got to eat a good portion of a yummy popsicle. :) Poor thing, he would eat a few bites then put it down even though he liked it and wanted it… he just didn’t have it in him to finish it all.

 

Only two people are allowed in the recovery area at a time, so Stephen took turns with my parents and they came back one at a time for a few minutes.  Stephen made a phone call to his mom to update her on everything, then came back and stayed with us until they moved us to a post-op private room.  The nurses in post-op allowed my parents to come in so that all four of us could sit together. We were in that room for maybe 30 minutes. They gave us all of our post-op instructions and called in an order of oxycodone to the ACH pharmacy. Christopher got a bit more juice and was offered another popsicle but he didn’t eat any of it. I would guess we were in that room maybe 30 or 40 minutes total? Then they took out Christopher’s IV, waited on the doctor to sign off on our dismissal, and gave us our walking orders! Before we left, I ran to the pharmacy to pick up the oxycodone prescription.

We left out of Little Rock immediately and headed home. Christopher threw up right after we hit the interstate – just a tiny bit – and then he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until about an hour away from Mena. He cried for about two minutes asking to get out of his car seat then fell back asleep and stayed asleep till we got him out of his car seat at home! We got home around 4ish and he stayed up for awhile watching “choo-choo” and snuggling. He had a little bit to drink and some crackers, but threw them up not long after he ate them. I have a suspicion that he was reacting to the oxycodone the same way that my mom and I do – it makes us throw up, too. Both times that Christopher was sick and threw up, he had been given a dose of oxy within an hour before.  So - I didn’t give him any more oxycodone and called the doctor’s office the next morning to get a different pain medicine.

Watching choo-choo after we got home.

On Thursday night, Christopher was just pitiful. He didn’t feel well and was probably in a little bit {or a lot} of pain. He wasn’t happy laying down, sitting up, being held, etc etc… he laid down but didn’t really sleep, wanted up, wanted back down… he ended up falling to sleep around 7 and slept for a few hours then was awake again for a few hours. Around 11:00 (I was so exhausted and so was Stephen) he actually told us he wanted to put up his toys (some little cars he had been playing with on the sofa) and go to “seep.” (So cute… he feels the the need to rub his eye when he’s talking about going to bed or being sleepy.)

His recovery has gone wonderfully! No complications and he has just been in the best mood. On Friday you would have never guessed that he had had surgery the day before. The actually surgery (in the best way that I can put it) consisted of going through his belly button with a camera to find the test.icle, then making a very small incision in his pelvic area to bring the test.icle down, then they used a few sutures to put it in its proper place and keep it there. Amazing that they were able to do all that in just an hour, all via laparoscope, and Christopher was able to go home the same down and run around the next day like the wild 2-year-old that he is.

We love our sweet boy SO much and we are so thankful that everything went so smoothly and that Christopher is home safe and sound!