The Surgery, Take Two

 When Ethan is scared, he gets silly.  When your kid is going into surgery, they ask how he reacts when he's hurting or nervous.  My boy's feelings are easily identified if you know him well.  Nerves = baby talk and plain silliness.  Pain = anger and irrationality.

There was quite a bit of silliness.  Especially when we first got there.

 He had freshly knitted socks from Uma and the thoughts and prayers of lots of people - far and wide.  Once he found out he'd be asleep before the IV was put in, he calmed down quite a bit.  As did I.

 Every time someone asks us what his symptoms are, we have him point to the wall.  Then we don't have to say anything.

I was kind of sad to say goodbye to his future career of a circus performer, but so glad to know he wouldn't be hurting any more.  

 At this point I was still okay.  My baby was with me and he was doing well.  They gave him a DS to play with and I tried to explain to everyone that this was a bad idea.  He'll break every bone in his body if it means he gets a DS.
As we got closer to 10, they gave him some versed.  This is to induce drowsiness, relieve anxiety, and aid in memory loss. Then the doc and anesthesiologist came and asked him all sorts of questions.  They should have done that before the DS and the versed.

 He told us all that "Sonic is brave all the time.  He saves the world with his creature powers."    He'd been really positive and matter-of-fact all along, but as they wheeled him away he said, "But I don't like surgery."  And then the tears came.  But not for him.  For me.
We quickly ran down to the cafe to grab something to eat while we waited, but I couldn't even stand to be down there for more than a minute.  I ran upstairs to watch the screen that would tell us where he was in the process.  I watched it change to green - "In OR".  And then we waited.  The whole time I was a bit of a mess, but then I'd look at this couple whose child had been in surgery for four hours already and just be thankful.  It's just an arm.  It's just an hour and a half of our life.  It's nothing life threatening or altering.  But all rationality went out the window when he moved to a pink stripe - "In PACU" - (Post Anesthetic Care Unit).  Because then we waited.  For 38 minutes.  While I knew my baby was waking up.  Last time he was so disoriented and freaking out.  I just kept picturing him like that.  I knew our doc wanted to check on him before he came up to see us, but I figured it would be quick.  I think the reasoning was that he wanted to see if the nerves were working before he got us.  Had they not, he would have taken him back to surgery to see why.
We finally got up there and he was looking pretty good.  He was talking and chowing down his popsicle -getting barked at for eating it too fast.

 We were moved into a room and after a bit he said he was hurting pretty badly.

 They brought him some morphine and I tried to cheer him up with his 02 zebra.  Didn't really work.  But TV did.

 It's crazy to me how fast the meds work.  He was perking up pretty quickly - so much better than last time.

 They gave us our "Goals for Getting Home", and while they weren't easy, this kid was a champ.  I was afraid that when the morphine wore off we'd be a mess again.

 And he was, but turned out that he was mostly just scared about getting the IV out.  We talked about the difference between the pain scale and the scared scale.  He was a 10 on the scared scale, but a 2 on the pain scale.  The lady bribed him with a popsicle and went really slow and he was a champ.

 After a long, but happy, drive home, he was happy to curl up in bed with his new pillow (gift from the hospital) and his sling.

 He slept really well and then I knew we made the right choice to come home.  We never would have slept that well at the hospital.
I slept well too - better than I had in a while.  Even though I was sleeping in Lucas' bed (we won't let Ethan sleep upstairs on these pain meds or in the soft cast).

My baby was okay.  His arm is straight again.  The hard part is over and now he just has to heal.  Luckily, his arm really likes to regrow - and it is so tightly pinned in to place that this time it should grown in the right direction!
My baby?  He's so brave.  He saves the world using his creature powers.  Just like Sonic.