Brendan's Surgery

I know it was so long ago, but Brendan did have his surgery on May 12th, and Caleb cooperated nicely by staying in my belly at this point. It was a tough day for a 22-month old who didn't really understand what was going on.

Our morning started really early as we had to be at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning. Luckily for me, my mother was in town to help me through it all. We packed ourselves breakfast to eat during surgery, but Brendan was not allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight.

When we got to the hospital, they weighed and measured Brendan, then gave him a gown to wear. The gown was purple, and with his curly hair grown out in the back and his pretty long eye lashes, everyone thought he was a girl. They let him play in a play-room with toys while waiting. His nurse brought him a stuffed bear with scrubs when they took his blood.
The hardest part of the morning was not getting anything to eat or drink. It was 9:00 before they finally took him to the operating room. He was very unhappy, screaming crying, all he wanted was his milk! Finally, the anesthesiologist came in to talk with Brendan; he saw how upset he was and ordered some medication to “calm” him down. Everyone was very caring; another nurse brought Brendan a Ty Beanie Baby Kangaroo for him to take into surgery with him.
Half an hour after ordering the medicine, it was finally brought in. Brendan, who usually takes medicine fairly well for me, spit out most of it. I was afraid it wasn’t going to work since I couldn’t tell how much he got, but sure enough not 5 minutes later he was not longer screaming. We were doing the itsy-bitsy-spider and he would sway on my lap and laugh when he would almost fall off. He would spin in circles and not be able to walk; my kid was giddy and drunk! When the anesthesiologist came back in to check on him, Brendan went to him easily, gave him hugs and had no problem leaving me, I’m not sure he even knew who I was at this point!

My mother and I went a bought a cup of coffee and waited in the waiting room for the surgery to be over. I was called back when they were done and I was able to hold him but he was still pretty out of it. Once he was stable enough to go back to recovery in pediatrics, they wheeled him off. Recovery took longer than expected; Brendan had a really hard time waking up. He only wanted me to hold him, Grammi would not do. Of course, I am very much pregnant at this time and have to pee almost every half-hour. I noticed a few hours into recovery that he was feeling warm and getting a fever.
Our pediatrician was so great and came to the hospital to check on him even though he was technically another doctor’s patient at this time. Turns out Brendan was sick going into surgery, we did not realize he had a viral infection. Luckily they sent us home and didn’t make us stay the night.

Brendan recovered well, after two days he was starting to be back to himself again. Although he didn’t feel up to running around, we could tell he was feeling better. Now his scar is healing well, the hernia is all gone and we have a two inch scar in its place.