Hernia Operation ~ Carter

We found out the end of 2008 that Carter had a hernia, he was scheduled with a general surgeon to have the operation done in January. The morning of his operation we got up very early and headed into Mary Bridge Hospital, he was very calm and in good spirits. That is..... until we got to the surgical floor, as soon as we stepped through the double automatic glass doors, he started getting upset and telling me he wanted to go home! He calmed down once we got into his pre-op room and you saw that they had toys and cartoons. There is a drug they use to calm patients before an operation, it is also suppose to help to forget the whole procedure. The only problem with the drug is that you run the risk of not waking up well. I informed the nurse that Carter already wakes up grumpy a lot w/o any drugs, so they thought it might not be the best choice for him. The hardest moment was when they rolled him away in his hospital bed. He was looking at me with the biggest, saddest eyes, as if he was thinking "what are you letting them do to me?" That left my stomach in knots, and my anxiety level very high. I then put my heart back in my chest and headed to the surgical waiting area. Mary Bridge has the best way of having ongoing communication during the surgery. They use an innovative real-time Patient Tracking System for families. You simply look for your child's private patient code on the computer screen in the family waiting area to see when he moves from pre-surgery to surgery to recovery. I was very impressed with this system, it is nice to know what is happening during the operation every step of the way. Especially knowing the operation is done!

When the nurse came to get me, It was no shock to hear that Carter had not woke up well and was asking for his mother. I found him with bright rosy cheeks, and lot's of tears! They gave him a boost of pain meds, which doubled as something to make him sleepy! Within a few minutes he had calmed down and was ready to go to his post-op room. He did so well we were able to go home just a couple hours after his operation. The true test was trying to keep him from climbing the walls, as he usually does! We stopped and he picked out a new DVD (Spiderman), which made it easier to get him to lay in bed! The rest of the day he was good about staying down, it was the next day that was a challenge, he didn't seem to understand that he had an incision to nurse! Luckily, those little kids have such tough resilient bodies, and he heeled just fine!