Surgery in a Rush

I was sitting at my desk yesterday morning, trying to get some work done, and waiting on another dietitian who was so kind to take her time to come and help me catch up at the office.  My phone rings and it was the NICU.  The NICU only calls if something bad has happened or there are some unfavorable exam results to report. You don't see that number and think someone is calling just to chat.  So you can imagine when I saw the number pop up I was not exactly thrilled.  I knew David was having his eye exam Monday morning, and when I heard Dr. Mungan's voice on the other line, I knew we had avoided the eye surgery long enough.  With the fire alarms going off in the background, he was able to tell me that we needed surgery in both eyes and it was going to be that afternoon...not the usual Wednesday scheduled surgery they had originally told me when the ROP and Plus first showed up on our horizon.

I shuffle around some stuff at the office, pick up Charles, and rush up to Jackson to be sure that we can see sweet David before he heads back for surgery.  Dr. Mungan had originally told me the surgery would be around 2 or 3pm. We got there around 1:30pm and I had expected us to only have about an hour before it was time. Charles and I took turns holding David, and then we wait and wait and wait and wait.  Finally, around 5:30 they come to take us back and at 6pm they are wheeling my little 5 pound 14 1/2 ounce baby boy back for his first surgery.  David was sleeping like a log the entire time, and I was so thankful, because if he had been awake and staring at me with his sweet eyes I don't think I would have been as calm as I was!

When its finally done around 7:30, we wait for them to get him situated back in the NICU before going in to say goodnight.  He was intubated on the ventilator which is really the scariest part of this surgery....its almost like you are looking down on Day 1 all over again, and all the progress you've made is behind you.  While I realize that this is probably not the case and he should come back off the vent easily, common sense is not really applicable when your baby is on the vent.  It's just not.  He was on slightly higher vent settings than they typically see with this eye surgery...he was on 40% oxygen instead of 20% , with 20/4 pressures, and not doing any breathing over the vent rate.  

Dr. Mungan said the surgery went well, but we will not know the success of it for another 1-2 weeks.  At 8 o'clock this morning, he was about the same.  Same settings and still riding the vent.  The nurse did tell Charles that he had woken up around 4 am and had to be given some pain meds b/c he was moving so much.  At 8 am, he was back to sleeping like a log and resting from his eventful day yesterday.  The plan as of now is to get him off the vent this afternoon, so we must pray that David is not lazy about letting the vent do the work for him and that he is working to get off too!  Hopefully the transition will go well and we will just pick up with our progress right where we left off!

We had been doing so well the last couple of weeks and I was so happy with all of our steps forward.  I know with all the good times, there are also some bad, so I guess we were due a little bit of a rough day.  And while yesterday was exhausting and difficult, it could have been so much worse.  God allowed us only to have to have this more minor surgery, He gave us 3 weeks of growth between when he was first diagnosed with ROP and the surgery, He gave us some pretty good weight gain before so the weight loss from stopping feedings won't be as big of a deal.  All wonderful blessings.....