Owen’s Leukemia – Day 29

Today is the day we have been waiting for all month!  We arrived at the hospital bright and early and had a welcome surprise.  Dana, the Child Life Specialist from the 9th floor came down to the surgical floor to be with Owen before he went in for his procedures.  He was very happy to see her and she was able to keep him occupied while he was waiting to be taken back.  I went in to the OR with him and held him while they gave him the sleepy medicine.  I have never seen anyone fight it so hard!  He had his head on my shoulder and I was having a hard time not breathing in the gas… that would not have been good to have me on the floor too.  He finally went out and I headed to the waiting room to meet Jeff.

I walked in and he was talking to another couple, which ended up being the parents of one of Owen’s friends from school.  They were there because there daughter was having a procedure.  They were saying that their daughter has been asking about him and wanted to see him.  Who would have thought they would be in surgery at the same time?

The procedure lasted about an hour and the IR’s came to talk to us about the surgery.  They said that it went really well, and that they only had to do one incision.  Before, they were saying that they might have to cut open at his port and at the line, but they were able to cut a small incision at the tube.  This was a relief since the port incision is much larger than the tube one.  They pulled it out, cut it and put it back in and said that he shouldn’t have the palpitations anymore.  As for the Bone Marrow Aspiration, we won’t have those results for another week or or two.

We went back to recovery when the anesthetic was wearing off, but he didn’t want to wake up.  We were in the first recovery for about a half hour then they moved us to the secondary recovery.  That is where they needed him to drink approximately 4 ounces of fluid and sit up before they would release us.  He was pretty sleepy and didn’t wake up till after noon, and then he didn’t want anything to drink.  He is such a trooper though, we told him the steps he needed to follow so that we could go home and so he really pushed to drink his slushy.

The rest of the day has just been a lot of resting and eating  He wasn’t allowed to eat before surgery for 8 hours, and didn’t eat anything in the hospital while we there. Here his is relaxing with his Daddy.

Thanks for all of the thoughts and prayers for today.