Before my memory gets too hazy, I wanted to get this 'on the books' for the record.
Last Tuesday, Rohan went in for surgery. He had a hydrocele/hernia repair. He's had the hydrocele for a long time, since he was in diapers, and we had taken him in to have it looked at when he was little. Apparently these things are often self-correcting and so we were told to just watch it. Well, I watched for several years and it didn't appear to improve, but seemed to be worse, in my estimation. So, a few weeks ago, I took him back in to the Dr. This Dr. told me that if it hasn't corrected itself by now (he's almost 5 years old), then it will not correct itself and leaving it uncorrected is as good as asking for a hernia in the future, if he didn't already have one.
So, he recommended a specialist for us. We went and this specialist told us that it was indeed a hydrocele and already had an accompanying hernia and should be repaired. He took one look at my very round, pregnant torso and asked, "When is this baby coming?". I told him that it was due in about 5 1/2 weeks and he recommended that we fix Rohan ASAP so we won't be worrying about having a baby and having a little boy in surgery at the same time. A wise plan, I thought.
He scheduled the surgery for less than a week later and off we went for a few days of anticipation.
Monday night arrived. Surgery was scheduled for the next morning. My parents had graciously volunteered to take Mac and Ella and let them sleepover at their house, as we had to be at the hospital with a sleepy little boy at 5:30 a.m. Dustin took the day off work and both Rohan and I were very glad he was there. (Rohan has become quite the little daddy's boy in the last few months.)
We woke early, got ourselves ready and woke Rohan. He couldn't have anything to eat or drink and so we rushed him out the door before he could remember that he should be eating breakfast. He was sleepy and wary at the hospital. He didn't want to watch T.V. or do anything except sit on his dad's lap, or sit on mine and play with my hair. We got him dressed in his little hospital jammies and when the anesthesiologist came, he told us that Rohan would need to drink some medicine that would help him relax. In fact, he said it would make him "punch drunk". I said something to the effect of, 'Good luck with that one... Rohan won't even drink liquid Tylenol. He hates liquid medicine and he does much better swallowing a pill.'
The doctor was quick on his feet and told Rohan that if he could drink this very yucky tasting medicine, then he WOULDN'T have to have a shot, but if he couldn't drink it, then he had to get a shot. Rohan thought he could probably drink it.
They brought in the medicine and the mean nurse gave me the syringe to squirt in the back of his mouth. :( I gave it to him and I thought for sure he was going to throw it back up. He was gagging and crying and I felt like the bad guy. He kept saying over and over, "I wish there was no such thing as this stuff!" Poor little dude.
A few minutes later, they had us put him in the bed-on-wheels and accompany Rohan down to Pre-Op. As we laid him in that bed and started walking alongside it, I got very worried. Rohan just laid there with his eyes shut and I thought he had fallen asleep or something, but he wouldn't respond to me. My mommy-instincts kicked in and I was feeling like yelling something at those people demanding to know what they did to my son. I don't know why he wouldn't respond, but once we got into Pre-Op and the bed stopped moving, Rohan opened his eyes and acted more normal. After wiping more of his medicine-laced spit out of his mouth, he started being chatty... something he hadn't been all morning. And by the time they were getting him ready to wheel away to surgery, he was relaxed and being downright funny. Punch-drunk, indeed...
As they wheeled him away, awake, alert and alone, my heart wanted to bust out of my chest. I had no idea what a hard thing that would be to send him off with strangers to go to sleep and be operated upon. Ugh. I was so glad, again, that Dustin was there with me. My baby was alone and, although the rational part of me knew that this was a fairly minor surgery and he would be just fine, the mother-part of me was in anguish and I wanted to cry for my little Rohan.
Off to the waiting room we went. As we walked in and found some seats, we noticed a horrible noise that permeated the room. It must have been something to do with the HVAC system, a high, ear-piercing whine. I had brought a book that I had just checked out at the library, but I wasn't going to read with Dustin sitting there by me with nothing to do. But, he was going crazy at the sound and I had brought my iPod with me, so I let him put in the earphones and drown out the awful squealing noise. I was able to ignore it a little easier than he, so I tried to read a book. It was hard to care about this fictional story when my baby was asleep in surgery somewhere not far from me.
The hour crawled by and finally, the doctor came to the door and brought us into a little room where he told us that Rohan did great and that he would probably wake in ten or fifteen minutes. He told us that someone would direct us to day surgery in a few minutes.
And we waited a little more.
Finally we were called down and when we got there, there was no one at the desk to tell us where Rohan was. We waited for a few minutes before we heard Rohan screaming not far from us. We followed the cry and went into where he was, rather hysterically, waking from his general anesthesia. He calmed a little at the site of us, but he was very upset and kept saying his hand (where he had an IV wrapped in gauze... too tightly, I might add) and his incision site were hurting. He kept trying to pull off the gauze on his wrapped hand and kept complaining of it all hurting. It was very sad, but I felt better. It was over and he was there and crying to his parents and we could hold him and try to comfort him.
After a few minutes, the nurse brought some pain medicine. He didn't want to drink it, remembering the last thing he had to drink, but this one didn't taste near as bad and he got to chase it with apple juice. It took a little time for the pain meds to kick in, and Dustin held him while I hummed lullabies in his ear, just like when he was a baby. Soon he was asleep and Dustin and I breathed a sigh of relief.
He slept for about 45 minutes and the nurse made us wake him up. I was worried, but he woke, had some apple juice and started being cute and chatty. He was such a champ! He was more or less back to his normal self and he was very happy when he got to have his I.V. taken out.
We were discharged not long after that and went straight to Target to buy him a prize for being so brave. When we told him this, he said he shouldn't get a prize because he wasn't brave. He thought that crying about the nasty medicine he had to drink and crying when he woke from the general disqualified him from the "brave" category. My heart melted. This boy is so easy to love. We assured him that he was, indeed, brave and we went and picked out two "Bakugan" toys... something he's had his eye on for a while.
A few more stops at stores and two vomit-sessions for Rohan and we were home. He didn't want any more pain medication because he didn't want to throw up and I was worried that he would be hurting too much. Amazingly, he didn't complain ONCE and he never took anymore meds. Not even Tylenol. He lounged around with his dad and watch movies all day and he's been completely and totally normal ever since! He often needs reminding to take it easy and not run and jump around.
I love my little Rohan and I'm so relieved that this ordeal was over so quickly and relatively painlessly!
