Surgery Update

Short version for the impatient: Harvey's surgery went fine.

Harvey went to bed later than usual last night, around 9:30pm. It kind of worked out, though, because it gave Mom and Dad time to come down and have Dad give him a blessing. Heather's parents got here just after 10. So we didn't get to sleep until 10:30. Then Harvey woke up around 4am for a while, because he had worked one of his arms out of its sleeve.

Anyway, that's the long way to say that we were tired when we got up at 6am. We were supposed to be at the hospital at 7:30am to check-in. We got there right on time, but they were finishing a fire drill, so everything was a bit behind schedule. After a flurry of nurses and doctors talked to us about different aspects of the surgery, they took him back just after 8:30.

Then began the fun hour and a half of waiting. About 10:15am, they said Heather and I could go back and see him. He was awake and seemed to be pretty comfortable. We gave him some apple juice to make sure he could keep something down. After about 15 minutes, he started crying and then screaming. Later we realized that, even though they gave him some local anesthesia that was supposed to last 6 hours, it may not have worked. Both Heather and her mom do not really get numb from novacaine and similar drugs, which is what they had given him as the lasting numbing agent. So when the short-term anesthesia from the surgery wore off, he really started to feel it. We asked for something for him, and they gave him a low dose of morphine. After that kicked in, he was okay, but that sure was a long 20 minutes. Trying to calm your kid as he writhes in pain is not fun.

They wanted to observe him for a bit after giving the morphine, so we waited in the recovery room a while and Harvey slept. He was doing just fine, so just after 11am, we dressed him and headed out. One thing we were anxious to see was a smile, and although he wasn't in pain and he was looking around alertly, we hadn't seen one yet. On the ride home, he finally perked up and laughed and played with his stuffed Pooh for the whole trip. It was a great relief.

He's been somewhat uncomfortable today, which is understandable, but we've been able to keep him in a pretty good mood overall. The doctor says that kids are usually feeling much better by the next morning, which hopefully will be the case with Harvey.

All in all, things went well. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers.

P.S.: Heather's previous post was posted at 6:30am, not 4:30am. It looks like it got tagged with Mountain Time instead of Eastern Time. She wasn't up all night, although she didn't sleep great, either.