Rough ride

As promised by the surgeon, the recovery from this surgery has been much more difficult for Colin. He has been plagued by bladder spasms, despite being on anti-spasm medication. Not only are they very painful for him, but they also force urine out everywhere, which means he ends up soaked every time. 

He had two big ones last night, which kept him awake basically from about 10:30 until 4:00 this morning. And nothing I did would make it better. I finally went and got John from Veronica’s room (where he was still up with her — more on that in a minute) to see if he would have better luck. I was at my wits end. 

For whatever reason, Veronica was a pill all day yesterday, and absolutely refused to sleep at all. But she was so tired, everything made her cry. I even tried pushing the stroller through the ever-growing mounds of unshoveled snow to see if she would fall asleep that way. No luck. And, of course, that complete lack of sleep meant that she too had trouble sleeping last night. She was up for more or less the same stretch — I think she got about an hour in the middle. 

She slept well from 3:30 or so until 5:30, at which point she woke up screaming (and the girl can project that wail like an opera star), which woke everyone else in the house up. 

I ended up putting Colin back down for a nap by 7:30 (in Roni’s crib, because John was sleeping in Colin’s room). He slept more or less from 7:45 until 1:00 when, finally, our old mostly cheerful boy was back. That first laugh was the sweetest sound I’ve heard since the first time he cried. 

He has had a lot of blood in his urine (an expected result), but that is starting to diminish now. He seems to have only had one spasm this afternoon, which is good. His fever, which spiked yesterday afternoon at 100.5, is basically gone. So I’m feeling a little less worried now. I am, however, dreading tonight because I fear a repeat of last night. 

I am not at all sure how we’re going to survive 10 days of this (two down, eight to go) before he gets the catheter out. But I guess we don’t really have a choice. With luck, as the surgery site heals, he’ll be better able to deal with the spasms, and things will go better. 

And then we have to do this all again in six months. Ugh!