Tyler had Surgery! Hickman out, Port in.

Today was the big day! Dawson went to my mom's house, then Dan, Tyler and I all went to Children's. First we went to the clinic for the mandatory pre-op appointment. He passed! He weren't sure what they would think, since he had a cough this week, but it was down to barely anything. His lungs sounded great. They also gave us his chemo. He'll be on Methotrexate once a week, I have to crush 3 pills and put them in water, juice or something. He also gets 6-MP everyday. He'll get his counts checked at his appointment in 2 weeks. Then 2 weeks after that. If his counts have remained stable, they won't see him for a whole month! No counts for that month either. It's shocking! Unbelievable, exciting and very scary all at the same time!

His surgery was on time (shocking, they rarely are!), and everything went fairly smoothly. The Anesthesiologist talked with us, then the nurse, then the Surgeon (same one that did his first Hickman), then the Anesthesiologist came back to get me and Tyler. I went back with him. Got all gowned up, mask, hairnet and all. I held him until he was asleep. He looked around the room a bit and cuddled right into me. It was like he just knew something was going to happen. It was such a big room, that table looked so small and he looked even smaller! He went to sleep quickly, as he usually does.

They came in about an hour later and said the port was in. They were able to use the same path as the Hickman, so it went smoothly. They told me about 15-20 minutes later the Oncologist would have the Bone Marrow Biopsy and Spinal Tap done, then we'd get informed. Well 20 minutes went by, 40, an hour.....we still hadn't heard anything. Of course I kept thinking back to his first surgery. We hadn't heard from them in 2 hours. We made the lady in charge of the waiting room go check on his progress and found out that he hadn't woken up and they were having problems. So I asked the lady about him and she wasn't sure, but assured me that they'd come get him. The screen they have that they update said he'd been in recovery for 40 minutes. Quite a while to wake up! So I went back up there and told her that he'd had trouble with it in the past and I want to know what's going on. So she checked and they said everything is fine and they're coming to get him in 5 minutes. Whew!

They came and got us with him. He was awake but really groggy. I took him, he sighed at me and fell asleep again. He seemed so relieved to be back by me again. It must all be so confusing for him. We were brought to Short Stay, where they said as soon as he's alert and eating, we can go. He slept for an hour or 2, thankfully I had my sister's laptop to keep me partially sane throughout the day and be able to update people and concentrate on something else! He woke up, nursed, went back to sleep, woke up again and was very excited to see us, especially Daddy. He's a big Daddy's boy. :)  We left there around 5pm. It was such a long day. We'd both gotten about an hour of sleep, so we took turns driving to pick up Dawson. Thankfully we got a good night's rest because Tyler slept in!

 Tyler the night before surgery

Tyler's Hickman

After surgery, his face is red from the gas that helped sedate him. He had Propofol also.

Face is clearing up. He was getting fluids through the IV in his hand.

He woke up, nursed, slept, woke up again and was excited to see Daddy!

He was a little groggy, but in a great mood, considering!

After surgery. The top line is the incision they made to put in the port. The port is in the middle. It was accessed at the time, which is the round thing and the almost invisible tiny tube you see. Otherwise it's totally under the skin. All I can currently see is the little poke mark where the needle was. The bottom in the middle there is where the Hickman was. There's steri-strips on that. They should fall off on their own once it's healed. There was a lot of blood, it's just a small hole, not as bad as it looks. :)  The top one is as long as the blood mark, but is just a line of an incision. I noticed his hip bled a lot too. I wonder if his Platelets are down more because of all this. He bled through 6 double gauze pads! I just took that off tonight.

His face got a little flush again. They said it's common for the redness to come and go a bit. He tired himself out pretty quick, playing with Daddy and being excited. There was no calming him down until he got tired!

Once he stopped, he seemed to realize how tired he was. He leaned his head towards me, I held out my hand and he just plopped his tired head in my hand. It was so cute!

Even though he was so tired, he didn't seem to like the idea of laying down. We compromised, I put the bed to the sitting position and he was content laying back a bit but still sitting up enough to see things.

Poor tired little boy!

They had a board under his arm to keep it flat, like a splint. This was so he didn't bend much and kink the IV line. Thankfully they used his Hickman to put him under, then put in the IV while he was sleeping.