Tough Night...Long Road

Thanks to Magpie for helping me post the update last night while I was staying with The Charmer in the hospital!

This evening, he is feeling a tiny bit better.  He struggles with pain from the surgery site, the cast that goes all the way around his midriff, and the mental stress of how hard this road is going to be.  Pain management is a big issue here.  It takes a formidable will to get the drugs that will ease a kid writhing in pain.  We were given paracetamol (like Tylenol) and a bottle of liquid ibuprofen and generally expected that those things would help our guy.  It is the standard issue...but they in no way came close to giving him the pain relief he needed after a five hour, complicated surgery.  Here are some photos I took over the last twenty-four hours...maybe they help tell the story...

 

Above:  The View from our hospital room...

 

Above:  this morning I watched groups of dancers exercising in the early morning light...from my vantage point I could see 3-4 gatherings in open areas - this remains one of my most beloved things about here...I would LOVE to be close enough to one of these dancing groups to join in!

 

 

Above:  we arrived at 7 am and felt very hopeful...

 

Above: the bathroom in our hospital room...it is used by everyone in our room, but also anyone else on the floor who needs a bathroom...particularly the observation room, after one comes out of surgery, has no bathroom...so people all through the day and night enter our room to use the bathroom.  The odor was a bit strong mixed with the super-heated hospital room...so some dear sisters brought me some bleach that I later splashed around a bit...grateful.

 

Above:  after a five hour surgery, they took me down two floors to wait with about 100 other souls who were waiting for their loved one's name to be called, as they needed to then move their loved one from the surgical gurney to a transport gurney (the family members/friends lift and move the patient from gurney to gurney and take them back to their rooms.)  Here I am waiting for them to call The Charmer's name.  I was feeling quite anxious as the surgery ended up being extremely complicated and difficult and I'd just had that report.  I knew he was waking up, and they were going to allow me to be there, in recovery, when he woke up.  (This is an entirely new development here, as recently as two years ago, parents were not allowed into recovery with their small children.)  The crush of people in this space made me feel uncharacteristically claustrophobic, though you can't see the many people behind me, trust me...it was overwhelming.

 

Above: an example of what the elevators are like...P A C K E D...every trip up and down!

 

Above:  Another patient's family transporting him/her back to their room after surgery...note the family member holding the IV Bag in lieu of a pole...the other is holding hot water, and the one who was pushing put all the pre-purchased surgical supplies on top of the patient for the trip back to the room.

 

Above:  this was a sad moment for me...A new baby, delivered surgically is whisked into the first waiting room (where I sat for 5 hours)...the father's name is called...and he immediately rushes up with two other guys who were waiting with him...the nurses, very crisply state, "it's a girl."  He then sort of takes a step back...looks remotely at the newborn...and goes back to sit down in the waiting chairs.  He said nothing, so I do not know for sure his thoughts...but wow...everything told me that he was not happy at the news of this precious girl's birth.  It literally made my body ache.  Even still, there exists with some in the population, a preference for a male child.  I pray that he'll fall hopelessly in love with her...girls need their daddies.

Above:  photo of the guys waiting to transfer their family member to the transport gurney...this is just inside the big metal door that I was waiting outside of for my chance to get to The Charmer.  Every few minutes the blue door in the back of the photo would open and another patient would be "released" from recovery to go to their room...wild.wild. experience.

 

 



Above:  After enduring the public humiliation of being handed scrubs in an Asian size "large" (Also see Western sized "small"...and having to refuse them...they gave me a surgical gown and a snappy hair covering, plus some "sterile" Mickey Mouse crocs.  This photo is after The Charmer and I have spent one hour in recovery...a large, seemingly state-of-the-art recovery room with ten other patients still "out of it"...finally it was our turn to come through the blue door and have Daddy and two friends come in the silver one to transfer our sweet boy...lifting and moving your kid right after surgery?  STRESSFUL.

 



 

 

Above - our little man in his very extreme cast...the only way the surgeon could get his femur head to stay in the hip socket was to set it this high, with screws, and a lot of prayer for "regeneration" of a hip socket that has never had a bone in it...six year of being empty...praying for LIFE to begin in that socket that it will grab ahold of the femur and build the necessary connective tissues...

 

Tonight he told us to "call an ambulance, I'm in pain here and get this thing off of me!"  Please pray for he surrender to the situation...this guy is a tremendous fighter...he has a will of steel.  He told me last night, "now I don't want to walk!"  The reality of this journey looming very large in all of our hearts and minds.  He kept moaning upon waking from anesthesia yesterday, "I want KFC dinner!"  Over and over again...I told daddy that we should take video of it as I'm sure KFC's marketing guys would be THRILLED to have such an endorsement...the child's first thought after surgery?!

 

I'll talk more about our first night of sleep struggling in my next post.  For now, I get to be home while Daddy takes the night shift and I try to settle my kids down and take a SHOWER!  Back tomorrow...thanks so much for your interest and your prayers during this incredibly challenging time.