2nd Urological Surgery

Sleeping en route to the pool on Sunday

My mom arrived at our house around 7:30pm on Saturday so that she could attend church with us on Sunday morning, as my choir sang 4 anthems as our last hurrah before our summer break. In the late afternoon she went with the kids and I to the swimming pool. She started her drive back to Maryland before 7:00 this morning. Yesterday she took care of Nadia all day while we were taking Ian to and from the hospital. Thanks for coming, Mom!! We left at 7:15 yesterday morning and arrived back home at 8:55 last night. During the 7 hours Ian was in the car, he only slept for 30 minutes. He watched VeggieTales for 6.5 hours. We were at the hospital from 10:15am until 4:40pm. We had been told to arrive at 10:30, but it was almost noon before they actually called us back to the pre-op area. He was taken to the OR around 12:30 and the surgery began at 12:55pm. I finished writing a midterm exam (which a student will be taking this Friday) and wrote half of a final exam during his surgery. The surgeon gave us the report at 3:10, and shortly after that we were able to back and hold Ian in the recovery room. A little more than an hour later we were able to get him dressed and head back to our car.

Ian did pretty well in the morning considering the only thing he consumed between 6:15am (when he woke up) and 3:30pm (after the surgery was over) was one sippy cup of apple juice. He was very grateful for the EleCare I gave him in the recovery room. The hardest parts of the day were leaving him when he went to the OR (even Paul got "misty eyed"), seeing him after surgery (breathing oxygen and hooked up to an iv and various monitors), and changing his diaper (made me want to throw up). I am to remove the dressing on Thursday. He's not supposed to get wet before then. After the dressing comes off I'm supposed to apply vaseline a few times a day. They don't do the double diaper routine like the first surgeon did. They said they used to, but they don't find it helpful. They usually remove the catheter, but in light of how far away we live, he emailed me instructions so I can take it out myself in 13 days. Because the first surgeon thought there was something wrong with Ian's native urethra, in addition to the stage 2 hypospadias repair, he did a scope down to Ian's bladder. Thankfully the first surgeon was wrong. No additional urological surgeries should be necessary! It's a week for surgeries as my brother-in-law is having ear surgery today, and tomorrow a nephew in Turkey is having surgery on his forehead (to remove some hardware that is causing a lot of pain).

Our trip home was longer than expected because I used one feature of the GPS for the first time. I thought selecting the closest gas station would mean closest to our current location, but actually it took us to the gas station closest to the hospital which meant we spent 30 minutes driving in the wrong direction. Not Fun. I won't make that mistake again. To add insult to injury, the gas in downtown Philly is VERY expensive. If I had waited and got some at a rest stop off of the turnpike, I would have saved 30 cents a gallon. If I had filled the tank up before we left, I would have saved 38 cents a gallon. Big difference! Live and learn. We were concerned that we wouldn't get to CVS before the pharmacy closed, but it was still open when we arrived at 8:30pm. I only filled the Rx for the antibiotic, and I was greatly relieved it only cost us $8. Whew. We still had Tylenol with Codeine at home from his surgery in October, and the third Rx the Urologist gave was "as needed" for bladder spasms so I decided to wait and see if he needed it or not. Speaking of medications, I finally got the pin in the mail yesterday from AstraZeneca (took almost 2 weeks) and completed the online application last night and mailed the rest of the paperwork today. We are now waiting to hear from Merck and AstraZeneca about getting free Pulmicort and Singulair and from United Healthcare as to whether they'll pay for the EleCare or not. We're on our 6th can of EleCare. We went through more than 5 cans in 2 weeks. I'm praying they'll cover this "medical food."