The night before Nathan's big surgery, Evan's stomach bug unleashed all it's fury - multiple pureed BM's and a 2:30 AM yak session in the middle of our bed! So, with the diaper changes, sheet changes and middle-of-the-night bathing, there was not much sleep for anyone except Nathan that night. Due to Evan's ills, Laura kept him home from daycare while I carted Nathan off to the surgery center solo. He was a real trooper! When it was time to go, he made me proud by going with the nurse and anesthesiologist all by himself. His surgery went very well, according to his doctor, and I was finally called back to recovery.
My son's world was seriously rocked! He was still coming out of anesthesia and moaning, drooling, hurting and scared. I did my best to comfort him, but the nurse did better than I when she shot a little painkiller into his IV. Considering he went into surgery about 9:20 AM, and we left around 12:15PM, I'd say things went quite well. He did puke on the ride home, but no blood was a comforting site. After we got him home, he did pretty well. We started on his hydrocodone and the games began! We soon realized that four-year-olds on narcotics are an emotional roller-coaster, and you never know what you're getting next!
One minute Nathan wanted nothing to drink, no one to talk to him or touch him, and just sat there as glazed over as a dozen Meche's donuts! Next thing you know, he's wanting to go outside, talk up a storm, ask a million questions about a million things, drink a gallon of tea (that's a good thing) and play with Evan. We had to reign in some of his sudden, manic behavior to keep him from hurting himself. We had feared the worst drama would be trying to get him to drink or eat anything. In reality, his biggest first day drama was when he cried 30 minutes b/c we couldn't let him have a cheeseburger! We compromised and let him eat some scrambled eggs and he helped make them with food coloring! (thanks, Dr. Seuss!)
The next two days proved to be pretty good. Evan got over his stomach woes, Nathan became a little more balanced and Laura and I caught up on some of our rest. In the photo below, you'll notice the covering over the left ear. When Nathan was born, the top portion of his left ear was adhesed together, as if someone pinched the top of his ear and it got stuck that way. We said that he was "earmarked" for us by God. We all know that kids can find enough to pick on each other about without giving any obvious reasons to do so. We decided, since he was going to be under anesthesia and his doctor also does reconstructive work, we would have his ear repaired at the same time of the other procedure. We've not removed it yet, but will on Friday.
Thanks for your prayers and encouragement. Continue to pray that Nathan's healing will be quick and complete. The sooner we get him off the drugs, the sooner we can have some sense of normality around here! Come to think of it, the next time he gets the manic talkative thing going, maybe we'll let him call some of his grandparents!!
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