I had written this before we left on our Christmas vacation and just never got it posted.
(don't know how I missed that one!) Anyway, here is how our surgical experience went down.
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Evan has never been a big eater and I have dreaded and stressed over every calorie his tiny little body has consumed in the last 5 years or so. After about a year of research and stress we made the decision that Evan should have a feeding tube. He will be required to continue to follow all of his "food rules" and we will be supplementing his feeding at night while he is sleeping.
When we first made the decision he was quite distressed by it, and eventually he just became resigned to it. I know he wasn't thrilled, but he knew it had to happen so he didn't fight it anymore. We are hoping to accomplish a couple things with this new adventure.
1)We hope that Evan will start to grow better than he has in the past.
2)We hope that the night time feedings will boost his energy during the day.
3)We now have a back up plan for feeding when Evan is sick and goes on a food strike.
The surgery was the first one of the day so we left our house at 5:30AM. Having that time alone with Justin and Evan was such a beautiful thing for me. I needed Justin's strength to hold it together (I don't like knowing that my baby is going to feel pain) and I just needed to hold my Evan as much as I could.
By the day of surgery Evan wasn't as afraid of the procedure because he had decided that he would be able to stay awake. He told the anesthesiologist that he was going to have a competition with him and didn't think that he would be able to get him to go to sleep. (hint: Evan lost that competition, but scored points for effort).
They let me take Evan back to the operation room. I laid him on the operation table and started to sing him to sleep. Evan was true to his word and he did put up a fight. I held one hand and a nurse held his other hand. As I was coming to the conclusion of the second verse Evan took his hand away from the nurse and reached up, touching my face as he peacefully went to sleep. I hardly finished the song because I was crying and I left my angel in the care of his doctors.
Thankfully the surgery wasn't very long and after an hour we received word that everything had gone text book perfect. We saw him a half an hour after that. Watching him try to recover from the anesthesia was brutal for this parent to watch. He was in a ton of pain and nothing really settled him. Finally they were able to get his pain under control and he started to come to his senses.
It took a while to get a room, but we didn't have to go to ICU which is what the original plan was. We stayed in the hospital for 3 days and came home. Evan gets better every day and is now even showing an interest in doing his own care for the surgical sites. I know this was just a minor surgery, but it is still surgery and I am so grateful that Evan came out of it alright. We look forward to the exciting prospects that this tube might offer to help Evan through his day to day.
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| it was a long day for all of us ... and yes, Justin is actually sleeping!!! |
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| after a whole day of fasting Evan finally gets to have a popsicle! |
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| Home Depot came and did a project with the kids. Evan had just lost his IV and was thrilled to go without having to be hooked up to a machine. |
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| the kid who doesn't eat very much was soooo excited to have his first real food the next day! |
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| a special visitor came!!! |
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| and he had EXACTLY what Evan requested for a present. |
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| The brothers came with daddy for a movie night ... everyone but me and the baby fell asleep. |
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| Evan got a "bath" before we went home :0) |
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TUMMY BEFORE AND AFTER
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