Ethan's Home After First Surgery

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to let you all know that Ethan is home now. The docs wanted to make sure that Ethan was able to take his meds orally and take a full feeding (either orally or through his NG tuge) before he was discharged from the hospital and able to keep it down. After the surgery on Wednesday, he was understandably irritable with every movement and slept a lot. He was on IV fluids and not allowed to eat all day. By Thursday morning, he woke up very alert and looking around. By lunchtime, he was off the morphine, eating, talking, and smiling. They started him off with a small amount of milk and slowly increased it throughout the day. After each feed, he did wonderfully and kept it down. His oral feeding is little low now, but hopefully that will increase as the days go on. The nurses and docs were very pleased with his progress and by 9pm, he took his first full feed and kept it down. We were discharged at around 10pm last night, though we had the option of staying. I didn't see a real reason to stay other than it was late, so we came home. Our discharge papers had been written up by early afternoon so I had already reviewed them with a nurse and been taugh G Tube care already, so discharge was incredibly quick.


Today, he is doing well. He's a little irritable today, but doing well. He's on pain meds every 4-6 hours for a few days. We have a follow up appt on Monday where we will learn how to use the G Tube. At this point, we cannot use the G Tube until it heals next week, so for now he still has the NG Tube in his nose. It will be wonderful to get that out.

All the nurses and docs were absolutely wonderful and got us through Ethan's first surgery. We were visited frequently by docs and nurses to check on him. The scariest thing about this stay was that Ethan's IV came out twice and each time there was a lot of blood. I can't believe how much an IV bleeds when it comes out. When the IV team came to reinsert it, they tried his other hand and had no success so they tried one foot and had no success so they finally got it in the other foot. Poor guy has holes in both hands and feet :(

Thanks to all of you for your prayers and well wishes. This will be posted on the blog as well as some pics. I have to say that on Wednesday morning during the surgery all I wanted to do was cry. As Bob and I were waiting for the doc, I checked my email and many of you had written us well wishes and those really helped! Thank you so much! Jonathan even came to visit his little brother and loved playing in the play room. He also had a great time with daddy and grandma. Thank you also to my Uncle Scott for bringing me lunch and staying with me yesterday. It was great spending time with you!

-Dina