Edmonton Trip #3

So. We're in Edmonton again.

I know, I know. It seems like my whole blog is either about going to Edmonton, being in Edmonton, or returning from Edmonton at the moment. But bear with me. Really, that's all that's going on, and hopefully we will be done with Edmonton for a while after this trip.

We arrived on Tuesday evening in order to be here for Dominic's preadmission clinic at 7:00am (why? WHY do we always have to start these things so early? That's 6:00am Saskatchewan time, we were up at 5:00. Gross). A lot of what we did was the same as last time, but they gotta do it all over again every time he leaves and comes back. We also talked to the surgeon about the plan this time around (he was also the surgeon that did his first surgery) and he was great about putting my mind at ease without sugar-coating anything, and I love that about him. There are risks, I now know what they are, but the surgeon is cool and confidant without being arrogant. That doesn't mean I didn't cry a river this morning once we got to the hospital. I'm a mom. I'm supposed to worry. But Dominic doesn't make it easy to let him go. Even though he hadn't been fed since 3am he was content from the get go. I think he knows the routine already. Once the admission nurse had finished assessing him, he snuggled right into me, we sat and cuddled (and I shed a few tears periodically) right up until he went into the OR. They even let me continue cuddling him on the stretcher as they wheeled him from admissions to the OR waiting room. Great cuddles. But then the time came for him to go in and a nurse came to take him from me, and it was like Dominic knew it was coming. He had slept in my arms almost the whole time until a moment before the nurse came and then his eyes popped open and he grabbed my shirt. As she took him he started to cry, and then my waterworks turned on as he started to cry and clutch my shirt, I gave him a last big kiss, pulled his hand from my shirt and he was gone.

That's the toughest part. I kissed him about a million times during those cuddles, because I couldn't help but think the worst. That may have been my last kiss ever, so I kissed him 5 more times. But then THAT may have been my last kiss, so I kissed him another dozen times.

Then he goes and there is the waiting. They told us there was a possibility if everything was super easy that it might only be 2 hours, but it was more likely to be 4. We decided until then to go back to the hotel, being so close has it's real advantages. So we went back and I cried in bed until I fell asleep, woke to my alarm at the 2 hour mark and snoozed for another 1/2 hour. I really wanted to be there right when he got out, but I was so tired. Didn't get much sleep last night. I got to the hospital around 11:00 and checked in with the Pediartic Cardiology Intensive Care Unit (PCICU), to see if he had come out of surgery and to them yet, but he hadn't so I parked my butt in front of the unit and waited for the doctors to come see me.

Around noon, the 4 hour mark, the doctor did come to see me and told me that everything had gone, basically perfectly. They had a lot of back up equipment available in case things had gone wrong, because although there wasn't a high risk of things going wrong, if they did, and they weren't prepared, things could easily take a really bad turn. But none of that stuff was needed. Dominic did great, he was stable throughout the entire procedure, no complications, everything that they needed to do was done, and done with relative ease. After coming to see me to tell me he was out of surgery, the doctor did come back to say that after they had reviewed the video footage of his surgery (who knew they recorded all of the surgeries with these cath cameras?) to say that there was about a 2 frame moment where it looked like there may have been a leak near one of his pulmonary arteries. So they are just gunna do a CT scan tomorrow to verify if it is there or not. The doctor speculated that it if is actually something, it's really tiny and nothing big to be concerned about and it would probably close up on it's own, but better safe than sorry. So we gotta check it. Worst case scenario, it's too big to close up on it's own and they would need to go back in and put in a stitch to close it up. Not ideal, but at least if we do have to do that, they caught it early. Not in a week when we think we are almost going home.

About 1:30pm we were able to go in to see him and we were lucky enough to have my favourite PCICU doctor on and one of my favourite nurses was the Resource Nurse today. He got his same bunk back, he has way less tubes and equipment than he did last time, he's not on as many meds, and he's doing really good.

So although having your kid go through surgery is never a walk in the park, today was a pretty good day. Let's hope the weekend is the same!

~*~

Check back soon! I'll have a little more time to post while we're here, so I've got some posts waiting that need to be polished and then posted, and I'll also keep the blog in the loop about developments with Dominic.