s: October 2009

So Kyler had surgery yesterday. He's had an umbilical hernia since he was little, the hope was that it would close up on it's own. They like to wait until their two to do surgery, and have to have it done before their 3 if it doesn't close up on its own. Kylers was so small that the surgeon was worried that the little bits of intestine that stick out would get stuck, then things would become an emergency situation, and we didn't want that to happen, so we opted to go ahead with the surgery.
So we couldn't feed him anything after dinner on Sunday, and his surgery was scheduled for 1:00pm Monday. I could give him apple juice and water, that's it. You can imagine how long that held him over. Poor guys was supper cranky by the time we got to the surgery center. He kept looking in the diaper bag for treats, he just didn't get why I wasn't feeding him, I felt terrible.

The surgeon ended up having an emergency procedure to do, so we waited for quite some time, but they gave Kyler some loopy juice to help with the anxiety. He was hilarious! When we checked in they put a hospital bracelet on and he hated the thing, the completely tore his first one off and they had to give him another one. But once the loopy juice took effect he thought his bracelet was the coolest things ever. He also had a blast playing with a hair net thing. He kept putting it over is face and laughing. Brian had fun playing the "touch this" game and watching him completely miss his target. It was nice to have some relaxed laughing time with him before he had to go. Then we put him on the stretcher with three nice nurses and watched him roll down the hall, he just waved...it was so cute and so sad all at the same time.

Then the wait. They surgery was actually really short 15-20 min, I can't imagine waiting for hours, 20 min was long enough. Everything went fine, we went into the recovery room and Kyler was one cranky little boy. He was still pretty out of it, so there wasn't much we could do to comfort him, he kept trying to pull his IV out, and pull his bracelet off again. It was hard to have to hold him down and comfort him at the same time. Once they got him all unhooked and ready to go we were anxious to get him outside to see if we could get him to stop crying. No such luck, he was just mad at the world. So we put him in his car seat and drove as fast as was legal (not fast enough). He screamed the whole way home, he hated being strapped down in his car seat. He kept arching back and I kept thinking....."eeee....don't pop your stitches please...." When we got home I unbuckled him and he flung himself on the floor of the car. Sigh, I felt so helpless. We gave him some space, and then Brian went for a long walk with him, it was a nice day and we hoped the sunshine would help. When they got back he was still whimpering, but at least he wasn't screaming. Finally he let me sit on the couch with him and was happy watching cars.

Brian then set out to get he and I food, and fill Kylers pain medication. He got the run around on where he could fill the prescription, so two hours later he got home. I felt so bad for him, thanks Brian for dealing with all that crap when you really wanted to be home with us. While Brian was gone I finally looked at the bandage and got a little worried. It is just a big clear plastic bandage, but is was full of lots of bright red blood. I was pretty sure it didn't look like that when we left the hospital. So then I was worried that he'd popped his stitches. I paged the surgeon and he said to fold up some gauze and tape it over the plastic bandage just to add more pressure to the wound. Then tonight we will remove the plastic bandage and put a large waterproof band aid over it. So hopefully that goes well. We weren't suppose to touch the bandage till his follow up appt next week. So we'll see how that goes tonight.

Then we all just watched movies on the couch and then carried Kyler to his bed about 9:00. We layed him down and just sat with him until he fell asleep. It didn't take long. Brian and I were exhausted and headed to bed shortly after. I thought for sure I'd be up with him most of the night, because he's a tummy sleeper, but he actually slept all night! I could believe it. I kept waking up and turning the monitor up way high so I could hear his breathing just to make sure.

It still hurts him to move his tummy this morning, he doesn't like sitting up, or the process of picking him up or laying him down. I assume because he automatically flexes his tummy muscles. We'll just chill this morning, and then I'll see if I can get him walking around a bit. I'm thinking that some of it is just feeling the bandage there, especially with the added pressure of the gauze. So hopefully he'll get use to it and things will get better .

Thanks to all of you who kept him in your prayers. I know they helped!