Monday, January 31, 2011

Waiting, and Hoping.

Waiting for the nurse to come take him to the cath lab.
Poor little drugged up baby. Better, though, for getting IV's!

After surgery, look at all those sticky-electrode things! They had already taken some off at this point...they really had him covered.
Sleepy Jackson just before we left the hospital.
Jackson's surgery went pretty well. We arrived at the hospital at 9:30 am to get ready. They checked him in, made us undress him and stuck little electrodes all over his tiny body. Then we waited. And waited. At about 11:30, the nurse came back and gave him some medicine to make him sleepy, and she and another nurse tried to give him an IV. I think I'm seriously going to consider learning how to do it myself. I cannot watch another person poke my poor baby like that and keep missing the vein. I know they are tiny veins. I know it isn't always easy. I still don't want to see you stick that needle into my baby more than once. They finally got his IV in, and told us it would be maybe another half hour, this was 11:45 ish. The fellow and the doc came in to explain the procedure to us, and commented on how fat he had gotten. (Hehe...we have been fattening him up nicely)
We finally got him sent off at 1:45. Then we waited....and waited....and waited, and waited some more. It was close to 6:30 pm when we couldn't stand it anymore, and called the cath lab to see if he was out yet. He had just been wheeled out about thirty seconds before we called. Excellent timing, since we had just about waited as long as we could wait...especially Connor! We sat with him and began the wait for the doctor to come and see us. Jackson was still asleep, and just kept on sleeping while we waited. More than an hour later the doctor finally came in to talk to us and let us know that everything went well. I had been watching the monitor, and his Oxygen saturation level was 94-96. The highest I've ever seen it.
When he woke up from the anesthesia, he was pretty freaked out and kept crying. The nurse kept poking his head in and telling me he had to be kept calm for the next six hours. Do you know what it is like to try to calm a baby who is hysterical from anesthesia? And seriously, I was doing everything I knew how, and he was not calming down! Finally he fell asleep again, and didn't wake up until the middle of the night.
We got to take him home the next day. Ever since the surgery, Jackson has seemed a lot pinker. We really love him, and are so glad he is doing so well. His cardiologist explained to us that he could proabaly do the catheter surgery once more, before any other surgical interventions which will be forthcoming.
CRAZINESS! We are just happy he's okay.