Good Day

Henry's surgery was a success and Henry is fine. 

I start with that because I assume that is what most readers are wanting to know but also in case our surgeon is reading - it's a good opening. Instead, we got "when we first went in, it was like a bomb had gone off".  To be fair, as I said before, we really like this surgeon and he actually managed to improve his standing with us a little more just after the pre-op consult. As I previously talked about, people's beliefs really come right to the front in difficult times so I really shouldn't have been surprised that our surgeon made this request: he told us that it helps him if he prays with the family before a surgery, so would we mind if he prayed with us? You would have to really, really dislike praying to risk putting the surgeon off of his game, don't you think? I thought his words were fantastic. He asked his "Heavenly Father" to give Henry strength and asked for a little help for himself. Seemed an appropriate message to me.

We waited in surgery's waiting room and while we did I wrote part 1 of the story before they were born while Aly marveled at the chaos around us. We both needed something to avoid worrying about what could be happening. We got our call to go meet the surgeon and, sorry Magoo, the chairs were full size this time. After the "bomb went off" comment and catching us up that Henry was ok, his post-op chat was really good. The just-dumbed-down-enough analogy he gave us was this; if you think of handling intestines like handling cooked spaghetti, the area around the perforation was like handling cooked spaghetti that you left in the drainer way too long and it all stuck together. If you try and pull it apart, it all breaks and the mess gets worse. So, they eventually found some spaghetti they could handle well and worked with that. Unfortunately, this was further up the track towards the stomach than we would have liked. However, we were assured that the dried up sticky stuff isn't lost and it will be fine in a few months when we go back in. In the meantime, Henry will continue to be fed by IV, with a bit of milk to make sure his stomach keeps busy. It sounds awful, but they are very good at this at Texas Children's Hospital and we believe in them.

For now, though, it is about getting Henry better after the operation. I have learned that a good first 24 hours can be misleading. So the worriers, hopers and prayers have plenty to worry about, hope for and / or pray for until Thursday, I would say. Henry needs to keep up his blood pressure and show us his system is working. We are on pee watch again, people.

I hope that I don't come across as too light hearted on this. It isn't escaping me how serious all of this is. It's just that, once you train yourself to move day by day, you can get quite giddy on days where disaster doesn't strike. Put it this way; I could equally report today as "my tiny son, who is 6 weeks old but still weighs only 3 pounds had abdominal surgery today and now has an ostomy bag" or "my son had an operation today and survived and is fighting on in his long, hard fight and I could not feel prouder... and let me tell you about the surgeon".

Mondays are Charlie head ultrasound days. He gets daily visits from neuro surgery and today's visit was from the attending, a top guy in the field with absolutely immaculate facial hair. It's like he wants to show how good he is with a blade as soon as you meet him. Charlie's head feels good and the ultrasound results are encouraging. No surgery is on the schedule right now and Aly and I love to wallow in tiny little drops of good news from neuro surgery. I think we even saw a little smile from Dr Perfectbeard today as he agreed that the ultrasound report was, indeed, good news. 

Progress on Charlie's feeds slowed then stopped today but he has plenty of time and, like with Henry, he gets all the nutrition he needs by IV for now. Getting nutrition and growth right is the top priority now and the key is to not rush anything. The backward steps can be devastating, as we have learned. 

Reflecting, I finished last night with the hope for a successful surgery for Henry and no bad news from Charlie's ultrasound and we got both. So, as Ice Cube once said; "nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A."

(D)