There’s a couple pictures of Christian over at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellyschaos if you’re interested.
I wrote a couple blogs when I was in the hospital, so I’m posting them now.
I’m sitting in the hospital, thinking about a lot of things, and there’s been several times where something has come up and I’ve thought, “I should blog that.” As you can see, however, I haven’t. I was just thinking right now, that I use an ‘offline’ blogging app sometimes. I’m writing this in the Pediatric unit at Good Samaritan hospital in SJ, and they don’t offer a wireless internet, so I’m writing and storing this stuff for later posting. I’ve tried a couple of different blogging clients/apps (I’m never sure what the proper name for this kind of thing is.. I suppose ‘composer’ is probably good. I tried MarsEdit, and whatever Ecto was before it became Ecto, and then I tried Ecto as well. They are all good, but for some reason, didn’t fit my needs, or I thought were too expensive. I’m using a more multi-purpose tool now to do my composing, It’s something that some of the newer bloggers probably don’t want to use, called ‘vi’. That’s “Vee-Eye”, not “Veye”, and it’s a composititon tool that lets me edit and compose any number of different blog entries prior to posting.
Anyways, an update on personal stuff: My son Christian has been having episodic (every 2-3 days) vomiting for about 8 weeks. Last Thursday (The 15th of May) he went to the hospital for an Upper GI, which is a procedure where the patient drinks a fairly large quantity of radioactive substance, while having an x-ray video shot of your chest while the substance flows through your throat, stomach and digestive tract. For a 3 year old, this is not a fun procedure. It was followed by a series (yes, a series. Not one or two.) Chest X-Rays. This started at 7:30 and went till around 9:30. At noon we got a call to bring him back in immediately for more tests. Kelly and Christian spent the afternoon there while they were doing more tests, more chest and stomach area x-rays. The result was that we were told he had a Diaphramatic Hernia, a small hole in the diaphram that caused the stomach to move into the upper right chest area, next to the right lung. Good news is that he’s not in any immediate danger, nothing critical. The bad news: He’s going to have to have surgery, fairly soon, to fix it. Friday we meet with the surgeon, a Dr. Hartman, whom we get glowing recommendations from our pediatrician(Excellent Pediatric Surgeon, Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Stanford). He goes over the condition with us and what we can expect. He does a little examination of Christian and says that he would like to do the surgery the following Thursday or Friday, and that his office will contact us Monday to follow up and make the arrangements. He was really amazing, took as much time as we wanted to answer questions, he was very reassuring.
Saturday Night (The 17th). Our neighbours across the street had a party, with Taco Bar, Bouncy House, everything you can imagine. Caitlin, while crawling out of the house, falls and hits her head. That’s OK, right? Kids hit their head all the time. Until she starts vomiting and getting lethargic. Kelly rushes her off to Good Sam’s ER. CT scan, exam, etc. Result: Concussion. I. Am. Not. Making. This. Up.
*MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE BAT-CAVE* (Insert deedly-deedeley doo music here).
At home, I bring Christian home and put him to bed. He starts saying that he’s going to throw up. Since this has been happening for a couple months, we have a bucket handy and I put him to bed around 8:30, bucket right next to his pillow. 9pm: He awakes, throwing up. Repeat every 45 minutes, until 7:00am. Kelly and Caitlin roll in around 3AM, exhausted from their trip down to the ER. By 6:00, Kelly is worried enough about Christian to call the Surgeon. He listens and tells us to “Get Thine To The ER.”
We proceed to do so, checking in around 8AM Sunday morning. Some AMAZING friends of ours (Thanks Aimee & Jason) take Caitlin for the day, and by 12:30 we’re admitted to the Pediatric unit, Christian has an NG tube, an IV and they’re telling us that surgery will be the next afternoon, (That’s Monday, the 19th, for those keeping track at home.) I stay at the hospital Sunday night, and Monday just after noon they sedate him and wheel him in. The Dr’s tell us that surgery should take right around 3 hours, so figuring some wiggle room, that’s around a 4pm finish. When we haven’t heard anything by 5:15, Kelly accosts someone going into surgery, and after a whirlwind bout with tears, the person agrees to try to find something out. A half hour later, she comes back and let’s us know that things are going well, but taking longer than expected. An hour after that, a surgical nurse comes out and gives us an update: Things are still taking longer than expected, but should be done in 30-45 minutes (This is around 6:30 or so). Around 7:30, the same nurse comes out, and says the same thing.. another 45 minutes or so. Finally around 8:30, The anesthesiologist, Dr Paige, comes out and says that they’re done, he’s in Recovery, and would we like to see him. Duh.
Once there, he and Dr Hartman explain what happened: Once they opened him up, they found that what they expected (Small diaphramatic hernia, with stomach in chest) was not what they found (Large Diaphramatic/Hiatal hernia, Stomach, colon, large intestine in chest). The hole for the esophagus should be about the size of a quarter in Christian, but it was around the size of my fist. There was a membrane around the stomach and that area, which had to be removed, all the bits pulled back into their proper places, then the hole patched with a piece of Gore-Tex. For the surgical repair, they tried to use a robot which can do very small and intricate stitching, but since it ran Windows, it crashed, and they had to do it by hand, thus it taking quite a bit longer than intended.
After an hour in Post-Op, he was wheeled back to the Pedi unit, and had a difficult night. Caitlin was sleeping over with another friend, and I went home, having been up for 3 days at that point. Kelly stayed with Christian, and he was very agitated. Tuesday he was better, sleeping a lot, once they changed him from Morphine to Demerol. When the Morphine would wear off, he would freak out, tear at his tubes, get very agitated, his heart rate would skyrocket and his O2 would drop. With the demerol, he just got sleepy, then when it wears off he complains that his ‘tummy hurts’. Tuesday night, Kelly took Caitlin home, and I stayed with McGough. He had a mostly sleepless night, and I watched ‘Thomas, Percy and the Chinese Dragon’ at least 12 times. Now it’s Wednesday morning, and I’m pretty tired, but things have been brought up to speed. Now I await my beautiful queen, and hope to retire soon. Good day, gentle readers.
