Jaden's Surgery

Jaden had surgery on January 4th.  He had to be circumcised  and he also had some reconstruction work to be done "down there".  Things didn't form quite right, and we've known since birth that this surgery would have to be done.  We waited until now so that he was old enough to handle the ventilator (and more importantly, come off the ventilator ok, since that was such an issue in the NICU) but young enough to never remember this!  It was a same-day surgery, and the surgery took 1 1/2 hours.  Here we are in our surgery prep area:

 We made sure to bring a lot of Thomas DVD's and trains.  The hardest part was that he kept begging for milk/juice/snacks but we couldn't give him anything and he was miserable!  He didn't get taken back into surgery until 10:45am, and he was starving!

After surgery, they had us wait to go back and see him until he had woken up from the anesthesia.  But by the time we got back there, he was sedated again.  Apparently he tore out his IV 3 times and wouldn't stop rolling and thrashing around on the bed so they had to sedate him again.  I guess kids do better after waking up from sedation following anesthesia.  The nurses couldn't stop talking about how incredibly strong he was - it took three of them to hold him down!  Also, the nurse anesthetist told me that he completely freaked her out - right after she extubated him (pulled the breathing tube out) he sat straight up on the operating table!  Like, he was knocked out cold from the anesthesia one second, and the next, sitting straight up!  Something straight out of a horror movie if you ask me!
They had me crawl on his post-op bed to calm him when he woke from sedation.   He was still really disoriented when he woke and he wanted nothing more than to get that IV out!  We watched cartoons for awhile and then let him have some apple juice, which he kept down just fine.  Then they let us go home!

 They gave him a nerve block in addition to the anesthesia to help with the additional pain.  They said it would relieve his pain for about 6-8 hours after the surgery.  They lied.  Almost as soon as we walked in the door, Jaden started screaming.  And I mean, the kind of scream that you never want to hear your child make.  Blood curdling doesn't even begin to describe it.  That entire night was just a blur of awfulness that I want to forget.  The doctor had given us a prescription for Tylenol with Codeine  but that barely took the edge off the pain.  It was a long night.
The next morning he woke up at 4:30am.  As soon as we got downstairs, he wanted to get down to play with his trains, but as soon as he put his weight on his legs, he started to scream!  I quickly picked him back up and went and brought the trains to him.  He sat with me until 6:30am when he asked to be put down again.  I hesitantly put him down, and he ran off to play with his toys without even looking back!  It was like regular Jaden for the rest of the day!  Except we could always tell when he was peeing: his body would stiffen, he would hunch over, and then he would whimper in pain.  But then he would straighten up, smile, and run off to his next adventure.  He still had awful moments (like most diaper changes) but things have gotten progressively better.  I think we are almost done with the pain at this point.
At the end of the month he has his follow up appointment, and if the doctor is happy with his healing, he will discharge him from Urology, which means that Jaden will no longer have any specialists or therapists, just a regular pediatrician!  And we are also really happy realizing that this has been Jaden's only surgery since birth, which all things considered, is pretty amazing!