On September 3rd, we took Reagan to Vanderbilt (again) to have surgery on his throat. He has never been able to form his words correctly because of a submucous cleft palate (repaired last year) and his uvula not being long enough to close properly. This caused most of his words to come through his nose, which made it nearly impossible to understand him.
The surgery wasn't until 3:30 pm, which was pretty crummy because that meant that he could not eat all day long. He was allowed to drink juice until 10:30 am, though, so that helped a bit. We also bribed him with a trip to Target and let him pick out a few GI Joe action figures.
When we got to Vandy, he was scared. He remembered his last surgery and was not cooperative about getting his vital signs taken, etc. so they decided to do all of that after he had his "happy juice" medication that calmed him down and readied him for the surgery.
A child life specialist came in to talk to him - she had a bag of medical equipment so that she could explain things to him. She pulled out a blood pressure cuff and asked him if he knew what it was for. "I'm gonna die..." he exclaimed. "I don't want to die..." She was a bit taken aback and we pretended to take his Mickey Mouse's vital signs.
After that, they gave him his medication and he started to get a bit strange. Reagan on a normal day can be funny, but Reagan on Happy Juice is hysterical! He gets very silly, laughs a lot, and says weird things. When it really kicked in, he couldn't walk a straight line without falling over, so we put him in the bed with the rails up.
The surgery went well, it was so sad after he came out, though. He was in extreme pain and I left him about 9 pm with Clay. We expected him to be in the hospital for days like last time, but he was able to come out of it more quickly and we got him home two days later.
The day that we went to pick him up, Emma went up to him and said, "Talk to us, Reagan...Can you talk normal now, like us?" Funny thing is, Emma's concept of normal and our concept of normal are completely different! Go figure!
3 comments:
I would've LOVED to have seen him on his happy juice. He cracks me up anyway...I can imagine how hilarious he is with that in him.
Poor little guy indeed! I hthat this helps him.
Poor little guy! I could barely stand a simple ear tube procedure, I can't imagine something big like that. He's such a trooper. (and so are you!)
Post a Comment