Surgery blues

Tomorrow Colin has surgery — again. This is the next (but probably not last) stage of his hypospadias repair. Right now I am alternating between a state of nonchalance and fear. This is the third time he’s had surgery in his little life. We’ve been there, done that. And his surgeon is the head of urology at Children’s — so he's no slouch. In fact, this type of surgery is his specialty. 

But on the other hand, it’s surgery. What if something goes wrong? What if Colin doesn’t bounce back as quickly as the last two times? How on Earth am I going to keep the kid from pulling out the catheter? He never holds still.

Taking care of all the pre-surgery details has been much more time-consuming than I remember from before as well. Maybe it’s because I’m so busy at work. I barely make it home for the twins’ bedtime most nights. I don’t have time to figure all of this stuff out. 

And then there was the little glitch of us failing to schedule Colin’s follow-up appointment with his pulmonologist, which should have been today. That made the anesthesiology department nervous, and they weren’t sure they were going to allow him to go under. But a quickly scheduled appointment for early February (out in the suburbs, because we couldn’t get in here in the city until April) seems to have addressed their concerns. 

So now, I believe, we have all of our i’s dotted and our t’s crossed. We’ll find out this evening what time we have to arrive at the hospital tomorrow morning. And, more importantly, when Colin has to stop eating. 

Although this is technically outpatient surgery, we’ve had to stay in for “observation” for 23 hours each time he’s had surgery in the past. This means spending the night in the recovery ward, which has bays with three walls and a curtain, rather than in a room with a door. And it means having a nurse check his vitals every few hours, all night long. And it means one of us has to sleep in a chair (it does fold out into a bed of sorts) in a noisy ward. John took the last two shifts because I was still nursing Veronica. This one is going to be mine. 

So I’m preparing for the worst, and hoping for the best. With luck, the surgery will be less complicated than the surgeon expects (not likely, since he has a pretty good idea of what he’s dealing with from the last surgery), Colin won’t need a transfusion (again, unlikely, given the expected level of complication/length of surgery), and the anesthesiologist won’t have any concerns about him having an adverse reaction to the anesthesia (again, probably not going to happen, given his lung disease). 

I wish I could say after this that we’re done with surgery. But in all likelihood, Colin will need at least one more surgery this year, and possibly another after that. But we’re getting through the worst of it here. And being at the hospital tomorrow will put this all back in perspective for me, as I listen to parents in consultation with their surgeons about problems far more serious for their children in surgeries that are much more complicated and dangerous. And I will again thank God that despite the long odds facing the babies when they were born, we have come through this experience relatively unscathed.