Operation

Nico Completed his operation yesterday and the Doc was happy with the results.

We flew to Dallas on Monday, a difficult three hour flight. I don't think there was a single passenger that hadn't said hello to them at least three times. we read books, walked up and down and played dvd's but they were still very restless. I could not wait to get off that plane.

By the time we got the minivan I rented then drove to the hotel and went grocery shopping it was midnight! They were cranky and tired. They did not sleep well. The next day we waited at the hospital for three hours to get the doc to see him prior to surgery. There was not much he could tell until he made the first incision.

They missed lunch and were an hour late for their nap so it took an hour to get them to sleep. I went back to the hospital and paid.

Yesteday the day went very well. The people are SO nice at Childrens medical center. Even the admitting staff go out of their way to please. So different from kaiser California. Nico was relaxed. I had found out what time the operation was scheduled and timed it so when we got there we went straight into the prep room I was not going to sit in another waiting room for two hours with a baby that had not eaten or drunk anything since the previous night!

That worked really well. Nico relaxed. They attached the pulse/Ox and he didn't like that. Then I sat with him on my lap and he started getting really sleepy. Then they gave him the pre-med and he went to sleep.

Not all babies take the pre-med. He drank it all. I sat with him for 30 min's while it took effect then we put him on the rolling bed and he went into into the O/R. Barbara was upset that he was on my lay not hers. I think she felt like she had let him down. The tongue lashing I got about this was just her way of relieving the obvious tension I think. They would not let us go with him, but he was very relaxed so i felt comfortable letting him go.

We went down to the Hostpital cafeteria which was wonderful. On the way Luca saw the model trains running all over the main entrance. He was a little freaked out, but after some lunch took a nice long nap. The restaurant background noise is great for putting babies to sleep.

After two hours they came down and told us the Doc wanted to see us so we went back up to a conference room (unlike Kaiser) where he went over the procedure in private with us. I gave him a second $100 bottle of wine I put on he credit card. I wanted him to be available post op if anything happened and with his personal email address I was "buying" a fast response

The operation went two hours which is about the minimum time for this procedure, so it obviously went well. There was nothing that he was concerned about. He was very confident in his work (and his results prove it).

Last month he was training 80 docs from all over the world. He is very precise and unemotional. He just knows what he is doing and does it well.

Next we went back to the recovery room. Nico was awake and vey out of it. We could not take Luca in with us so we switched out every 10 mins. Nico sucked down some apple juice and promptly threw it all up. The wretching hurt and he was not happy.

It took another hour for the medication to wear off and for them to remove the IV and the monitors. Then we took him back to the hotel.

The dressing is supposed to stay on for a day or so and then fall off. It is taped in place with surgical scotch tape. It looks like a large blister pack of gum, with a bloody red mess underneath.

The first night we had to wake him every 3 hours and give him tylenol or Ibuprofrin. It was a loooooong night. I stayed in a separate room down the hall hoping to get some sleep, but at 3am the phone rang and all i could hear was Nico screaming in pain. In the coming days it would become very apparent that the only position Nico would relax in was on my lap. I Would play him the youtube cartoons I downloaded and he would settle. He did not want Barbara, he wanted his papa or he would scream continuously.