Adam's Week

Well I'm not sure why, but blogger won't give me an option to upload a picture... I don't have any specific picture related to this post. Just wanted to post another cute picture of my little guy.

Anyway, Adam's "fun" week started out Tuesday night. He was in the bath when the phone rang. I stepped out of the bathroom for a minute to answer the phone. It was just Doug telling me he'd be working late. I went back into the bathroom and Adam's inguinal hernia had popped out. (I don't want to gross out squeamish people so if you're curious what that is just google it.)

Just as a side note, Adam's had this hernia for a while. We've been dealing with insurance changes so although we'd met with the surgeon at Children's, we hadn't actually scheduled the surgery yet. Usually it was soft and squishy and I could massage it back into place and he'd be just fine.

Tuesday night it was a hard bulge and he'd cry and squirm whenever I touched it. So I called the surgeon's office and the on call doc asked that I bring him down to the ER at Children's. I told Mary and Alex I was going to take them over to the neighbors' house. Mary was excited. Alex begged to go with me so I caved and let him come much to my later regret when he was running around the waiting area like a lunatic.

Poor Adam was in pain and just sat on my lap while I checked him in and while we sat in the waiting room. Every now and again he'd twitch a little bit or readjust his sitting position. At one point he decided to go try to play with the toys in the waiting room, but after limping over to some he wanted me to come get him.

A while later Alex had to go to the bathroom. The restroom had a regular toilet and then a teeny cute little one so Adam wanted to go potty too (sit there for 2 seconds and do nothing). I took off his diaper to let him go and lo and behold his hernia had popped back in all by itself. I checked with the gal at the desk and she checked with the surgeon to see if we could just go home, but he still wanted to see us. Adam then proceeded to also run around like a lunatic.

We finally got called back around 9:30ish (at least there was a TV in the room there to entertain the boys). The surgeon said he didn't need surgery immediately but that we should get it taken care of soon.

So Wednesday I called the surgeon's office to schedule surgery. The only day they had available for the whole month of July was Thursday. So I decided to take it. I hurried and got my work covered for me and found a friend to watch the kids. The friend I was planning on asking was at girls camp since she's the YW president, but I found another friend who was more than happy to do it. Alex was thrilled to go there too since one of the boys is in his primary class and they don't get to play as much as they'd like.

So Thursday morning arrives. Adam is not allowed to eat or drink anything except some apple juice a few hours before surgery. This kid almost always wakes up and asks for milk and pretzels first thing in the morning. He did ask for milk and was easily persuaded to take juice, but he didn't ask for food once that whole day. One of the other doctors walking around the surgery center even mentioned that he had "a lot of energy on no food." (During the actual surgery I was reading an Ensign article and realized that they Lord had just been "lightening my burden." It was hard enough to just keep him happy once they'd checked us in before the actual surgery started.)

The "receptionist" was a grandfatherly man who made an ID bracelet for Tiger too, which was really cute and made Adam more excited to get one. They let me go into the room with them until they put him under. He wasn't too thrilled with the mask even when we tried to let Tiger do it first. So we had to lay him down and put the mask on, which made him cry. That wasn't exactly the shining moment of my day.

The surgery took about an hour and a half. He had a hernia on both sides that had to be repaired. The left side was pretty straightforward and easy, but the right side was more complex than your typical hernia repair. Fortunately we had an excellent surgeon who is the chief of her division.

After the surgery they kept an eye on him for another 90 minutes or so. Most of that time he slept in my lap (it was nap time after all and he'd just been drugged). A 13-year-old boy was having the same surgery (one side only) and got out of surgery much sooner, but we left before he did. Of course maybe toddlers don't realize they're "supposed" to hurt down there as well as a 13-year-old would. Plus I could carry Adam out to the car. It'd be hard to carry a teenage boy.

Adam was running around mostly like normal at home that day. He even tried jumping on the bed. The only problem was that he was still a little whoozy from the anesthesia so we had to keep an eye on him so he wouldn't fall down the stairs or something like that. He's still a little sore occasionally so he still gets some Tylenol and Motrin a couple times a day, but otherwise he's doing just fine. He really is a healthy little boy.

I am very grateful for Steri-Strips... They're a wonderful invention. It looks kind of like tape they just put over the little incisions so he has no stitches or staples or something like that. You just wait several days and then they fall off on their own.

More importantly, I'm grateful that I don't have to go through this all the time. I honestly don't know how some parents handle the stress and worry of having their kids undergo a bunch of surgeries, especially really scary ones like open heart surgery or brain surgery. I do transcribe reports for a few pediatric neurosurgeons, and I've always felt sorry for those parents. I feel even more sympathy for them now that I've had to go through a little teeny bit of what they go through.

So here's hoping we'll have a much more fun week this week. And in a little over a week and a half we get to see "Gamma and Bampa" anyway so it's all good.