Today is Thursday, which means we survived Wednesday night, the worst so far.
Nixon’s pull-through operation (so named because they surgically pull healthy intestine down and rejoin everything after removing the diseased segment) went well, although it took 6 hours rather than the 3-4 that was expected! Stressy. Bubba’s bowel was in worse shape than his surgeon had anticipated, creating more work in theatre.
So the past few days have been spent managing pain and administering a multitude of medicines orally, intravenously and through his epidural, also managing his ‘output’ levels though his catheter and nappies. He has been doing so well and managing like a champ. As his surgeon reminded us, he has been through major surgery that would render any adult an absolute puddle of jelly. His only outward scars are three laparoscopic incisions through which they worked on the top bowel segments, they then completed the remaining work through his bottom. Ow.
Lets be honest though, last night I lost the plot. Yesterday he was switched exclusively to oral morphine and tramadol to see if he would be able to manage without the epidural (and in turn the catheter). One of the two made Nix go mental. He was unable to sleep until 10.30pm after being awake the whole day. He got so frantic he wrapped his epidural cable around his neck before I was able to get it untangled. Then his catheter connector snapped and the nurse taped the end of the tube inside his nappy. 15 minutes later Nix took control and simply finished the job, ripping the balloon tipped catheter completely out!
#nonixonno!
So I cried and despaired and text Dave to say I didn’t know how much more I could take. I feel like a failure but I hadn’t realized how much of a mental respite nap times are; even more so when Nix and I are confined to a small hospital room.
We ended up co-sleeping for the first time ever as an older and wiser nurse suggested he may just calm down if we stay as close as possible. I had been trying this over the past two days by climbing into the crib but it was just too small to stay there for any period of time, so a full size bed was brought in and we got to sleep before 11pm. He was on 2 hourly observations but we managed to resettle each time and eventually slept through until Dave arrived at 7am.
The absolute best thing that has happened this week? Nixon had black beans in his vege mash for dinner last night and this morning, out came some black beans! This is seriously amazing. Never is his life has he had a bowel movement so quickly and with so little effort. I had so many doubts about this operation, I just thank god that we have seen positive results so quickly
Oh. And baby was discharged this afternoon! We are home to heal.
Thank you, thank you all so much for your lovely messages, heart emoticons {tee hee} and prayers. We appreciated it so much xx
secura: $32 bum cream – our baby has never had poo sit on his bum as his bowel movements have been controlled by suppositories or wash-outs for much of his short life. this stuff, prescribed at the hospital, is apparently the golden ticket to protecting his skin, which at 13 months old is prone to his first dose of nappy rash.
huawei mobile wifi from 2°: my lifesaver. you get 1 hours worth of free wifi per day at the hospital. 1 hour. this little black box was worth it’s weight in gold. $99 and a pocket sized modem that enabled dave to continue to work from nixie’s hospital room and let me remain at least somewhat connected to the outside world for the 5 days we spent ‘inside’ lol.
medical obs: oh how nix hates the routine obs, particularly the O2 sensor and getting his blood pressure checked every 2 hours. he can spot a nurse at 20 paces and gear up to beat her off so fast.
remove: there is this magical solution called remove that ‘removes’ sticky sticky adhesive tape with no residue or pain! a miracle on baby skin. man and medicine do some cool shit.
books: it’s taking me a long time to read a book at the moment, but i did read over these past few days and The Invention of Wings is a damn good book. so is any book about trucks, diggers and tractors which distracts nix from diaper changes, which are now alarmingly frequent. yay?
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