He's a rock star

Wow, what a stressful day. Don't get me wrong, I get that way more stressful days hit a lot of families, especially SMA families. But today was Kyle's surgery and our first experience with general anesthesia and I was pretty wound up.

It started last night, when his anesthesiologist called to get some background on Kyle, on his current status (healthy, no complaints other than knee contractures), and on SMA. Then, I woke up at 4am today to get us off to Phoenix Children's Hospital at o'dark thirty.

Surgery was scheduled for 7:30am, and the doctors were running early for once. Kyle was pretty thrilled with a rocking horse in the waiting area (I had to prop him on the horse the whole time, of course), but he was less than thrilled when I handed him off to the anesthesiologist outside his OR room.

Seriously. How do parents do that, leave their kids and walk right out of the OR? And let me tell you--I am TOUGH. I have zero trouble stern-talking my kids into blood draws and vaccinations and timeouts. You will be still for x-rays. You will stop spitting. You will sit properly at the dinner table. You will not pick your nose in public. I have no mercy. I'm all kinds of "rules with an iron fist". But sweet Jesus the kid was screaming, "no no NO momma momma MOMMA MOMMA!" and was slumped up against the shoulder of the anesthesiologist (you SMA parents know what I'm talking about when it comes to a stranger handling your type 2 baby) and the tears were a'flowing. I marched out of there seven different levels of brave. Sort of. Unless you looked too closely and then you could see my distraught.

Anyway.

Worst case scenarios would have involved terrific trouble inserting his IV. Requiring use of a ventilator once anesthetized. Even potentially a lung collapse after extubation. Also a 1-2 day hospital stay for observation.

Best case scenario involved no ventilation, no respiratory concerns, short operation.

We got the best case scenario. Surgery was at 7:30am, and he was cleared for discharge by 10:30am. We barely got to spend any time with Jaci and Mike Felix, whose daughter Alexa is going on week 5 in the PICU for severe respiratory illnesses, and I actually was sorry that I didn't get to hang out with them more. They've been stuck in the hospital for over a month, and we consider them good friends and I looked forward to hanging out with them in the parents' lounge. (There IS a parents' lounge, right? Complete with free wi-fi and unlimited bottles of Jack Daniels and chianti? You look confused--is this assumption wrong?)

I got him home, he had a little nibble of food, took a bit of a nap, watched Blue's Clues, ate some cupcakes for dinner (hi, I'm Mother of the Year), and then went to bed early.

I'm going to try to block out the part where this afternoon I dosed him with his Tylenol 3 and he experienced an allergic reaction and I sat there with Lauren's Epi Pen Junior in my hand wondering when it was "shit or get off the pot" time when it came to deciding he was okay enough or just plunging it, and then he stopped with the choking and coughing and seemed okay-ish and I called the doctor and so hey we're going to list "codeine" as a drug he's allergic to from now on.

In any case, he's doing fine tonight. Sleeping (mostly) soundly. At home. No more hives or purple swelling. Lots of Motrin. A decent amount of stitches in places you don't want to know about. Good times.

My hat is off to you more experienced parents, when it comes to surgery and stitches on sensitive man-parts. As it turns out, handing my baby off to a relative stranger while said baby goes into hysterics is my kryptonite....

The only photo I took the entire day, in recovery:


p.s. GO PHOENIX COYOTES. AROOOOOO! First playoff game is Wednesday night, 7pm. I won't be there, unfortunately. Blarg.