The Morning-After-Surgery Update

I should be sleeping. As you can tell I am not, because I can't. Yesterday was one of the hardest days of my life. Top 10 for sure. I would say Top 5, but Owen has had 5 surgeries and it would be difficult to narrow it down to 5. Doesn't matter, yesterday was hard. It was hard because I had to wait knowing that my baby was in surgery, it was hard because the surgery took longer than expected (5 hours), it was hard because Owen's experience in the PACU (Patient Acute Care Unit, or Recovery) was not so good, it was hard because I have to see my Little Man hurt so badly. It was hard because I hate hospitals, I hate blood, I hate "gross" things. Owen has some gross things going on. It was hard because he is my baby and I don't want him to hurt or have gross things.

Owen came out of surgery at about 12:30. We spoke with Dr. Gazak in one of the conference rooms and he told us that it went well, but was a lot of work. As in, he had to do a lot to make Owen's urinary tract work the way it should. He made an incision between his ostomies (so like a smile across his belly under his belly button and just above his pubic bone). He took down his ureters from the ostomies and reimplanted them into his bladder. He had to reimplant them a little differently than "normal", in more of a straight line to the point of entry than the natural curve a ureter would take. There are a lot of reasons for this that I won't bore you with. He had to create valves from Owen's ureters to his bladder to prevent urine from refluxing from his bladder back up into his ureters and eventually into his kidneys. That is what got us into this mess in the first place, Owen was born without these valves. He took out the left ureter stump (the part that was left attached to the bladder when the ureters were disconnected 10 months ago) and used the (huge) right ureter stump to augment Owen's bladder. He also had to place a super pubic tube to drain Owen's urine while his bladder heals. I will spare you the details of what that means. It is one of the gross things. If you don't mind gross things feel free to ask me about it or Google it. That will stay in for about 7-10 days and will be removed in Dr. Gazak's office. He put that in through the site where Owen's vesicostomy was. Remember that was what his first surgery was, a vesicosotomy to relieve the pressure of the reflux, which didn't work as well as it needed too. He also placed stints which will be removed in 3-4 weeks during a short out-patient surgery. Did you get all that?

Recovery was awful. To put it mildly, Owen was ticked off. He was hurting, confused, disoriented etc. He was wailing. He also spiked a very high fever that was of concern to the nurses, who paged the anesthesiologist, who went into Dr. Gazak's OR and asked him what to do. He ordered a blood culture and a urine culture. We should have the results of those later today. Dr. Gazak came to talk to us (still in recovery) after his second surgery. He said he wasn't too concerned about the fever. First of all it is not uncommon in babies after such a long surgery. Second of all, he took down his ureters which were previously exposed at the skin, therefore bound to harbor some bacteria. Also, Owen is on two strong antibiotics which should fight off any infection. It was scary at first, but Dr. Gazak calmed us down. Not too long after that Owen's fever went down and we were taken up to our room on the Pediatric Unit. Dr. Gazak even came back to see us around 7 after his office hours. (I love him, you know that right?) He thought all was looking pretty good.

Last night was difficult. At about 1 am Owen started having very bad gas that was obviously making him very uncomfortable and was very painful to pass. At 4, not even a minute after receiving a dose of Loritab (pain medicine), therefore losing the medicine. As a result he was in pain and very restless for the remainder of the night. They also had to come draw blood around 4:30, which is always awful. Needless to say Wes and I did not get nearly enough sleep.

This morning Dr. Gazak's nurse Judy came to check on Owen while Dr. Gazak was in surgery. She thought his incision and super pubic tube looked good, but was not happy with his level of pain. She also said that his belly felt full and hard, probably full of gas. They gave him a dose of Morphine at about 8:30 and he has been resting comfortably since then, with the exception of when one of the anesthesiologists came to check his epidural. Hey people, I know you are trying to do your job and all but could you be a little bit more compassionate? And please stop waking my sleeping baby who is in a great deal of pain! Anyway, the epidural is working fine, it is just that it only really covers the pain of the incision not the internal pain from spasms etc. He is on an anti-spasmatic medication to minimize that.

I guess that is about all for now. Thank you all again for caring, thinking about and praying for Owen and our family.