We dropped big brother off at Grammie and Pappy's house and headed to the medical center. I don't think I have ever felt so sick or nervous in the car. Davis was just playing and baby talking it up in his car seat and I was sitting in the front seat, my heart racing with the biggest knot in my stomach. I kept thinking about the only other times we had driven to the hospital as patients - both times were to have a baby. This was so much different. There was no nervous energy or excitement because we were about to meet our little miracle, only nervousness that we were going to have to hand him over to strangers and trust them with one of our most precious gifts.
Once we got to the hospital we checked in and met with a lot of different people - financial counselor, nurse, nurse anesthetist, the anesthesiologist, the surgical fellow, one of the OR nurses and the surgeon. Every single person we met (all individually by the way) commented on my sweet boy's chunky legs. It was pretty cute. At this point it still felt like a dream. We snapped back to reality pretty quickly when we were sent back to Pre-Op to put on his yellow pj's. Then we did some more waiting - my precious boy actually fell asleep for a good 30 - 40 minutes while we were waiting in this area. {Did I mention that at this point he had gone almost 12 hours without milk/food...I was so nervous about a hunger meltdown and thankfully it never happened.} This was the point where Luke and I started to get (even more) nervous....waiting for them to come and take him to the OR.
The moment we did have to hand him over was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I wanted to just get back in the car and take him home but instead we kissed and hugged him and they quickly walked off with him. In retrospect it was probably better that it was a quick goodbye but at the time we both felt like we didn't get enough time to love on him. One of the nurses came back as we were sniffling and crying and probably looking pretty crazy and told us that he was just smiling and looking around as they took him to the OR.
We had been told that the surgery would last 2 - 3 hours and to our surprise the OR nurse called us every hour to check in and let us know the status of the surgery. The first call scared us to death - we were sitting in the 'snack room' and they told us to answer the phone if it rang because they were trying to reach us from the OR - I couldn't breathe for a moment until she told us they were just chekcing in. We did a lot of waiting and talking to our family that was there for support. Our pastor came up for awhile too and everyone provided such a great distraction. The first couple of hours flew by - it was amazing. Hour 3 started to feel long because we knew they would be finishing up soon. Then we went almost 2 hours without a phone call and at this point it had been 4 hours since the surgery began. We were told that Davis was fine, they were still working on him and she didn't know when they would be done. I don't think I have ever felt so vulnerable and it doesn't help that I always have the worst case scenario running through my head.
Finally after 5 hours the computerized status board changed to show they were 'closing'. Then, more waiting as we were called to a private room to meet with the surgeon. Davis was there to have a laparoscopic pyeloplasty but he ended up with 2 additional procedures while in the OR - they found 2 hernias we didn't know about {don't ask me how we didn't know about these - there have been so many pictures of his insides I don't know why we hadn't seen them before} and they fixed his undescended testicle which was attached {sort of?} to one of the hernias. The surgeon told us he had done fine and we would be called to the PACU soon to see him. We felt immediate relief after talking with Dr. Cisek but were so anxious to actually see our boy - I just wanted to get my hands on him!
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