A Bish Tale: Twas the Night Before Surgery

Brody's first holidays were amazing. It was so nice to get to have him home and share all the festivities with him and with family. I spent a lot of time thinking and trying to implament what I would like to have as family traditions. We nervously decided to take Brody to church on Christmas Eve. I love the Christmas Eve service at our church and really wanted to take him with me to service. I knew there would be a lot of people there, but I figured if I held him real close to me we should be good. It was a great feeling to hold him in my arms and listen to all the carols and holiday worship music. The music was a little loud for his liking, but we made it through the service with no major meltdowns. One Christmas Eve event that I am hoping we will not be making a tradition was our trip to the ER. Right as we were pulling into the neighborhood to come home from my grandmothers, Brody decided to pull out his feeding tube, in the middle of his feeds. Trey and I heard him start fussing and start gagging. I immediately stopped the pump and tried to push the tube back in, but it was so far out that when I touched it the rest came out. Because of the stress involved with putting in a new tube, we have been told to take him to the ER rather than do it ourselves at home, so to the ER we went. I called ahead and was happy to hear that there was no wait. We got there and were taken back pretty quickly. There were some difficulties getting the tube down, but after a couple of hours we were on our way back home. Christmas morning we woke up and opened gifts. Of course Brody is still too little to have a clue as to what was going on, but we went through all the motions anyways. We made two pit stops to see family and just like that Christmas was over. New Year's was rather uneventful as well. We were home and in bed by ten and woke up to all the fireworks to know it was now 2014.

It was during these holidays last year that our world was turned completely upsidedown. Two days after Christmas 2012 I had my first regular OB appointment where we were diagnosed with the Cystic Hygroma. We have been living this crazy journey for over a year now. It seems like it has been so much longer than that though.

Our cardiologist has always told us if there was any funny business with Brody that we needed to bring him in right away. Around New Years, Brody started getting very irritable. He wasn't sleeping at night and during the day he would just wine and fuss and was pretty inconsoluable. It felt like the only time he wasn't crying was when he was actually sleeping. After a few days of this we finally decided to take him in. Trey was working, so I had my mom ride with me. I took him to TCH downtown because I assumed we would be admitted and I wanted him to be with his doctor and surgeon because they always said if anything came up we would be going to surgery sooner. We brought him in and as I am filling out the paperwork, Brody is screaming. They took him to do vitals and when they looked at his history in the system they decided to admit him as a trauma. They sent us to the trauma room and immediately about 5 different nurses started working on getting an IV and drawing blood. A couple of doctors were asking me all the standard questions and everything was happening very fast. Think about the ER scenes on TV or in movies. The entire time Brody is screaming. I have gotten pretty comfortable with handling situations like this, but even this one was getting to me. After they got all their labs, cardiology came and looked at him and, as to be expected, we were admitted over night for observation. Brody and I made it to our home on 15 and got settled in finally about midnight. The next morning during rounds they said that he looked good. His ECG looked normal, his chest x ray looked the same and though they didn't have blood work back yet, he wasn't showing any signs of infection or viruses. They said as long as we were comfortable that we could take him home. We were good with that. The main thing we wanted to make sure of was that there wasn't anything funky going on with his heart. We also knew he had a cardiologist appointment later in the week. We later found out that all of his blood work came back negative for infections and viruses!

Now we are back at TCH and being admitted for his surgery tomorrow. Though you are never ready to send your baby off to surgery, and heart surgery at that, I am ready to get this done and be able to put this surgery behind us. You can tell that it is time. He isn't sleeping well at night. He has pretty much stopped eating by mouth. He constantly wants to be held and he just naps all day. He is fully awake very little. Nerves are out in full force. They have told us that this will be a bigger surgery than his first one. This time they will be taking his Pulmonary Valve and making that his Aortic Valve and then putting in a fake Pulmonary Valve. He will spend time in ICU and the big question everyone keeps asking is how long will he be in the hospital. The answer... who knows? His recovery the first go around wasn't exactly smooth sailing, but we are praying that the fact that he is bigger and stronger will work to his benefit this go around. He is looking at an extensive recovery since there will be several things they will be checking on and monitoring. I keep asking for an estimate at how long we can expect and I can't seem to get a clear answer. So, tonight we will get to stay with him, and I'm sure none of us will get any real sleep. They will come to his room and get us about 6:30 am and take us to a holding area. When everyone is ready, they will take him for surgery around 7am. I really am anxious about the moment when they physically take him from me. I have woken up in tears thinking about it and I just pray that he stays strong enough for the both of us and isn't screaming. We ask obviously for good thoughts and prayers tomorrow for Brody. He will be in surgery all day and we all will be anxious for the day to go by quickly.

One of Trey's co-workers dresses up as Santa so we were able to get a picture. We weren't going to be able to because of all the germs of being in a mall around other germy kids