Baby's Surgery

Tom and I got up at 4:30am and left our house at 5:00am to get to the hospital by 6:00am. Of course it was a hurry up and wait situation because they were short staffed in pre-op and only had one nurse checking in all of the "first cases". That was less than fun with a hungry 10 month old. We made it through the hour and a half and then the doctors started arriving for us to sign consents. The anesthesiologist was particularly concerned because of Grayson's cough/cold. She said if this was an emergency to get the chemotherapy started there is no way I would be putting your baby to sleep (so comforting). She let us know that there were risks of all sorts of asthma style spasms and closing of airways that could happen while he was going to sleep and while he was waking up. I took him back at about 7:30am and he got the gas mask which he screamed about but that just helped him inhale more gas and fall asleep faster :)

We were told that the surgery would be about 45 minutes to an hour. They called the waiting room at 8:15 and let us know they had begun the surgery and he went to sleep without complications. Praise God, no problems going to sleep. We were in the waiting room for over 90 minutes before we heard anything else. The anesthesiologist had said they would not bring him to recovery until he was breathing without problems on his own. So, needless to say I was praying hard and posted to FB for everyone else to pray hard as well because we were both feeling anxious.

Finally I saw the doctor emerge (no baby) and he walked over and asked us to step outside the waiting room for a moment. Just an FYI, normally the doctors just talk to you in the waiting room and shake your hand and say everything went great and he's being wheeled to recovery. When he asked us to step outside our initial reaction was that there were complications and that he was probably on ventilators. Thank God he was only calling us out because there had been some minor complications but he was okay and breathing.

What was the minor complication? The doctor was cutting Grayson's neck to thread the cathiter into his facial vein (that's actually the normal part) and one of his tools clamped Grayson's earlobe and caused a bruise/cut on his ear (that was the complication). He is okay, just looks like someone tried to pierce his ear. They also had a hard time finding an IV for a vein so he has several stick marks and bruises from the failed attemps. The doctor had warned us that he was borderline as far as size to do a sub-clavian (below his collar bone) or juggular (neck) entry and he tried to go in under the collar bone first but couldn't get it to work so he had to cut his neck. Unfortunately because Grayson's platlets are so low the area where he poked under his collar bone is very bruised. These things are all very minor in comparison to the complications that could have occured with the anesthesia so we are just rejoicing at this moment.

Grayson has a Double-Lumen or Hickman line which means he has two tubes coming out of his chest and they go into his body up his chest and enter his blood line in his neck area. This is going to be a permanant fixture so please pray for no infections or complications with this line.

Today was just another example of Christ's hand at work to protect out little angel and the power of prayer. Thank you so much to all those praying for our baby. We so strongly believe it is through prayer that our baby will be healed. Please help us give thanks for all of the victories we had in the operating room today.