Sean Update

[Mrs.Starling]

What a day yesterday. I spent 8 hours at Children's Hospital of Central California with Sean. He spent 3 hours in surgery. The hardest part of yesterday was the waiting. The nurse called Wednesday and said Sean could not eat anything after midnight (could only have clear liquids) and couldn't drink anything after 9 am (morning of surgery). Well, Sean has eaten in the middle of the night for at least 6 months. So this was a very difficult thing. The poor little guy hadn't eaten in over 20 hours when his procedure was finally finished. He was a real trooper, though. He didn't really start getting upset until about 1:00 pm. Then, he let everyone in the hospital know he was mad. He procedure was scheduled for 11:00 am. He was not taken into OR until 2:30 pm. We were in the exam room waiting from 11:00 to 2:30. When he started getting really fussy, I walked him up and down the hospital halls. One very kind nurse offered me a wagon to pull him around in. He liked that very much. Finally, about 2:15, a nurse came to give him some medicine to calm him down. He got very silly after that. He was blowing spit bubbles and talking to everything in sight. He swayed from side to side and drooled like crazy. He was so happy to get the medicine. He thought it was food and looked at the nurse like he wanted more. Shortly after that, they rolled him (still in the wagon and talking to stuff)  into OR. Then the waiting game continued. This was difficult. My husband and I ran and grabbed food to go from the cafeteria and went back to sit in the "parents" waiting room. We watched as the door open to notify many other parents that their child had gone into the recovery room and as other parents were called back to take their child home. We sat. We paced. We cried. We fidgeted. We jumped every time the door opened. Everytime it wasn't for us. About 4 pm, the waiting room phone rang. No one wanted to answer it (really didn't know if we were suppsed to). Someone finally did and said, "Are the parents of Sean in here?" My heart sank. Why were they calling and not coming in to talk to us. Where was the surgeon? She was supposed to come in to tell us how the surgery went? What was going on? My husband took the phone and I could see a concerned look on his face. He came back and said that the nurse told him the surgery was going to take longer because the surgeon found something she wasn't expecting. Again, we sat and waited. Finally, at 5:30 pm, the surgeon came in to talk to us. She said that Sean's surgery went well but, she ran into some unexpected things. (I am not going to get into the details because it is unpleasant) Anyway Sean had four procedures done instead of three. The srugeon told us that we would be able to see him in about 30 minutes. That was the longest 30 minutes of our lives. We were called back to see Sean at 6:00 pm. It was so sad to see him wheeled out on such a big bed (not really, it's just that he is so small). He looked at me and gave me the dirtiest look I have ever seen. He looked so sad. The nurse gave him a bottle of apple juice at that point. That was the first time I had seen him smile on his own since about 11:00 am. (He smiled around 2 pm but that was because the nurse gave him the "Dopey" medicine). The nurse took out his IV and gave us his discharge paperwork. Sean got another wagon ride out to the car. He enjoyed that a lot. By then, he was working on apple juice bottle number 2. An hour later, we were at home. I put him to bed and tucked his sister in. My husband and I both crashed by 9pm. The hard part is over, but we still have to deal with the pain. We will have to go back to Children's Hospital again in about a week so that Sean can have a tube removed, but other than that this should be our last visit.

Today, Sean is doing well. Thank you for all of your prayers.